Dr. Lozito said that fibroblasts and phagocytes working together are like the starting point for the lizard's regrowth. He thinks this is a big step in understanding how to help mammals, including humans, regrow body parts like lizards do.
Do you know how lizards can regrow their tails if they lose them? Well, scientists have been studying this amazing ability in hopes of helping people regrow body parts too. A group of researchers led by Dr. Thomas Lozito at the University of Southern California has discovered some interesting facts about how lizards do it.
When a lizard loses its tail, it can grow back a new one, but it's not the same as the old one. The new tail is made of different stuff, like cartilage, which is softer than bone. It also has muscles, nerves, and blood vessels to make it work.
These scientists wanted to know more about how this works, so they looked closely at what happens when a lizard's tail grows back. They used a fancy technique to see which cells did what job during the process.
They found two important types of cells: fibroblasts and phagocytes. Fibroblasts are like construction workers for our bodies. They build things called collagen and other stuff that keeps our tissues strong. The scientists saw different kinds of fibroblasts helping to make cartilage in the new tail.
Phagocytes are like the body's clean-up crew. They help get rid of bad stuff and protect us from germs. They also gather at injured spots. These researchers saw that different phagocytes were helping in different parts of the new tail. Some of them even sent signals to the fibroblasts to make cartilage.
The scientists wanted to test if the stuff from one special kind of phagocyte could help other parts of the lizard's body grow back, too. So, they took the special phagocytes and put their signals into lizards with injured legs. Usually, lizard legs don't grow back, but with the signals, they could make new cartilage instead of scars.
The scientists also found a signal pathway called Hedgehog that's super important for making cartilage. When they blocked this pathway in lizards, the tails they grew back didn't have cartilage.
Dr. Lozito said that fibroblasts and phagocytes working together are like the starting point for the lizard's regrowth. He thinks this is a big step in understanding how to help mammals, including humans, regrow body parts like lizards do. But there's still more to learn before we can do that.
