photo: University of Florida Health
Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) are studying salamanders’ ability to regenerate lost tissue; with a future objective of developing a treatment for humans to scar-free healing after surgery.
The research group works with a species of salamander, called “axolotls”, which is endemic to Mexico and belonging to the genus Ambystoma. This species have incredibly regenerative properties, it can regenerate lost limbs, regrow its own spinal cord and avoid cancer.
Ed Scott, Ph.D., a UF Health researcher and a professor in the UF College of Medicine department of molecular genetics and microbiology said: “When axolotls are young and still living together in nature, it seems like their favorite snack is their siblings’ appendages. They just nibble them off and they grow right back. They don’t even know they were missing.”
In all animals, blood is responsible for repairing the body, Scott said. Red cells carry oxygen and nutrients to cells, whereas white blood cells monitor and repair damaged cells. Scott and his team have developed a method to study how the regenerative properties in the axolotl’s blood work. This consisted in the creation of green axolotls with fluorescent red blood and red axolotls with green blood; with the objective of letting them tracking the contrasting blood color to the site of regeneration. Then, they are able to extract blood cells from the site to identify proteins involved in healing.
“In human beings, they can do in-utero surgeries on growing babies and the babies are born without scars. When kids are very, very young, they can cut their finger back to the first knuckle and it will grow back. But by the time you’re an adult, if you get down to the nail bed, that’s where regeneration stops,” Scott said.
Scott explained that axolotls, mice and humans share similar cells, but the cells behave differently. “Maybe the axolotls are expressing different genes in healing in a different pattern, and that might make all the difference between scarring and regeneration,” he said. “In this way, we have two animals — axolotls and mice — that have very similar genes and cells, and now we can just directly compare them. It becomes one of those old Hocus Focus comics where you have to find the differences. Maybe those differences are key differences for regeneration.”
Axolotls also seem unable to develop cancer. In the 1940s and 1950s, papers were published examining what happened when axolotls were exposed to carcinogens, Scott said. They grew an extra arm or leg but never developed cancer. The researchers’ next step will be study why diseases such as cancer don’t spread in the axolotl.
Through: Health Library, University of Florida Health
