The Healing Foundation and the University of Manchester are teaming up to understand how some creatures can recreate their own severed limbs and to see if it is possible to enable people to do the same.

The aim is not unrealistic, said Enrique Amaya. Human embryos in the womb, if they are operated on before six months of gestation, heal without a trace of scarring, but this ability is later lost. Humans and amphibians share 85% of the same genes, so adult humans might have, in a silenced form, the genes that would enable scarless healing.

Before becoming frogs, tadpoles that are injured heal themselves within a few hours, or grow a new tail in nine days. Salamanders can regrow the same limb repeatedly, while some lizards have the ability to shed their tails voluntarily.

In salamanders, the clue is a group of blastema cells which have the ability to organise themselves into new limbs. “We want to find ways of creating these very specialised cells,” Professor Amaya said.

Professor Amaya’s aim, when the genes are identified, is to develop drugs or gene therapy treatments that would activate or silence them in humans, whichever is needed. The first stage would be to encourage scarless healing; limb regeneration is much further away.

Via The Times.
Martinjust sent me a link to the Axolotl movie file.