Hydra — a tube-like organism with a tentacle-rimmed mouth and a sticky foot — can regrow its whole body from a small piece of tissue in a few days. Image credits: Jaroslav Ferenc.
Hydra — a tube-like organism with a tentacle-rimmed mouth and a sticky foot — can regrow its whole body from a small piece of tissue in a few days. Image credits: Jaroslav Ferenc. Hydras are tiny creatures with regenerative superpowers: they can renew their stem cells and replace damaged body parts in only a few days. Now, researchers in the Tsiairis group have found that mechanical forces turn on key genes as the mighty Hydras regenerate their entire bodies from scraps of tissue. Understanding how mechanical forces guide stem cells toward their fates could help to reveal how organisms develop, but also how certain diseases arise. Hydras are named after a mythical serpent monster that regrows two heads each time one is cut off. The myth isn't too far from the freshwater invertebrate's regenerative abilities: these minuscule organisms are just a hollow tube with two-cell thick walls, a tentacle-rimmed mouth and a sticky foot, but they are able to renew their stem cells, which can develop into all the different types of specialized cells that make a body.
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