Unlocking the salamander's capacity to regenerate

The salamander has intrigued scientists for many years with its extraordinary capacity to regenerate after injury. Why is it and how do these animals manage to completely and faithfully regenerate large body structures such as limbs when mammals don’t?

In 2005, the respected journal, Science, declared that understanding what controls organ regeneration was in the top 25 hit parade of major questions facing scientists in the coming decades.

It seems the National Institute of Health in the US agrees and has awarded a $2.4 million package of funds to the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute to stimulate research into this phenomenon as part of their Grand Opportunities (GO) program.

The multidisciplinary teams will embark on an examination of the salamander’s response to injury and systematically “compare and contrast” that with the human’s. Humans and other animals share many of the same genes but in the case of the salamander some of these genes may be regulated differently giving rise to useful regeneration. Using the cellular and genetic makeup of salamander to guide them they hope to understand what genes to switch on and off and ultimately unlock a far greater regenerative potential in patients.