Updated:05/06/2022 21:49h
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A group of scientists from the University of Porto have discovered that a variety of rodent, the African spiny mouse, has a special ability to regenerate its wounds. This allows you recover from skin wounds, as well as more serious ones that affect your heart, kidneys, and spinal cord. This makes it one of the few mammals with the ability to regenerate their tissueswhich represents a very important advance in research on the regeneration of key parts of the human body.
Mammals are not usually able to recover from damage to the central nervous system, but this mouse – which can be found in Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania – would be the exception, along with some species of deer and dolphins.
One of the scientists, Mónica Sousa, explains to the BBC that she and her colleagues were “completely amazed” when they saw that a specimen of this rodent was able to jump and run within weeks of being paralyzed and unable to use their legs.
This expert in nerve regeneration, whose conclusions have been recently published after ten years of research, recalls that there are other animals that can regenerate important parts of your body, but are usually amphibians or worms. Some are axolotls, flatworms, zebra fish or even some jellyfish. However, unlike the mouse, neither of these animals is close to human in genetics.
Regeneration is a way of healing wounds by replacing tissues to the right extent so that lost functions can be recovered and function as the original ones did. This research could lead to a way to regenerate key parts of the human body and could help millions of people suffering from degenerative conditions.
Studies in this regard hypothesize that these mice could have evolved to shed their skin to escape predators. But there are other reasons, such as surviving attacks by parasites, frequent in these areas of the African continent. In addition, according to research yet to be published and echoed by the BBC, scientist Ashley Seifert, from the University of Florida, has discovered that another rodentthe brush-haired mouse, also appears to have similar regenerative abilities.
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