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Editorial
. 2021 Dec 23:10:e75629.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.75629.

A matter of nerves

Timothy J Duerr  1 , James R Monaghan  1
Affiliations
Editorial

A matter of nerves

Timothy J Duerr et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Regrowing new body parts requires neural input to restore appropriately sized limbs in salamanders.

Keywords: axolotl; developmental biology; limb regeneration; neural control; proportionality; regenerative medicine; size regulation; stem cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

TD, JM No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Limb regeneration in the axolotl salamander.
Previous studies suggest that nerves play a role in limb regeneration. Wells et al. hypothesized that larger animals have more nerves, and that blastemas from a smaller animal grafted onto a large animal would cause the new limb to grow to the same size as the animal’s existing limb. Large (top; pink) and small (bottom; pink) axolotls were grafted with blastemas from small (top; green) and large (bottom; green) individuals, respectively. Regardless of the size of the blastema they received, the animals grew limbs matching their body size, suggesting that the number of nerves could play a role in determining the size of the regenerate limb.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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