Dolphins & Regenerative Medicine
By Konstantina Bilali Panagiotidou - September 09, 2019
In the history of developmental science, animals have
been a key factor in research. Most studies in the field of medicine and
biology have only focused on laboratory animals such as mice, rats, frogs,
rabbits, hamsters etc. To date there has been little to none organized research
about mammals that have many similarities with humans such as Dolphins. One observer has recently drawn
attention to the paradox of the dolphin’s medical miracle.
Dolphins are one of the most widely known groups of
mammals that have been attracting the attention of scientists due to their
significant structure. For Instance, their brain is equally big and sometimes
even bigger than a human's brain and just as much complex since it creates
visuals highly superior than the ones humans experience. These animals never
sleep but instead they "lock" their half hemisphere which helps them
rest each one in turns. Surprisingly, they have no vocal cords but possess very
sensitive and accurate hearing. In the
same way, they have an acute eyesight. To be specific, they have the ability
for a panoramic vision of 300 degrees.
One of the most significant reasons that humans are
amazed by those sea mammals, is their incredible intelligence. Dolphins have an
enormous nervous system and are able to score highly in neuroanatomic tests. It
was observed that they have the need and the ability to form cultural and
social behavior while they prefer to organize each other in groups and give
specific names to each one of them. It is also quite known, that those animals
are characterized by their sense of humor. Notably, they have the longest
memory in the whole animal kingdom. 
However, the most surprising discovery about them, is
their ability to self heal. Dolphins are often attacked by sharks and they end
up with tremendous holes in their flesh. One of the issues that would emerge from these wounds, is a non-stop
bleeding which would have killed a human being in a matter of hours. Dolphins
on the other hand, have the capacity to overpass their wound , without bleeding
to death. Not only they continue swimming as if nothing happened but no sign of
pain appears and shockingly the wound disappears after one month.
In order to explain why dolphins don’t bleed,
scientists have suggested that they operate the same mechanisms that allow them
to dive to great depths. Basically, their blood vessels stop the bleeding.
A reasonable approach to solve the riddle of how their
wounds retreat, is the regeneration process. Michael Zaslof suggested that
dolphins regenerate and fill up a whole part of their skin. The sharks have
basically ripped off their flesh, which isn't only fat but fiber and blubber. The
hypothesis says that, dolphins which suffer from such trauma, formulate some
kind of hormone which in turn stimulates the production of stem cells. To
explain further, these produced stem cells will differentiate into specialized
cells(maybe blood cells) , like macrophage, that are able to heal the wound. The
single most striking observation to emerge from understanding the regenerating
ability of these mammals, is to be able to take the same hormone and proteins
used in the rebuilding process of the blubber and transfer it to humans.
Another central question in this dissertation asks
how is it possible for the dolphins to
function normally and submerge in the water while being wounded deeply by the
infectious shark’s teeth. The mammals regenerate their wound in a timeline of
30 days. During this whole time, they survive while carrying a dreadful
compilation of polluted organisms in their body without suffering any kind of
sepsis or illness. In addition to that, their wounded flesh is exposed in every
kind of virus, pathogen and infectious creatures that live in the sea. It is
quite known that dolphins have a diet full of fish,
squid, shrimps, jellyfish and octopuses. But it has been observed that they
sometimes absorb something from algae and plankton. That something could be
some short of antibiotics those algae have, which Dolphins use in order to
create a vital compound similar to antibiotics. In other words, they don’t even metabolize the algae but simply store
them up as crucial composition for their injuries.
In conclusion, one of the more significant
achievements to emerge from the current studies, even in a theoretical base, is
to understand the regeneration mechanism that dolphins use in order to defy and
overcome a deadly injury. Studying their regeneration procedure , scientists
could find a way to replicate and create the same mechanism in order to regenerate
wounds in humans that would kill them in a few hours. As well as the suggestion
of them storing their own antibiotics in their flesh and potentially having
morphine in their tissue brings hope to the possibility of using the same
method in humans.
1 comments
Wow! So informative, great work job on the article. I look forward to reading more here! Linda
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