Sci-fi to reality: Superpowered salamander may hold the key to human regeneration

Regeneration is one of the most enticing areas of biological research. How are some animals able to regrow body parts? Is it possible that humans could do the same? If scientists could unlock the secrets that confer those animals with this remarkable ability, the knowledge could have profound significance in clinical practice down the road.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sci-fi-reality-superpowered-salamander-key.html#jCp

Tau.Neutrino said:

Sci-fi to reality: Superpowered salamander may hold the key to human regeneration

Regeneration is one of the most enticing areas of biological research. How are some animals able to regrow body parts? Is it possible that humans could do the same? If scientists could unlock the secrets that confer those animals with this remarkable ability, the knowledge could have profound significance in clinical practice down the road.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sci-fi-reality-superpowered-salamander-key.html#jCp

> announcing today that they have assembled the genome of the axolotl, a salamander whose only native habitat is a lake near Mexico City.
Axolotls have long been prized as models for regeneration.
It’s hard to find a body part they can’t regenerate: the limbs, the tail, the spinal cord, the eye, and in some species, the lens, even half of their brain has been shown to regenerate.

> Though humans share many of the same genes with axolotl, the genome is ten times larger, posing a formidable barrier to genetic analyses.

Ten times larger genome than a human!

Why?

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Sci-fi to reality: Superpowered salamander may hold the key to human regeneration

Regeneration is one of the most enticing areas of biological research. How are some animals able to regrow body parts? Is it possible that humans could do the same? If scientists could unlock the secrets that confer those animals with this remarkable ability, the knowledge could have profound significance in clinical practice down the road.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sci-fi-reality-superpowered-salamander-key.html#jCp

> announcing today that they have assembled the genome of the axolotl, a salamander whose only native habitat is a lake near Mexico City.
Axolotls have long been prized as models for regeneration.
It’s hard to find a body part they can’t regenerate: the limbs, the tail, the spinal cord, the eye, and in some species, the lens, even half of their brain has been shown to regenerate.

> Though humans share many of the same genes with axolotl, the genome is ten times larger, posing a formidable barrier to genetic analyses.

Ten times larger genome than a human!

Why?

We know why genome size can be huge in some flowering plants – polyploidy allows survival of hybrids between different species, as well as other effects. Octoploid plants (4 times the normal genome) include strawberry, dahlia, pansies, sugar cane, and some sugar cane hybrids are dodecaploid.

But why in some amphibians?

But why in some amphibians?

Limb regeneration perhaps and can’t some change sex when conditions require it, maybe it requires a lot of genome coding