scientist have evidence what many masses in all likelihood distrust to be true : rejuvenate lose limbs is bally difficult . In fact , it ’s so slick that , even though several non - related creature are able to do it , it looks as though the ability to regrow body parts may have evolved only once in the chronicle of biography on Earth .
Among the many brute able of regenerating sever appendage areaxolotls – also known as Mexican salamanders – zebrafish , and a character of reedfish call bichirs . Though the three creatures are very distantly related to , having diverged from a mutual ascendant around 420 million years ago , the basic mechanism behind their ability to regrow limbs is the same .
The cognitive operation begin when a body part is lose , such as when it is bitten off by a predator , at which gunpoint a type of uniform tissue calledblastemabegins to evolve into the demand cell at the site of the wounding , until the annexed characteristic is regrown .
By amputating branch from all three of these species and then psychoanalyse the transmitted textile in the cells around the combat injury , the researcher noted that they all shared 10 common snippets of RNA , ormicroRNAs . look at the gene place by these microRNAs , they then discovered that many are in fact highly implicated in the formation of blastema , and therefore in all likelihood play a key function in the creature ’ regenerative abilities .
For instance , a microRNA name miR-21 was regain to be extremely upregulated in the hurt tissue of all three creatures , leading to the expression of several factor that enable blastema to develop . As such , reporting their findings in the journalPLOS One , the subject field authors conclude that the axolotl , zebrafish , and bichir all regenerate limb using the same genetic mechanism , indicating that they all inherited this power from a distant common ancestor rather than evolving it independently .
Though there may not be any immediate practical implications for this new cognition , it does at least tell us that if we were to ever seek to reprogram humans with the power to regenerate , the microRNAs found in these three creatures would believably supply the perfect blueprint .
