Abstract
The ability to regenerate is scattered among the metazoan tree of life. Further still, regenerative capacity varies widely within these specific organisms. Numerous organisms, all with different regenerative capabilities, have been studied at length and key similarities and disparities in how regeneration occurs have been identified. In order to get a better grasp on understanding regeneration as a whole, we must search for new models that are capable of extensive regeneration, as well as those that have been under sampled in the literature. As invertebrate deuterostomes, echinoderms fit both of these requirements. Multiple members regenerate various tissue types at all life stages, including examples of whole-body regeneration. Interrogations in two highly studied echinoderms, the sea urchin and the sea star, have provided knowledge of tissue and whole-body regeneration at various life stages. Work has begun to examine regeneration in echinoderm larvae, a potential new system for understanding regenerative mechanisms in a basal deuterostome. Here, we review the ways these two animals’ larvae have been utilized as a model of regeneration.
Highlights
Tissue regeneration remains one of biology’s greatest mysteries
Whole-body regeneration requires the ability of the animal to reset its major body axes through positional cues, such that the correct tissues are regenerated in the correct spatial domain [9,10]
We examine the advances echinoderms have provided in the study of tissue regeneration
Summary
Tissue regeneration remains one of biology’s greatest mysteries It is a complex process, involving the coordination of signaling cascades and gene expression programs, but this capacity to regenerate is not universally shared among animals. Progenitor cells, which are usually either resident stem cell populations or other cells that have become dedifferentiated following the injury, are recruited to proliferate to provide the cellular material for tissue restoration [5,6,7] This is not always the case, as the cnidarian Hydra can achieve regeneration with limited contribution from the proliferation of new cells [8]. Viewing animal regenerative ability across a phylogenetic tree reveals no clear pattern in either regenerative capacity or mechanism, but as little is known about the array of species that it is hard to understand whether this complex process has evolved independently multiple times or has a common evolutionary origin of regeneration.
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