Stem cells help gecko regenerate "perfect" tail

Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, November 2 (Reporter Liu Xia) Regenerating body parts is no easy task! Although some lizards can grow back to their severed tail, only an imperfect cartilage tube grows back

The researchers adjusted the embryonic stem cells and implanted them into the stump of the scaly-toed gecko's tail to make the tail grow more like the original tail than before

Thomas Lozito, the corresponding author of the research paper and assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Southern California, explained that the natural regenerated tail of a gecko is “just a bunch of concentric tubes composed of fat, muscle, and skin.

To solve this problem, Lozito and colleagues used embryonic stem cells (compared to adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells can develop into a wider range of body tissues), modified them to ignore the original signal, and then The modified embryonic stem cells were implanted into the tail stump of the gecko whose tail was removed

Lozito said: "The gecko is a member of the Saurianidae family

However, the researchers also pointed out that these modified tails still lack a spinal cord, and there is still a certain gap between the original tail

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The gecko's tail docking to survive has become a well-known story