Weapon X Program: Maybe we could create a real life ‘Deadpool’

in #stemng6 years ago (edited)

On may 18 2018; Marvel entertainment released ‘Deadpool 2 ’ which is sequel to the original movie ‘Deadpool’ released on February 8 2018 starring Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson—the protagonist Deadpool. The movie has since this time received an encouraging financial performance on online video streaming websites and on the cinemas too; according to Scott Mendelson of the Forbes magazine, the movie has earned over $250M in domestic showings and a little bit over that figure in other countries totaling a worldwide financial output of over $600M as at June 3, 2018.

THE MOVIE


Wade Wilson continues to star as the superhuman mutant ‘Deadpool’ with an awesome ability of regenerating a lost or defective pat of his body which makes him immortal. Wade Wilson who had worked as a mercenary for the special forces was diagnosed with terminal cancer, was approached by a mysterious recruiter who offered him a cure for his cancer which have ruined his life as he had already distanced himself from his love— Vanessa without warning as he was worried she can’t cope with him following his condition.


[Image credit: Flickr. CC BY 2.0 license. Contributed by Didit Putra.

Excited however, he accepted this offer, all stories cut short, this experimental cure was based on injecting him with a serum which would awaken the latent mutant genes, he was subjected to the torture and stress to trigger these mutant genes and the mutations which would follow their activation, unfortunately this was futile, this annoyed the researchers who abandoned him in a hyperbaric chamber where he couldn’t get enough oxygen as he had to breathe under high pressure, this was accompanied with enormous stress which nearly made him unconscious and successfully triggered these mutant genes and finally activates a superhuman healing abilities that cured his cancer but left him with burn-like scars all over his body.

He couldn’t stand walking around the streets with this looks, hence he made his famous ‘Deadpool’s suit’. This is common to most Marvel superheroes, similar suits have been seen in Marvel’s Spiderman, superman and Batman.

Homo Sapien superior—Who are they?


image source: Wikimedia. CC2.0 license. Contributed by William Tung

Deadpool isn’t the first superhuman mutant movie produced by Marvel entertainment, in fact it is just one of the numerous mutant superhuman movies produced by the super rich American movie firm based on their comic books.

According to these books, these extraordinary beings are considered to be of the subspecies Homo Sapien superior an evolutionary progeny of Homo Sapiens and considered to be the next stage in human evolution.

These beings possess a genetic trait called the ‘X-gene’ which allows them to naturally develop superhuman powers, however, unlike the natural mutants who posses mutant genes at birth and manifest the trait at puberty, the Marvel mutants acquire these mutant genes on exposure to some extraordinary external stimuli, this can also be seen in the 1960s top selling superhero movie ‘Spiderman’ where Peter Parker developed his superpowers after being bitten by a spider.

Something peculiar?


Marvel’s superhero movies are highly fictional and almost naturally impossible, but Deadpool presents something peculiar to the science community. ‘Mutageic self renewing ability’ and this have been an important scientific phenomenon. Many non-mutagenic cells in the human body are capable of being renewed when destroyed, used up or worn out;

The human red blood cells are replaced by new ones every 120 days, the haemopoietic stem cells are also capable of self renewal, the labile and stable cells of the body are capable of regenerating readily or when they are induced respectively.


Mechanism of liver regeneration in humans. Image credit: Wikimedia. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Contributed by ELMcKinlay

After an injury, the healing process is employed to restore the function and architecture of the of the injured body tissues, left over cells regenerate gradually and fibroblasts are produced to fill up the space left by the lost tissues.

This healing capacity creates a little similarity between normal humans and the fictional Deadpool as his abilities can be described as a higher level replication and regeneration abilities as can be seen in scenes where he regenerates lost body parts such as his hands, the regeneration process goes through a real life development stages, from a little young limbs to a fully developed hand, this ability can be seen in real life in the near extinct Mexican amphibian —the Axolotl.

Axolotls — The Amphibian Deadpools?

Popularly known as a ‘walking fish’, the neotenic Mexican salamander originates from numerous lakes such as lake Xochimilco and lake Chalco in central Mexico. Over 6000 Axolotls inhabited the lake Xochimilco in 1998, However, due to civilization, the city of Mexico had developed greatly and the axolotls' habitat have been hampered so much and only about a hundred Axolotls could be found per square kilometre of the lake Xochimilco in 2008.

16989458087_9f55c01021_k.jpg
The walking fish. Image credit: Flickr. CC BY 2.0 license. Contributed by Luke.Lary

It has currently been included in the endangered species conservation scheme in Mexico. Supervised rearing of the Axolotls have been simplified as their aquatic larval stage requires only a little amount of food to grow and a little demand for terrestrial life unlike other amphibians.

However, Axolotls just as other salamander species are neotenic, they reach sexual maturity without undergoing metamorphosis, this is due lack of thyroid stimulating hormone which stimulates the production of thyroid hormone (thyroxine) by the thyroid gland, however this ability is reduced in terrestrial and adult axolotls, terrestrial axolotls tends to be larger than the dwarf axolotls found in high mountain lakes due to more availability of iodine for the production of thyroxine, they also exhibit genetic variation and a camouflage ability.

