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| Although acupuncture has been partially recognized for its therapeutic functions in Western countries, the meridian theory is still highly disputed. So far, no substantial anatomical structure has been found to support the existence of "Jing" or "channels" and "Luo" or "collaterals". The regulatory function of the meridians cannot yet be explained based on modern biology. In this article, the meridian system was compared with nematode nervous system, and it was found that there were high structural similarities between the two systems. Therefore, based on the biogenetic law that animal ontogeny is simply a quick recapitulation of phylogeny, I hypothesized that the meridian was originated from the nematode nervous system which was recapitulated during the human embryonic development, and meridian cells were the residual cells of nematode nervous systems. Here it was shown that many meridian phenomena can be well explained by the hypothesis, such as the bidirectional signal transduction, surface vs. viscus correspondence, delay of effect, linear features, stimulus strength threshold and diversity of stimuli. In addition, it can also explain other meridian phenomena, such as "De Qi " or "engaged", sensation along the meridians, meridian-specific skin disease, low resistance and high calcium ion concentration at the acupoints, high temperature and lighting along the meridians. I also proposed a number of ways to validate the hypothesis for two key aspects: (1) the truthfulness of the meridians, (2) the origin of meridian cells. For example, induced pluripotency technology can be used to demonstrate the embryogenicity of the meridian cells, and photogenetics techniques can be used to verify the nervous properties of the meridian cells.. |
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| Keywords:Chinese traditional medicine, embryo development, nematode, nerve system, pluripotency, photogenetics??? |
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