Isn’t she familiar with the work of Dr Kurt Connors?
I’d like to nominate this thread for the “Needs ‘(Need Answer Fast)’” award for 2010.
It’d have to be WAY younger than that, then. I was a tiny kid in… probably kindergarten… when I took a chunk of the pad of my thumb off with scissors.
I still have a near-perfect round scar nearly 30 years later.
The WAG I’d heard, was that in the span of most of a human lifetime, you can grow back half of your pinky tip. I seem to recall reading that in high school biology, so I don’t have a great source. I wasn’t going to mention it, but a few people have already mentioned chucks of their thumbs not growing back, so there, research the pinky, not the thumb, if you want to know were to look.
I think I’d heard about half a pinky tip grown back in grammar school too, come to think about it. The teacher pointed out, it’s so small, you could conceivably, regrow the bone tip, then you have the “scaffolding” mentioned above. And with a smaller volume, the existing blood vessels would have an easier time of building more tissue, and filling in the tip. Maybe.
Some recent research points to the scarring response as a limiting factor in regrowth/regeneration of CNS nerve tissue - glial scar tissue forms rapidly, blocking regrowth and limiting regeneration. Drugs that block/dissolve the glial scar have been shown to assist functional improvements in rats.
I suspect that further developments in this area will eventually allow the reduction of scarring following surgery/trauma, at the expense of healing time.
Si
Thank you everyone for your responses so far. As borderline silly as the OP was, I was legitimately curious.
Each tissue has its own “scaffolding”, just like it has its own blueprint. Although grossly we think of the bone as the “scaffolding”/support of an extremity, microscopically it needs a different support and microenvironment from the surrounding area in order to develop properly. Whatever grows out of a sliced off pinky, it won’t be a complete finger tip like it was before.
I don’t wanna piss on her parade, but how many people would really want to regrow a Salamander leg?
Where do I sign up?
I’d like a pair of them growing from my top lip - so as to resemble a moustache. I’ll pay extra if I can control them to make hand gestures while I speak.
Since on one has, up to this point been born with salamander legs, how could one REgrow one?
To the OP, skin does not grow back, if its full thickness is removed, as in third degree burns. It must have replacment skin applied as a graft, whether from another part of the body or skin cultured in the lab. The covering that grows over non grafted full thickness wounds is called granulation tissue. It has no feeling and it restricts movement.
Nipples, too, would have to be grafted, however, I’ve never heard of a nipple bank.
I laughed imagining the bolded section.
There’s no specific checkbox for it on my donor card either. (I suppose there would have to be two checkboxes, in case someone only feels comfortable donating the left or right one)
Imagine if it was only partially successful. As in, they made gestures based upon what you were ACTUALLY thinking when you were talking to someone, say your boss.
Or, they groomed and plucked your nose hairs continuously. Or, picked your nose and flicked boogers at people. Or, they could stuff the boogers into your mouth!:eek:
My salamander mustache legs would never stop flipping people the bird.
If someone loses their nipples due to breast reduction or chest surgery and doesn’t want the nickname Nippleless Nippleby, the usual fix is to get nipples tattooed on. Seriously. I mean, it doesn’t provide nipple sensation, of course, but it’ll pass a quick visual check.
Actually, they do grow back - I lost money on that one once. It may have been that there was enough surrounding tissue, but it grew back.
Not to get too TMI on everyone, but the story involves a five-eighth who forgot to tape up his piercings before a game for the Petersham fourth XV, a ruck that he was caught at the bottom of and the fact that his ring was about the same size as the studs on the bottom of someone’s boot, which it had to be pried off.
[del]band[/del] strip club name!
Did you cut off bone, or just skin? I’ve sliced off a couple of my fingertips at various times and scraped most of the palm of one hand off in a cycling accident; they all grew back with minimal scarring.
Picunurse, does skin not migrate back over granulation tissue? In horses, it does, at least to a certain distance. I have seen gaping full-thickness wounds which were un-suturable which, after many weeks, filled in with granulation tissue to the level of the skin and later re-epithelialised to form new skin covering the wound (although it did not necessarily look exactly the same as the surrounding skin and sometimes a tough scar is left). Granulation tissue that does not get covered by skin or scar (proud flesh) is a problem, not the normal state of things. From what I have seen in vet med, even skin grafts do not necessarily cover the entire area that was wounded; little “islands” of skin are implanted on a healthy bed of granulation tissue so that skin can grow out from around these islands.