More Than Just a Bandage: Closing the Gap Between Injury and Appendage Regeneration

The remarkable regenerative capabilities of amphibians have captured the attention of biologists for centuries. The frogs Xenopus laevis and Xenopus tropicalis undergo temporally restricted regenerative healing of appendage amputations and spinal cord truncations, injuries that are both devastating and relatively common in human patients. Rapidly expanding technological innovations have led to a resurgence of interest in defining the factors that enable regenerative healing, and in coupling these factors to human therapeutic interventions. It is well-established that early embryonic signaling pathways are critical for growth and patterning of new tissue during regeneration. A growing body of research now indicates that early physiological injury responses are also required to initiate a regenerative program, and that these differ in regenerative and non-regenerative contexts. Here we review recent insights into the biophysical, biochemical, and epigenetic processes that underlie regenerative healing in amphibians, focusing particularly on tail and limb regeneration in Xenopus. We also discuss the more elusive potential mechanisms that link wounding to tissue growth and patterning.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Frontiers in Physiology

• Publication date

  2019-02-08

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fphys.2019.00081PMID 30800076PMCID 6376490
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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