PhD defence
Tail Regeneration in the Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko)
- L. Nurhidayat
- Date
- Thursday 9 January 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
- Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson
- Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink
Summary
Regeneration is the ability of an organism to restore damaged or lost tissue with a functional replacement, and without scarring. Many lizards can regenerate their tails. They do this after ‘autotomy’ a process whereby the tail breaks off when seized by a predator. This thesis investigates tail regeneration in the tokay gecko (Gekko gecko). We find that tail regeneration in this species is not simply a re-run of embryonic development as it appears to be in salamanders and fish. Rather, the tokay gecko relies more on the reactivation of resident stem cells, and not on creating new stem cells by dedifferentiation, as seen in other species. Tokay gecko tail regeneration also appears to leverage the existing positional memory of the resident stem cells to rebuild the lost structure. Interestingly, some phenomena in mammalian regeneration have also been found to depend on the activation of lineage-restricted stem cells. We believe that the tokay gecko is an attractive model for translational research because it has important similarities with mammalian (including human) regeneration.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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