A tiny worm that regenerates entire organs. A South American snail that can regrow its eyes. A killifish that suspends animation in dry weather and reanimates in water. These are the organisms at the heart of regeneration science. But exactly how they do these things is still a mystery to scientists. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber talks to microbiologist Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado about this mystery. They get into what regeneration looks like, why humans can't do it (yet) and where the science may lead us in the decades to come. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.Have a science mystery? Send us your questions to [email protected].
Sánchez Alvarado grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and spent his summers on his grandfather's cattle ranch. There, he learned to appreciate diverse life forms, and to look to nature to solve human problems.
"That's the equivalent of me cutting a piece of myself and watching that piece regenerate another me," he says."These animals, out of a piece of flesh, can reorganize every component such that they can produce a head, they can produce eyes, they can produce a digestive system."When asked why humans can't regenerate limbs like this flatworm, Sánchez Alvarado responds with a riddle of his own.
Take, for example, a"switch" humans and killifish have in common. In the Mozambique killifish, this switch allows the organism to regenerate a tail. In humans, the switch is involved in wound healing. Sánchez Alvarado hypothesizes that this regenerative property was lost in humans during evolution.
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