Forever young: Linking regeneration and genome size in salamanders

Salamanders stand out among vertebrate animals in two key characteristics: their ability to regenerate body parts, and their large and variable genome sizes.

Here we show how to unite seemingly disparate facets of salamander biology, regeneration ability, and genome size variation, into one synthetic view. Large and variable genome sizes may be the key to understanding the prodigious ability of most salamanders to regenerate damaged or lost body parts. We report a correlate of genome size variation that has been previously neglected: the impacts of genome size on the structure and function of the genes themselves. Salamanders are, in essence, paradoxically much younger, especially at the cellular level than their chronological age would suggest.

Because of the large size and range of variation in genome size in salamanders, we hypothesize that this relationship uncouples a dynamic interaction between growth and differentiation in processes of morphogenesis, pattern formation, and regeneration in ways that are unique among vertebrates.