Insights into regeneration tool box: An animal model approach

Abijeet S Mehta; Amit Singh

doi:10.1016/j.ydbio.2019.04.006

Insights into regeneration tool box: An animal model approach

Dev Biol. 2019 Sep 15;453(2):111-129. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2019.04.006. Epub 2019 Apr 13.

Authors

Abijeet S Mehta¹, Amit Singh²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469, USA.
² Department of Biology, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469, USA; Premedical Program, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469, USA; Center for Tissue Regeneration and Engineering at Dayton (TREND), University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469, USA; The Integrative Science and Engineering Center, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469, USA; Center for Genomic Advocacy (TCGA), Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA. Electronic address: asingh1@udayton.edu.

Abstract

For ages, regeneration has intrigued countless biologists, clinicians, and biomedical engineers. In recent years, significant progress made in identification and characterization of a regeneration tool kit has helped the scientific community to understand the mechanism(s) involved in regeneration across animal kingdom. These mechanistic insights revealed that evolutionarily conserved pathways like Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, BMP, and JAK/STAT are involved in regeneration. Furthermore, advancement in high throughput screening approaches like transcriptomic analysis followed by proteomic validations have discovered many novel genes, and regeneration specific enhancers that are specific to highly regenerative species like Hydra, Planaria, Newts, and Zebrafish. Since genetic machinery is highly conserved across the animal kingdom, it is possible to engineer these genes and regeneration specific enhancers in species with limited regeneration properties like Drosophila, and mammals. Since these models are highly versatile and genetically tractable, cross-species comparative studies can generate mechanistic insights in regeneration for animals with long gestation periods e.g. Newts. In addition, it will allow extrapolation of regenerative capabilities from highly regenerative species to animals with low regeneration potential, e.g. mammals. In future, these studies, along with advancement in tissue engineering applications, can have strong implications in the field of regenerative medicine and stem cell biology.

Keywords: Epimorphosis; Evolutionarily conserved pathways; Morphallaxis; Novel genes; Regeneration; Regulation; Tissue engineering; Wnt.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Review

MeSH terms

Animals
Biological Evolution
Genetic Techniques*
Models, Animal*
Regeneration / physiology*
Signal Transduction

Grants and funding

R15 GM124654/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States