“As often in science, this discovery is a coincidence”admits Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, professor of molecular biology at the Howard Hughes (United States) medical institute, co-author published on August 6 in Naturewhich details the incredible regeneration capacity of the snail. Canaliculated pomace is an aquatic species from South America, considered among the most invasive in the world.
The researcher discovers the animal by exchanging With an Italian doctoral student, Alice Accorsi, at the end of one of the embryology courses he gave. Today the first author of the study, she then carried out her thesis on the means of regulating the populations of this very resistant gastropod who, after being imported by accident, proliferates in the region of Modena (Italy). Professor Sanchez Alvarado, who is used to working on the impressive regeneration of the planar, a flat aquatic worm, then offered to test the regenerative skills of the snail.
The researchers therefore ampute it with one eye, at the base of an “antenna”, which miraculously repels in a month. “It is remarkable, because it is a case of complex regeneration where it is necessary to rebuild a structure which mixes several types of tissues”explains Pierre Kerner, teacher-researcher in evolutionary genetics of development, within the laboratory cells, regeneration and evolution (Jacques-Monod institute/Paris Cité University), which did not participate in the study.
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