Humans and other mammals are limited in their natural abilities to regenerate lost body parts. By contrast, many salamanders are highly regenerative and can spontaneously replace lost limbs even as adults. Because salamander limbs are anatomically similar to human limbs, knowing how they regenerate should provide important clues for regenerative medicine. Although interest in understanding the mechanics of this process has never wavered, until recently researchers have been vexed by seemingly impenetrable logistics of working with these creatures at a molecular level. Chief among the problems has been the very large size of salamander genomes, and not a single salamander genome has been fully sequenced to date. Recently the enormous gap in sequence information has been bridged by approaches that leverage mRNA as the starting point. Together with functional experimentation, these data are rapidly enabling researchers to finally uncover the molecular mechanisms underpinning the astonishing biological process of limb regeneration.

人类和其他哺乳动物的自然能力有限，无法再生失去的身体部位。相比之下，许多sal具有很高的再生能力，即使成年后也可以自发地代替失去的四肢。由于sal的肢体在解剖学上与人体的肢体相似，因此知道sal的再生方式将为再生医学提供重要的线索。尽管对理解这一过程的机理的兴趣从未动摇，但直到最近，研究人员对在分子水平上与这些生物打交道的似乎无法理解的后勤工作感到烦恼。问题中的主要问题是sal基因组的规模非常大，迄今为止，还没有一个sal基因组被完全测序。最近，通过利用mRNA作为起点的方法弥合了序列信息中的巨大空白。