With its amazing capacity to regenerate tissues and organs, its ability to reproduce in a laboratory environment and the ease with which its genes can be manipulated, the Mexican salamander, or axolotl, holds enormous promise as a model for the study of regenerative medicine.
June 1, 2022
With its amazing capacity to regenerate tissues and organs, its ability to reproduce in a laboratory environment and the ease with which its genes can be manipulated, the Mexican salamander, or axolotl, holds enormous promise as a model for the study of regenerative medicine. But unlike research on traditional models like the mouse, fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans), which has progressed into the genetic age, the study of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) has been held back by a lack of scientific tools to work with it, including sophisticated genomic resources as well as experimental and genetic tools. That is now changing due to research at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and elsewhere. The development of new tools to work with the axolotl is elevating it to the level of established research models and positioning the community of scientists who use it as a model for exponential growth. As a result of these changes, the laboratory is expected to become a global epicenter for axolotl research. The institution’s growing prominence in the axolotl community is owing to Prayag Murawala, Ph.D., who joined the faculty last year. Murawala, who previously worked in the laboratory of Elly Tanaka, Ph.D., the world’s preeminent axolotl researcher, at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria, brought the latest tools for working with the axolotl, many of which he developed, to his new post, along with a commitment to fostering the growth of the axolotl as a research model. Many of the tools that have been developed for working with the axolotl, as well as those that are critically needed to expand the scope of axolotl research, were recently described by Murawala in two papers, „The Use of Transgenics in the Laboratory Axolotl“ and „Gene and Transgenics Nomenclature for the Laboratory Axolotl—Ambystoma Mexicanum“, both published in the June 2022 edition of Developmental Dynamics. In addition to Murawala, authors include Ji-Feng Fei of Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, in Guangzhou, China, and, on the nomenclature paper, Tanaka and S. Randal Voss, Ph.D., director of the Ambystoma Genetic Stock Center (AGSC) at the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, a federally funded center for the distribution of axolotl research animals.
„The ability of some animals to regenerate has fascinated observers for thousands of years, including early MDI Biological Laboratory investigators such as scientific luminaries Thomas Hunt Morgan and Richard J.
