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Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Salamanders have an amazing capacity to regenerate complex body parts including the tail, limbs, lens and central nervous system. The study of genes that function during regeneration in salamanders may provide clues to enhance healing in humans. In “Microarray analysis of early gene expression during natural spinal cord regeneration in the salamander Ambystoma mexicanum,” Randal Voss and his co-authors discuss the first broad-scale analysis of genes that are “turned on” or “turned off” during salamander spinal cord regeneration.

In this study, salamander tail tips were amputated, spinal cord tissue was collected and thousands of genes were assayed simultaneously using a custom salamander DNA microchip that was developed by Voss’s group. During the early phase of regeneration, salamanders mount a healing response and begin the process of replacing damaged cells with new cells. Many of the same genes that are turned on after spinal cord injury in humans were also turned on in salamanders. This suggests that some aspects of the regeneration process, and especially the early wound healing response, are shared between humans and salamanders. However, important differences were observed and these will be analyzed further in future studies.

Randal Voss is an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky. He earned his doctorate from Clemson University in 1994. Voss is also the director of the Ambystoma Genetic Stock Center and Research Resources, as well as a faculty associate of the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center. In his lab, students study the evolution, development, genetics, and genomics of tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum), which are important model organisms in biomedical and natural history research.