{"id":227262,"date":"2025-12-16T21:54:01","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/reactivation-of-mammalian-regeneration-by-turning-on-an-evolutionarily-disabled-genetic-switch"},"modified":"2025-12-16T21:54:01","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:54:01","slug":"reactivation-of-mammalian-regeneration-by-turning-on-an-evolutionarily-disabled-genetic-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/reactivation-of-mammalian-regeneration-by-turning-on-an-evolutionarily-disabled-genetic-switch","title":{"rendered":"Reactivation of mammalian regeneration by turning on an evolutionarily disabled genetic switch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/reactivation-of-mammalian-regeneration-by-turning-on-an-evolutionarily-disabled-genetic-switch2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mammals display prominent diversity in the ability to regenerate damaged ear pinna, but the genetic changes underlying the failure of regeneration remain elusive. We performed comparative single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analyses of rabbits and mice recovering from pinna damage. Insufficient retinoic acid (RA) production, caused by the deficiency of rate-limiting enzyme <i>Aldh1a2<\/i> and boosted RA degradation, was responsible for the failure of mouse pinna regeneration. Switching on <i>Aldh1a2<\/i> or RA supplementation reactivated regeneration. Evolutionary inactivation of multiple <i><i>Aldh1a2<\/i>-linked<\/i> regulatory elements accounted for the deficient <i>Aldh1a2<\/i> expression upon injury in mice and rats. Furthermore, the activation of <i>Aldh1a2<\/i> by a single rabbit enhancer was sufficient to improve ear pinna regeneration in transgenic mice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mammals display prominent diversity in the ability to regenerate damaged ear pinna, but the genetic changes underlying the failure of regeneration remain elusive. We performed comparative single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analyses of rabbits and mice recovering from pinna damage. Insufficient retinoic acid (RA) production, caused by the deficiency of rate-limiting enzyme Aldh1a2 and boosted RA [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}