Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 74, Issue 2, February 1980, Pages 302-314
Developmental Biology

Full paper
Regeneration of symmetrical forelimbs in the axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum

https://doi.org/10.1016/0012-1606(80)90432-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Surgically constructed symmetrical double-anterior and double-posterior upper forelimbs of the axolotl were amputated immediately after surgery. Double-anterior limbs either failed to regenerate or formed single digits or spikes. Double-posterior limbs formed symmetrical double-posterior regenerates in 60% of the cases, thus extending the previous finding that the amount of distal transformation in surgically constructed double-half limbs is inversely proportional to the time between grafting and amputation (Tank and Holder, 1978). When these symmetrical regenerates were amputated through the forearm region, all but one formed a symmetrical secondary regenerate. The majority of the secondary regenerates had a larger number of digits than did their corresponding primary regenerates. Reamputation of the secondary regenerates resulted in symmetrical tertiary regenerates, and the majority of these also had a larger number of digits than did their corresponding primary regenerates. The results are compared to those of Slack and Savage (1978a, b) on embryonically derived double-posterior limbs and they are discussed in terms of a formal model for distal transformation (Bryant and Baca, 1978).

References (13)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (36)

  • Hierarchical pattern formation during amphibian limb regeneration

    2019, BioSystems
    Citation Excerpt :

    Alternatively, smaller disparities in positional information will fail to re-establish all the circumferential identities required for patterning, thus generating distally incomplete structures. Phenomenological examples of such distally incomplete patterns have been generated by 1) the amputation of double posterior limbs in Urodeles (Holder et al., 1980) and 2) the heat or radiation induced generation of small positional disparities in the imaginal discs of the fly (Girton, 1981; Girton and Russell, 1980). Unfortunately, not all experimental data aligns with the polar coordinate model.

View all citing articles on Scopus

This investigation was supported by Grant HD 06082, awarded by the National Institutes of Health, DHEW.

View full text