Among vertebrates, the ability to regenerate lost tissue or organs is best developed in urodele amphibians, such as the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) which can replace lost tissue throughout adulthood. Urodels can regenerate a wide range of organs inluding limbs, tails, gills, heart, spinal cord and jaws. The goal of our study was the identification of up-regulated genes during axolotl hindlimb regeneration after amputation. We established at the Veterinary Faculty an experimmental axolotl pharm harbouring 40 specimens, and due to the reason that axolotl genome was not yet sequenced and no axolotl-specific whole-genome microarray was available at that time, we used suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) as a broader approach in order to target as many candidate genes as possible. Among 400 identified clones from the SSH library 133 represented known sequences (majority with annotated function) and 74 were novel. The novel genes we identified might be important for the process of blastema formation and the onset of cell proliferation in a regenerating limb. To continue this research we planed extension of the project to the study of tissue regeneration process in the heart; however, due to the lack of financial support for maintaining the axolotl facility at the Veterinary Faculty, the project was stopped in 2008.
Supportive research program:
- Interinstitutional national research program P1-0104 Functional Genomics and Biotechnology for Health (R. Komel); 2004-2008.
Academic partner:
- University of Ljubljana, Veterinary Faculty (Prof. G. Majdič, PhD).
Researchers involved:
| Researcher | Position |
| Radovan Komel | Program/project leader |
| Maša Goršič | PhD student |
Education:
| Student | Thesis | Title | Year | Supervisor |
| Maša Goršič | PhD | Gene expression during limb regeneration of Ambystoma mexicanum. | 2008 | Radovan Komel |
| Matej Kastelic | Dipl | Introduction of the methods for transcriptome and proteome analysis at Mexican axolotl Ambystoma mexicanum limb regeneration. | 2005 | Radovan Komel |
Selected publications:
- Goršič M. et al. (2008): Identification of differentially expressed genes in 4-day axolotl limb blastema by suppression subtractive hybridization. Physiol. Biochem. 64(1): 37-50.
- GORŠIČ Maša, KASTELIC Matej, MAJDIČ Gregor, KOMEL Radovan: Isolation of differentially expressed genes during axolotl limb generation using supression subtractive hybridisation. 2nd European Science Foundation Functional Genomics Conference “Functional Genomics and Disease”, 6-10 September 2005, Oslo, Norway. Final Programme with Abstracts (ESF, 2005), p. 117 (no. 141).
- GORŠIČ Maša, MAJDIČ Gregor, KOMEL Radovan: Identification of differentially expresed during axolotl limb regeneration by supression subtractive hybridisation. Cellular and Molecular Basis of Regeneration, 2004. Final Programme and Abstracts (Euresco, 2004), p. 32.