190 | Lea Goentoro on Regrowing Limbs

<p>Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucial ways. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Regeneration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Planaria</a> can be cut into pieces, and each piece will regrow into an entire organism; but for most advanced animals, loss of a limb becomes a permanent condition. But why should that necessarily be so, if an organism's genome knows what it's supposed to look like? Lea Goentoro's lab has recently produced surprising results that indicate that it's easier than you might think to coax animals into regenerating limbs.</p> <p><em>Support Mindscape on </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p>Lea Goentoro received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University. She is currently Professor of Biology at Caltech. Her research involves how biological systems function and develop across a variety of scales, including perception, organization, and self-repair.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://goentoro.caltech.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lab web page</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.bbe.caltech.edu/people/lea-a-goentoro" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Caltech web page</a></li> <li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7EQmovMAAAAJ&amp;hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Scholar publications</a></li> <li>"<a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/65092" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A conserved strategy for inducing appendage regeneration in moon jellyfish, <em>Drosophila</em>, and mice</a>"</li> </ul> <p><br /></p>