Newt is known for its ability to regenerate not only tissues, organs, but also body parts. Due to these unique opportunities, newts are very interested in biologists, since their molecular genetic secrets can help in the development of medicine in the field of cell regeneration and human organs.
Researchers from Dayton University in the United States decided to conduct a series of experiments that lasted 16 years to bring medicine closer to the cherished goal – to learn to restore or recreate tissues and organs in the human body.
The researchers chose the lens of the newt’s eye, like the one that should undergo repeated regeneration. With the help of surgical operations, scientists 18 times removed the lens from the eye of the newt, and observed what was happening.
In the course of these studies, it was necessary to find out with what accuracy the Newt organism would recreate the lens of the eye? And also, it should be understood, does the quality of the lens regeneration, the multiple restoration of the organ and the age of the animal affect? The answers received for so many years astonished the scientists.
Amphibians carefully restored the lost organ every time. Immediately after the healing of the cornea, which suffered during the removal of the lens, the amphibian lens was restored for one day. By the end of the experiment, the age of the newt had reached thirty years. So will this fact affect regeneration? No, the newly grown crystalline lens of the old amphibian was no different from the lens of a young Newt, which was not subjected to regeneration of this organ.
The activity of a gene called crystallin, as well as the activity of transcription factors and the amount of synthesized matrix RNA, has not been changed in any way.
These experiments have proved that age does not affect the regenerative abilities of the organism. Only, how this amazing process happens, scientific researchers can not explain yet. Maybe young and old amphibians use different abilities to achieve the same goal. Or maybe the newts have learned to maintain the same length of those chromosome segments that can determine the maximum length of life of each cell. If biologists manage to disclose these secrets, we can get new methods of treatment. And this will be a big breakthrough in the medical field.
