Keinath and her colleagues mapped more than 100,000 pieces of DNA onto chromosomes, the structures that package DNA in the nucleus of each cell. “This thing’s huge,” said Melissa Keinath, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Baltimore and an author of the paper.īuilding off a previous study, Dr. Smith and his colleagues looked to the axolotl’s DNA.Īt 10 times the size of the human genome, the axolotl genome was no small beast to tackle. To understand how they evolved these healing superpowers, Dr. As long as you don’t cut off their heads, they can “grow back a nearly perfect replica” of just about any body part, including up to half of their brain, said Jeramiah Smith, an associate professor of biology at the University of Kentucky and an author of the paper. Many animals can perform some degree of regeneration, but axolotls seem almost limitless in their capabilities. Their work paves the way for advances in human regenerative medicine. In a paper published Thursday in Genome Research, a team of researchers has reported the most complete assembly of DNA yet for the striking amphibians. Threatened by habitat degradation and imported fish, they can only be found in the canals of Lake Xochimilco, in the far south of Mexico City.Ĭaptive axolotls, however, are thriving in labs around the world. Today, wild axolotls face an uncertain future. Unusual among amphibians for not undergoing metamorphosis, it reaches sexual maturity and spends its life as a giant tadpole baby.Īccording to Aztec legend, the first of these smiling salamanders was a god who transformed himself to avoid sacrifice. It can be pale pink, golden, gray or black, speckled or not, with a countenance resembling the “slightly smiling face” emoji. The axolotl, sometimes called the Mexican walking fish, is a cheerful tube sock with four legs, a crown of feathery gills and a long, tapered tail fin.
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