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Project Background
Project Background
Regeneration is the incredible ability to fully replenish and regrow injured or lost tissue. The fascinating property has astonished scientists who recognize the immense clinical and biomedical breakthroughs that would come with restoring this ability, even partially, in humans. Zebrafish, planaria, newts, and salamanders are the most thoroughly studied organisms in regenerative biology as they boast some of the most extensive regenerative capabilities yet known. While molecular regenerative mechanisms across all species remain mysterious, recent research has elucidated a number of genes critically involved in tissue renewal, as well as genes (e.g. checkpoint proteins) that have been observed to hinder regenerative processes. The research of my mentor, Dr. Whited, investigates the role and processes of blastema formation in the context of regeneration.
Axolotl via WWF
Axolotl limb blastema development following amputation via https://doi.org/10.1002/reg2.32
Why flies?
Why flies?
Fruit flies (drosophila) have an extremeley limited regenerative capacity. So why use them in regeneration research? I intend to apply the knowledge of specific genes associated with regeneration in the axolotl to drosophila in an attempt to induce tissue renewal abilities that the animal does not typically display. Successful regeneration induction would imply the existence of regeneration mechanisms in drosophila able to activate only under certain circumstances. This finding would promote new inquiries into what these circumstances may be. It would also suggest the evolutionary conservation of regenerative mechanisms
Project Journey
Project Journey
In the fall of 2021, I stumbled across a paper describing insights and further questions about the mechanisms behind limb regeneration in the axolotl salamander. After reading just the abstract, which was one of probably 100 I'd read that semester in searching for a MARC topic, I was hooked. I met for the first time with the paper's lead author, Dr. Jessica Whited, an Assistant Professor and Primary Investigator at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute that December. Expecting just to learn more about her work, I left the meeting with a mentor and plans to apply her work with axolotl salamanders to drosophila, a much more accessible model organism
I am currently raising and maintaining wild type Canton-S flies. My experimental plan is to acquire a strain of drosophila with the heat shock eya2 gene. Dr. Whited's research has identified eya2 as a gene essential to limb regeneration in the axolotl. I hypothesize that if I enhance the eya2 in drosophila, I will see increased tibial regeneration being that eya2 is linked directly to limb renewal in other species.
My mentor, Dr. Jessica Whited: Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Principal Investigator
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