IF YOU can't keep your head when all about you are losing theirs – then why not grow a new one? Decapitated flatworms have had their genes tweaked so that they can regrow a head.
Some flatworms are champions at regrowing body parts, but not all flatworm species have such a talent.
Jochen Rink at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, and his colleagues investigated what gives some flatworms regenerative properties.
They discovered a network of genes controlling head regeneration that is essentially the same in all flatworm species, but different species express different levels of some genes.
Tweaking the expression of just one gene in the network – beta-catenin – in a flatworm species that can't usually regenerate allowed it to regrow a head (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12414).
When we get a cut, there is a wound response that forms a scar, but in these animals the wound response is translated into a regenerative response, says Aziz Aboobaker at the University of Oxford. Whether we can apply this to biomedical regeneration in humans is the next big question, he says.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Tweak a gene to grow a new head"
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