Quantifying Peripheral Nerve Regeneration Following Tail Loss in the Leopard Gecko (Eublepharis macularius)
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Abstract
Regenerating structures are often broadly characterized as being ‘perfect’ or ‘imperfect’ replicas of the original. However, the fidelity of regeneration is rarely quantified. Here morphometry was used to assess the fidelity of peripheral nerve regeneration in the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius). It was demonstrated that peripheral innervation of the tail is the result of axonogenesis, and not neurogenesis. Unexpectedly, in fully regenerated tails the cross-sectional area of peripheral nerves and skeletal muscle was significantly greater than in original tails, whereas the cross-sectional area of the spinal cord and the white matter of the spinal cord was significantly smaller. However, there are no significant differences in the congruence between blood vessels and nerves in both original and fully regenerated tails. These data demonstrate that purely qualitative evaluations may fail to capture the complexity of the regenerative program and indicate that regenerative morphogenesis includes both de novo and conserved molecular programs.