Lizards are known for their ability of tail autotomy wherein they drop their tails to distract a predator as they scurry away. Then they regrow it, but this time it is only a cartilage tube that lacks all the skeletal and neural structures of their original tail.
But a new study showed that lizards injected with gene-edited stem cells were able to regrow a perfectly regenerated tail complete with bone and nerves, which the typical regenerated tail lacks.
Lepidodactylus lugubris in captivity
Novel Way of Tail Regeneration
The Scientist reported that scientists from the University of Southern California have used gene editing on lizard embryonic stem cells to help adult mourning geckos (Lepidodactylus lugubris) perfectly regenerate a lost appendage.
Regenerative biologist Thomas Lozito from the university's Keck School of Medicine and his colleagues injected engineered neural stem cells to amputated lizards that will be unresponsive to the signals in making the cartilage tube when they cut their tails. They found that each amputated lizard would regrow its tail that exhibit normal anatomical patterning.
"This is one of the only cases where the regeneration of an appendage has been significantly improved through stem cell-based therapy in any reptile, bird, or mammal, and it informs efforts to improve wound healing in humans," he said in the university's press release.
Lozito told The Scientist that their successful experiment provides hope for inducing perfect regeneration in lizards and other species, including humans. He added that their team was particularly interested in the nerve growth that occurred in their experiment because it implies hope in treating people with spinal cord injury in the future by forming new nerves.
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Scientists Used CRISPR-Cas9 Editing to Regenerate Lizard Tails
The team employed CRISPR-Cas9 editing to knock the Smo that will block the production of cartilage then inserted it into newly amputated tail stumps of genetically identical adult geckos. The team then amputated and collected the regrown tails for analysis after 28 days.
Lozito explains that the engineered neural stem cells propagated as the tail regenerated ad incorporated into the regenerative tissues of the lizard, which give them properly segmented and patterned tails with bones and nerves in the dorsal side of the tail and cartilage at the ventral half.
Researcher Elly Tanaka from the Research Institute of Molecule Pathology in Vienna said that using advanced gene-editing techniques for regenerative studies is indeed a powerful and futuristic way.
But researchers said that more work is needed to determine whether the networks regenerated can communicate with neurons in the spinal cord. Although she acknowledged the impressive results of the genetic engineering they used in regenerating the lizards' tails.
The results of the study titled "Introducing Dorsoventral Patterning in Adult Regenerating Lizard Tails With Gene-Edited Embryonic Neural Stem Cells," is published in the journal Nature Communications.
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