Your Body's Wish List: Neurons and Muscle Fibers

The Scientist reports that your body "is a living machine that appears well thought out, but which fails when operated beyond its biological warranty period." If given the chance, what would scientists and researchers change?

Two of the big fixes are restarting processes that stop at maturity:

Particularly troublesome are two kinds of cells in the body that generally stop replicating past the stage of growth and development - neurons and muscle fibers. Two of our expert fixes deal with these problems specifically. John Q. Trojanowski, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Disease Center suggests that the problems of neurodegenerative disease could be avoided if neurogenesis in the brain worked better, replacing spent neurons before they begin to cause problems for themselves and surrounding tissue.

Similarly, the nerve loss that may invariably lead to muscle loss in the body (sarcopenia) could be avoided with excess motoneurons, suggests Michael Bemben, professor of health and exercise science at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Other improvements suggested for Humans v2.0 are another set of teeth, additional UV protection for the eye, and coatings for the walls of blood vessels.