How Animals Offer Clues to Regeneration

stem cell research, limb regeneration researh — Injured fins that lack bone-forming cells use another type of cell to regenerate.

(Image credit: : Ken Poss, Duke University Medical Center.)

With the goal of finding ways to regenerate lost or injured body parts, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health are exploring the strategies that some organisms use to regrow missing cells, organs and appendages. Here are a few examples.

Re-Forming From Stem Cells

Planarians are tiny freshwater flatworms — about the size of toenail clippings — that can re-form from slivers 1/300^th of their original size. To do this, planarians use stem cells, called cNeoblasts, that have the ability to become almost any cell type in the body. Researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research studied the genes that are active in these stem cells to determine which of them are key players.

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Zebrafish, blue-and-white-striped fish that grow to be about 1.5 inches long, can regrow fins. To study how, scientists at Duke University Medical Center generated zebrafish with depleted levels of cells responsible for creating bone. These cells, called osteoblasts, normally increase in number after a fish loses a fin. The researchers expected that when osteoblast-deficient fish lost fins, they wouldn’t be able to regenerate them as quicklyas those with normal levels of osteoblasts, if they could regenerate their fins at all. Surprisingly, all of the fish in the experiment regrew their fins, with recovery occurring at normal rates. Learning more about this process could aid the development of therapies for bone injury or loss in humans.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis identified another zebrafish regeneration strategy by tracking how individual cells behaved in the stump of an amputated fin. One possibility was that adult nerve, bone and skin cells that make up the fin would revert into stem cells with the potential to become other cell types. However, this study showed that adult cells maintained their identities during regeneration, with skin cells in the stump only giving rise to skin cells in the new fin. This discovery suggests that inducing the cells that are already present to grow again could be an additional approach to replacing lost or injured tissues.

Yet another technique for promoting regeneration might be found in turning genes off. Several years ago, researchers at The Wistar Institute discovered that inactivating a single gene allowed holes in mouse ears to close without scarring. The researchers determined that this breed of mice has an inactive version of a gene involved in regulating cell growth and division. The finding offers new insight into regeneration in a mammal and could guide the direction of future research.