Feature of most scientific importance in the axolotls is their ability to regenerate lost body parts over a period of time, ranging from weeks to a month or more, axolotls could regenerate lost parts of its central nervous system and can easily accept grafts and transplants from other axolotls and even the ability to develop additional body parts. These features have led to an increased scientific attention to the Axolotls and is also a major cause of the high use of this animal and hence it’s near extinct population status.

How are Axolotls genetically related to humans?


According to evolution, every living thing had evolved from a common parent/origin, however, as development continues, environmental factors have led to the adaptation which is centered on these living things developing some features and habits which enables them live successfully in their new/contemporary environment, adaptation also includes the reduced use of some body parts and a halt of normal habits;


Lamarck's two factor theorem. Image source: credit: wikimedia CC4.0 license. Contributed by Ian Alexander

According to Jean Lamarck's theory of use and disuse, the body parts which are not constantly in use tends to degenerate and become less functional, according to him, snakes once had legs but have lost this as its environment required more of creeping movements than erect movements.

Thus most living things share a character in common and this has been the basis of taxonomy as a specific group has at least a feature in common and a specie denotes individuals of most closely related features which can interbred naturally to produce healthy offspring.

Humans are Taxonomicaly distinct from axolotls and has almost nothing in common as regards their phenotypic make up, while axolotls are amphibians with little need for terrestrial life, mammals re mainly terrestrial and only visiting the water bodies as a form of recreation or for other miscellaneous purposes, but Whales which are also mammals are well known aquatic animals, this hints on an evolutionary relationship between the classes of living things and the comparison between the Axolotls and humans is not an exception to this.

The genome of axolotls is presently regarded as the largest animal genome completed, constituting about 32 million base pair sequence revealing specific gene pathways which enables for the regeneration ability. Amidst the disparity in quantity, the Axolotls genome encodes a similar number of proteins as the human genome— about 20,000 proteins and this very conspicuous difference in number of base pairs is mainly due to repetitive sequences which contributes to the increased median introns which are thirteen times that observed in man, hence a very important relationship between the two genomes.

What are the possibilities of a real life Deadpool?


The manipulation of wade Wilson’s cancer is the main principle applied by the weapon X program and the stimulation of the dormant mutant genes through cellular stress, this is very different from the natural process employed by the axolotls genes to regenerate a lost part of its body.


An autopsy examination of human liver showing many large pale tumor deposits which is as adenocarcinoma derived from primary lesion in the pancreas. Image credit: Wikimedia. A creative commons license. Contributed by Haymanj

Cancers are genetic disorders caused by either spontaneously or environmentally acquired DNA mutations. Cancerous tumors just as any other tumor are monoclonal, hence they arise from a single mutant cell and multiply over time to a large number of cells with features different from other cells which includes a very high viability, unregulated growth and an abnormal form of metabolism, it breaks down glucose anaerobically even in the presence of abundant oxygen. Cancerous cells are highly invasive and performs a different function from their forbearers which are always detrimental.

Two genes regulates the growth and development of tumors in the body, the tumor suppressor genes and the proto-oncogenes (refer to the pathway below). Tumor suppressor genes prevents uncontrolled growth, the development of neoplastic cells ensues when these tumor suppressor genes are lost, however there usually needs to be a loss of both alleles of the tumor suppressor genes for mutations to occur;


Image credit: Wikimedia. CC3.0 license. Contributed by Asw029

Guardian Tumor suppressor genes sense genomic damage and initiates control process culminating in the cessation of proliferation or apoptosis while governor tumor suppressor genes regulates cellular proliferation, the loss of these genes permits and accelerates the acquisition of oncogenic mutations. Proto-oncogenes promotes the growth of new cells in the body, cancer cells results from the hyperactivity of the proto-oncogenes which may lead the development of new cells which functions abnormally and different from the original cells.

Cancer cells functions by exhibiting reasonable control of these two genes, they inhibits the tumor suppressor genes and stimilulates the proto-oncogenes, hence cell division is overly enhanced, new abnormal cells are produced as the body cells replicate rapidly. This is the principle applies in Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool, and hence his quick regeneration ability, left over cells from lost parts of his body regenerates rapidly leading to the formation of new body parts in a manner which is not in tandem with the normal healing process of the body.


Image credit: Wikimedia. CC BY 2.0 license. Contributed by G. Weston

Researches in developing this regenerative abilities are however not centred on this principle, as more attention is the Axolotls' mechanisms of somatic cells regeneration and also the Lin-28 homolog A protein which is encoded by Lin 28 gene which functions in germ cell development, somatic stem cell population maintenance, positive regulation of neuron differentiation and also acts as a post transcriptional regulator of genes involved in developmental timing and self renewal in embryonic stem cells.

The Axolotls regenerative abilities also decreases when fed with iodine, this also points out a negative influence of thyroid hormones on this ability, hence this ability is very hard and almost impossible to incorporate in humans, hence it is very unlikely that we’ll have a real life Deadpool, we can only strive to prevent the Axolotls from going extinct and then calmly watch Ryan Reynold’s exciting movie and have only little hopes of a real life Deadpool.

REFERENCES


  1. Science behind deadpool superpowers, healing and regeneration -scienceabc
  2. Mutants -wikipedia
  3. Axolotl -wikipedia


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