Plants swaying in the breeze may actually be conversing

LONDON: Plants swaying in breeze may actually be conversing with each other as they not only respond to sound but also communicate actively by 'clicking' noises, a new research has claimed.

Scientists at Bristol University used powerful loudspeakers to listen to corn saplings, and heard clicking sounds coming from their roots. It is yet more evidence that while they appear to be passively swaying in breeze, plants are in fact actively communicating with each other in a constant chatter.

When they suspended their roots in water and played a continuous noise at a similar frequency to the clicks, they found the plants grew towards it. Plants are known to grow towards light, and research earlier this year from Exeter University found cabbage plants emitted a volatile gas to warn others of danger such as caterpillars or garden shears.

But the researchers say this is the first solid evidence they have their own language of noises, inaudible to human ears, the Daily Mail reported. Their study is published in the journal Trends in Plant Science.

Daniel Robert, a biology professor at Bristol, said: "These noisy little clicks have the potential to constitute a channel of communication between the roots."

Scientists grow bones from fat in lab

London: Scientists have succeeded in growing human bone from stem cells in a laboratory , which they claim may eventually pave the way for patients to have broken bones repaired or replaced with new ones grown outside the body.

The researchers started with stem cells taken from fat tissue. It took around a month to grow them into sections of fully-formed living human bone up to a couple of inches long. The first trial in patients is on course to be conducted later this year, by an Israeli biotechnology company that has been working with academics on the technology, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Professor Avinoam Kadouri , head of the scientific advisory board for Bonus Bio-Group , said: "There is a need for artificial bones for injuries and in operations. We use three dimensional structures to fabricate the bone in the right shape and geometry.

"We can grow these bones outside the body and then transplant it to the patient at the right time. By scanning the damaged bone area, the implant should fit perfectly and merge with the surrounding tissue. There are no problems with rejection as the cells come from the patient's own body," he added.

The technology, which has been developed along with researchers at the Technion Institute of Research in Israel , uses three dimensional scans of the damaged bone to build a gel-like scaffold that matches the shape.

Stem cells, known as mesenchymal stem cells, which have the capacity to develop into many other types of cell in the body, are obtained from the patient's fat using liposuction . These are then grown into living bone on the scaffold inside a "bioreactor" , an automated machine that provides the right conditions to encourage the cells to develop into bone. Already animals have successfully received bone transplants. The scientists were able to insert almost an inch of laboratory-grown human bone into the middle section of a rat's leg bone.

The technique could ultimately allow doctors to replace bones that have been smashed in accidents, fill in defects where bone is missing, or carry out reconstructive plastic surgery.

Scientist Grows Jaw Bone From Adult Stem Cells

by Anna Kuchment

A Columbia scientist has become the first to grow a complex, full-size bone from human adult stem cells.

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic , a professor of biomedical engineering at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science , reports that her team grew a temporomandibular joint (TMJ) from stem cells derived from bone marrow. Her work is reported in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science this month.

Vunjak-Novakovic used CT images (A and B) to build a TMJ-shaped scaffold (C).

“The TMJ has been widely studied as a tissue-engineering model because it cannot be generated easily, if at all, by current methods,” says Vunjak-Novakovic, whose co-authors include Warren L. Grayson, then a post-doctoral student in her lab and now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. Around 25 percent of the population suffers from TMJ disorders—including those who suffer from cancer, birth defects, trauma and arthritis—which can cause joint deterioration. Because the TMJ is such a complex structure, it is not easily grafted from other bones in a patient’s body. “The availability of personalized bone grafts engineered from the patient’s own stem cells would revolutionize the way we currently treat these defects,” she says.

Current methods of treating traumatic injury to the jaw include taking a bone from the patient’s leg or hip to replace the missing bone. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get the patient’s own stem cells and grow a new jaw?” says Dr. June Wu , a craniofacial surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center who advised Vunjak-Novakovic on her research.

Vunjak-Novakovic’s technique for turning stem cells into bone was inspired by the body’s natural bone-building process. Her team started by analyzing digital images of a patient’s jawbone in order to build a scaffold into the precise shape of a TMJ joint. The scaffold itself was made from human bone stripped of living cells. The team then seeded the scaffold with bone marrow stem cells and placed it into a custom-designed bioreactor. The reactor, filled with culture medium, nourished and physically stimulated the cells to form bone. “Bone tissue is metabolically very active,” she says. Bone tissue develops best when it is bathed in fluid flowing around it. Vunjak-Novakovic and the team looked into the exact flow rates one needs for optimal effects. After five weeks, they had a four-centimeter-high jawbone that was the precise size and shape of a human TMJ.

The technique can be applied to other bones in the head and neck, including skull bones and cheek bones, which are similarly difficult to reconstruct, but Vunjak-Novakovic started with the TMJ because, “We thought this would be the most rigorous test of our technique,” she said. “If you can make this, you can make any shape.”

Her team’s next step is to develop a way to connect the bone graft to a patient’s blood supply to ensure that the graft grows with the person’s body. “Our bones change, and these biological grafts would change with us,” says Vunjak-Novakovic.