UF scientists are using the blood of a rare salamander to study how humans might heal without scars after surgery.
The axolotl, an endangered salamander, can regrow lost limbs, spinal vertebrae and parts of its brain. Researchers are comparing healing in axolotls to healing in mice, hoping to better understand the amphibian’s regenerative abilities.
Ed Scott is a UF health researcher and professor in the UF College of Medicine department of molecular genetics and microbiology. Scott refers to this amphibian as the “king of regeneration.”
Scientists are focusing their studies on how different species’ blood cells react to healing.
“There’s something different about the blood cell formation in axolotls,” said Malcolm Maden, Ph.D., a professor in the department of biology.
Usually speckled brown-green, the rare salamanders being used for the research have a naturally occurring mutation that gives them white, translucent skin. Because of this mutation, internal organs and blood of these salamanders are visible.
Researchers developed axolotls with fluorescent blood so they can study the site of regeneration in the salamanders.
Axolotls, mice and humans all share similar cells, but the cells behave differently, Scott said.
“It becomes one of those old Hocus Focus comics where you have to find the differences,” Scott said. “Maybe those differences are key differences for regeneration.”
Axolotls are also unable to develop cancer. Scott said that when exposed to carcinogens, the creatures occasionally grew extra limbs but never developed cancer.
“We’re studying a set of animals that can do what we would like to help people do better,” Scott said.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 10/7/2014]
