The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
Congratulations to Whitney Laboratory's Dr. Mark Martindale and Julia Ramon, who recently published a paper in BMC Biology titled "Regeneration in the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi occurs in the absence of a blastema, requires cell division, and is temporally separable from wound healing." This paper is a collaboration with the University of Florida's Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Dr. Thomas Angelini and Tori Ellison, graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
The ability to regenerate is a widely distributed but highly variable trait among metazoans. A variety of modes of regeneration has been described for different organisms; however, many questions regarding the origin and evolution of these strategies remain unanswered. Most species of ctenophore (or “comb jellies”), a clade of marine animals that branch off at the base of the animal tree of life, possess an outstanding capacity to regenerate. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this ability are unknown. We have used the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi as a system to study wound healing and adult regeneration and provide some first-time insights of the cellular mechanisms involved in the regeneration of one of the most ancient extant group of multicellular animals.
Ctenophore Image: Dorothy Mitchell, Martindale Lab