Blog – Page 3378

Year 2021 😗

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Hydra belong to a larger group of invertebrates called cnidarians, which also includes sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish. Their simple bodies have a tubelike shape with the mouthpart and tentacles at one end, and a “foot” that attaches to the surrounding rock or other solid surface at the other.

Some animals such as lizards and salamanders can regrow lost limbs. But hydra, along with some worms and other animals, take regeneration to the extreme. Near their mouthparts, hydra have a cluster of 50 to 300 cells called the head organizer; as its name implies, it directs the development of the head. If a hydra is beheaded, a new organizer can form and prompt the animal to regrow its head. Meanwhile, the head that was lopped off will sometimes regrow the lower portion of its body.

Scientists have also successfully grafted hydra heads onto the decapitated bodies of other hydra. And if a hydra is torn into small clumps of cells, those clumps that include head organizer cells will regrow a full body, Macias-Muñoz says.

face_with_colon_three Year 2018 This detailed information about axoxtl limb regeneration is giving scientists a better understanding of how this remarkable can regenerate and eventually it will help humans regenerate lost limbs too.

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Limb regeneration requires a blastema with progenitor cells, immune cells, and an overlying wound epidermis, but molecular identities of these populations are unclear. Here, the authors use single-cell RNA-sequencing to identify transcriptionally distinct cell populations in adult axolotl limb blastemas.