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Article: FROM PUNCHED-OUT EARS TO CARDIAC SCARRING MIRACLE MRL MOUSE GROWS BACK HEART MUSCLE CELLS, TAKING PAGE FROM AMPHIBIANS' REGENERATION.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- August 7, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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From ear lobes to tongues to navels, body piercing seems to be catching up to tattooing, especially among teen-agers.
Researchers have been punching holes in the ears of laboratory mice long before this fad took hold. It's a convenient way of numbering and identifying which rodents are which in in vivo experiments. But as immunologist and regenerative biologist Ellen Heber-Katz at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia discovered to her surprise three years ago, there's one strain of mice, MRL by name, that heals over those perforations, leaving no trace of the punch-outs. "People looked at our ear holes," she recalled, and said 'That's very nice. What else can ...