Latent regeneration abilities persist following recent evolutionary loss in asexual annelids.

ABSTRACT: Regeneration abilities have been repeatedly lost in many animal phyla. However, because regeneration research has focused almost exclusively on highly regenerative taxa or on comparisons between regenerating and nonregenerating taxa that are deeply diverged, virtually nothing is known about how regeneration loss occurs. Here, we show that, following a recent evolutionary loss of regeneration, regenerative abilities can remain latent and still be elicited. Using comparative regeneration experiments and a molecular phylogeny, we show that ancestral head regeneration abilities have been lost three times among naidine annelids, a group of small aquatic worms that typically reproduce asexually by fission. In all three lineages incapable of head regeneration, worms consistently seal the wound bu

SUBMITTER: Bely AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2824374 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature