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Repair & Regeneration in Salamanders

Repair and Regeneration

An organism is said to regenerate a lost part, if a substitute for the loss grows from the rest of the organism, and the substitute is a copy or almost a copy of the old lost part.


Regeneration of a lost limb occurs in two major steps, first de-differentiation of adult cells into a stem cell state similar to embryonic cells and second, development of these cells into new tissue more or less the same way it developed the first time . Some animals like planarians instead keep clusters of non-differentiated cells within their bodies, which migrate to the parts of the body that need healing.


Sun flower sea star regenerates his legs


Regeneration in salamanders

In urodele amphibians (salamanders), the regeneration process begins immediately after amputation. After amputation, the epidermis migrates to cover the stump in less than 12 hours, forming a structure called the apical epidermal cap (AEC). Over the next several days there are changes in the underlying stump tissues that result in the formation of a blastema (a mass of dedifferentiated proliferating cells).


The Distal tip of the limb (the autopod, which is the hand or foot) is formed first in the blastema. The intermediate portions of the pattern are filled in during growth of the blastema by the process of intercalation [7,8]. Motor neurons, muscle, and blood vessels grow with the regenerated limb, and reestablish the connections that were present prior to amputation. The time that this entire process takes varies according to the age of the animal, ranging from about a month to around three months in the adult and then the limb becomes fully functional.

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