Grant: Operating Grant

Fish fins and limbs of mammals evolved from similar structures. Fish have the ability to regenerate their fins after injury and to re-develop normal bony rays that were lost. Regeneration depends on the formation of a blastema, a group of proliferative and undifferentiated cells which will progressively differentiate as the regenerate is growing. This process involves the reactivation of genetic programs that took place during development of the embryo and larvae. One important question to address mechanisms of regeneration is to determine how interactions between this blastema and other specific subset of cells allow the regeneration process. My laboratory is studying the molecular pathways for cell-cell communication that we think is crucial for the maintenance of the blastema and for the synthesis of new bone during regeneration. We are using techniques that allow us to inactivate gene function or, conversely, to activate the gene function in places where this gene does not normally function. We are using other techniques to eliminate specific cells of the regenerate to examine the impact of the loss of these cells on the regeneration process. This work will allow us to better understand how cells communicate with one another to assure the growth of the fin regenerate and to precisely position the newly-forming bone. The relative simplicity of the fin regenerate make it an excellent model to study regeneration mechanisms, a fundamental knowledge that will be important in establishing strategies to develop methods, drugs or tools to induce a regeneration response to injury, trauma or degenerative event in species that do not regenerate, including humans.