Your cells crackle with electrical signals that guide embryonic development and heal wounds.If we could learn how to tweak this ‘bioelectric code’, we might be able to prevent cancer and even grow new limbs.
health
February 22, 2023
creepy puka
When Dany Adams first played the footage, he couldn’t see anything. The tadpole had fully developed its tail and flew out of the shot, leaving only a blank screen. “Well,” she remembers thinking. “One more person is dying.” But the cameras were rolling all night, and she dutifully rewound the tape if there was no chance she’d spotted something interesting. I didn’t begin to describe what I saw. “My jaw dropped to the floor,” she says.
The video showed the frog embryo busily dividing to become a tadpole. Then this little smooth blob started glowing. An electrical pattern flashed a series of unmistakable images: two ears, two eyes, a chin and a nose. These ghostly predictions didn’t last long. But after a few hours, two ears, two eyes, a chin, and a nose appeared exactly where they had been shining. The proof she sought in her decade-long project conducted by Michael Levin at Tufts University in Massachusetts is finally here. Electrical patterns have been shown to provide a blueprint for shaping the developing body, regulating where to place the face and other features to grow.
As amazing as this is, this is just one of the many roles that electricity plays in biology. There is growing evidence that electricity not only affects development, but affects everything from wound healing to cancer. “Bioelectric gradients and communication are fundamental to life,” says Levin. If we can map this ‘electrome’ and learn to decipher it, some amazing results for our health are just the beginning.
…
