If we can grow teeth, and then create drinking water out of pee, what’s next? Will the next generation of videogame systems in 2021 be able to run on pee? Maybe we can pee into our cars and use that as an alternative fuel source? I don’t know where science is going with all of these pee pee experiments, but I give them two big thumbs up. Duanqing Pei, who is conducting this experiment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, mixed the pee stem cells with the cells of mice, and eventually he was able to grow teeth, and enamel. Granted, the ‘teeth’ were soft, and weren’t shaped correctly, but this is kind of a big deal. However, there is still a ‘but’ in this whole pee thing. Heh… Butt. Pee.
So apparently this strange experiment to grow teeth out of the cells of people who lost teeth using their urine isn’t the best way to go about it, just about anything would be better than pee, considering how disgusting human waste is (regardless of the powers it gives Lyoto Machida), but still: this experiment is happening. Teeth are being made out of urine somewhere right now, despite not being the best way to create new teeth out of stem cells.
The BBC even talked to a stem cell biologist to get his extremely informed take on these pee teeth:
“It is probably one of the worst sources, there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low. “You just wouldn’t do it in this way.” He also warned that the risk of contamination, such as through bacteria, was much higher than with other sources of cells. Prof Mason added: “The big challenge here is the teeth have got a pulp with nerve and blood vessels which have to make sure they integrate to get permanent teeth.”
There has been no word if the teeth created were yellow. Read the entire study here.
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