I was very impressed by the work that the other members of the fellowship were doing this summer. All of the biomedical engineering talks piqued my interest because they were actually solving a problems that were actually applicable to medicine instead of answering basic questions. However, there was one non-engineering talk that was really cool. That was Christin’s talk about regrowing hearts. This talk seemed like it could have been an engineering talk about the methods of regrowing a heart, but it wasn’t. The talk came from the point of view of pure research which was a cool take on something that I would usually associate with engineering.
What I really liked about Christin’s talk was that there were so many future implications for the research in the field of prosthetic organs and saving lives with no rejection by the body. Usually transplants are risky because even if they do work the organ is a foreign entity to the body, so there is a chance the organ will be rejected. However, if the organ is your own, the chances of rejection plummet to zero which is amazing. Also, her research focused on zebra fish which I didn’t know were so cool. I didn’t know that zebra fish could regenerate their entire body. I believe that this project is the coolest one that was presented.
However, this research leaves me with questions. I wonder if there is a limit to regrowth because there is a limit to the number of times a cell can go through mitosis. Also, I wonder if there is a certain amount of damage that would result in an inability for the heart to grow back. Lastly, I wonder if there is a way to bring this natural phenomenon into humans. I guess only time will tell and I look forward to hearing about this subject in the future.
