Plants and Animals Are Different in Their Design

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Some biologists think that the ability to regenerate is something inherent in all of us, just like a cell dividing. I'm going to show my ignorance once again, but plants and animals seem very different in this. Aand am i right or wrong to think that plants are sort of more plastic in this way, and animals are a little bit more rigd in their design? Ah, yes, i think so. Because the function, the ship of an animal is more closely tied to the function em were differentiated exactly y or like specific shipes of animals.

Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucial ways. Planaria 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.

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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.

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