Axolotls and Tumors

Axolotls are amphibians. Also known as "Ambystoma Mexicanum" are the species that are native to Mexico City (and probably from the Xochimilco lake to be precise). These amphibians have captured the attention of many biologists and other scientists for their regenerating abilities and remained in the juvenile stage, never leaving the water. The regenerating capabilities of the Axolotls were observed in the 18th century. It was by an Italian priest who when cut its leg an Axolotl observed that it regrow its whole limb back. Axolotls can regrow 50 % of their heart and 20 % of their brain and complete limbs and back within weeks (Usually 3 to 8 weeks). These supernatural abilities seem too bit much but they have a good reason for this. The habitats of the axolotls don't hold many of its predators so they are actually in competition with the other individuals and sometimes snack on each other (cannibalistic) !!!!!

These are now considered endangered even though scientists are still experimenting on them and Traditional Mexican farmers and scientists have teamed up to save the endangered axolotl in Mexico City. 

There are different stages in this regenerating process namely:- 

1. Amputation :-
   a cut or injury (in this case)
2. Healing
3. de-differentiation
4. Cone stage
5. Pallet stage
6. Notch stage
7. Digit stage

The axolotl has the ability to regenerate complete limbs regardless of the site of injury along the limb axis. Regeneration is initiated by wounding, although not all wounds (such as a lateral limb wound) will result in the formation of limb regeneration. Within hours (although this timing increases with the age of the animal), a wound epithelium migrates and covers the wound site. In the days following, nerve fibers innervate this wound epithelium, and signaling feedback loops between the nerve and the wound epithelium establish a specialized signaling center known as the apical epithelial cap. This center then generates multiple signaling molecules that result in the dedifferentiation and proliferation of the underlying mature limb tissues into limb progenitor cells known as blastema cells. Interactions in the wound between cells from the opposite axes of the limb establish the pattern of the missing limb structures; and once this pattern is established, the cells re-differentiate into the missing limb structures. 

Multiple studies on the axolotl have indicated that there are three basic requirements for regeneration of the limb;

•  the wound epithelium, 
•  nerve signaling, 
• and  the presence of cells from the different limb axes.

 One such study established a regenerative assay, known as the accessory limb model (ALM), which showed that the combination of these three components were sufficient for the generation of a limb.

In simpler words, Axolotls do this in a very complex way (still not completely understood of course), first when the body cells sense a cut they message to the surroundings triggering the immune to fight off any pathogens and at the same, the organism forms a Band-aid made up of its own cells more like a barrier and then the progenitor cells start to proliferate into tissues like nerves, muscle, blood vessels, skin, cartilage, and all the other tendons … 

seamlessly connected as before, as good as new. This regrowth or organ-biogenesis seen in Axolotls paves a good chance for tumors.

We, humans, are approximately 37 trillion cells on average when fully grown and divide very rapidly like a million times per day in a million parts of the body. Cells are the most fundamental unit of life. These cells have a nucleus that directs the chemical activities in the cell and all the functions, more like a brain of an organism. The nucleus contains chromatin which is an entangled mass of thread-like structures. These threads are made up of DNA (Deoxy-ribo Nucleic acid) and RNA (Ribo Nucleic Acid). These are mostly made up of sugars and nitrogenous bases that encode all the functions of the body. 

*DNA does contain all the information about the functions of a cell and how the body works but is not a blueprint. Reading DNA is not that easy for example in plants, the triggering of the chemical compound called auxin stimulates the growth of the shoot towards the sunlight as the auxin reacts more where there is light and thus directing the stem towards the sunlight and gibberellins react with ten other chemicals to spurt the growth. In humans, for instance, there are known ten or so hormones or chemicals that determine your height and this is just the crust of the DNA in many parts more than 50 to 100 chemicals react combining into the growth of your body. *

Back to your 37 trillion celled body, your cells divide many times and they make mistakes when replicating. Every time your cells divide passing on the same copies of chromatin they to other cells in the form of chromosomes your cells make on average 120,000 mistakes, this is a pretty small change in your genetics though, your DNA when aligned in a straight line would be as much as 2 meters (of one cell) with 3 billion nucleotides (smaller units of DNA). These mistakes sometimes wind up beneficial or harmful or even neutral. It's the problem that when these cause harmful changes in our genes, the cell now keeps on dividing as normal and its genetics would spread out creating a huge mass of yourself which is not you. 

This mass is called "Cancer" or "Tumor" with ranging of 200 different types discovered now.

Our body has already many repairing systems for these mistakes and tumor-oppressor hormones. There is still a chance that you get cancer.  Axolotls and larger animals like whales and elephants have more oppressing hormones compared to us at a factor of about 20 times.

Scientists believe that eradicating cancers and even humans can imitate spurt growth like that of the axolotls is still within grasp, in 40 yrs or so.

Comment below for any suggestion or topics for next blog 😊👍😃.

J. Maanavendra roy,
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