Biology Commons^™

Regeneration - The Road Not Taken, Raymond E. Sicard

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

Regeneration and repair are mutually-exclusive, adaptive responses to injury. The events associated with each process are well characterized. However, cellular and molecular mechanisms for their regulation are only now beginning to be defined. Moreover, full appreciation for factors that predispose to these contrasting pathways is not yet available. This article presents a perspective on regeneration and repair that suggests specific relationships between these modes of responding to injury. Injury provokes a coordinated pattern of response to tissue damage. At the wound site, local events determine whether tissue restoration or replacement occurs. Interplay among parenchymal and stromal cells at the site …

Regenerative Biology: New Tissues For Old, David L. Stocum

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

Throughout the human life cycle, tissues are regenerated either continuously to maintain tissue integrity in the face of normal cell turnover or in response to acute or chronic damage due to trauma or disease states. Blood, epithelia of skin and tubular organs, hair and nails, and bone marrow are examples of human tissues which regenerate continuously as well as in response to damage. Bone, muscle, adrenal cortex and kidney epithelium also regenerate in response to damage, and bone is continually remodeled in response to stress vectors.

The response of many other vital tissues to damage, however, is not regeneration but …