Widening perspectives on regenerative processes through growth

Abstract

Defining the basic mechanisms behind regeneration requires comparison to both development and homeostasis. How is organ size achieved in animals during normal development, and how is it reconstituted in animals capable of regenerating organs and body parts lost to injury? Are the mechanisms regulating size and allometry evolutionarily conserved? In recent years, discoveries in the fields of signalling, physiology, developmental biology and regeneration using a growing and diverse collection of model organisms have begun to shed mechanistic insight into these problems. Growth, central to embryonic development, tissue homeostasis and regeneration, was the unifying concept at the recent Molecular and Cellular Basis for Growth and Regeneration Keystone meeting.