Research article: Tail Autotomy and Tissue Regeneration in Madagascar Ground Geckos

Everyone knows that most lizards will grow their tail back as a defense mechanism, but how efficient exactly is this mechanism? With the increased research in future human tissue regeneration, tail autotomy has become a great interest in the medical field. In this article they compared the growth rate of regenerated tails compared to the original tails and is there is a trade-off in having such a trait with energy usage.

Snout-vent length and regrowth of tails after 160 days

Ground geckos were obtained as eggs and then hatched, their tail growth being recorded from the beginning of birth. After 116 days of growth, the geckos were separated out in control and autotomy groups.

By the end of the experiment at 154 days after autotomy, it was found that the regenerated tails were 68% shorter than the control tails (with the tails even growing faster than the control group tails at ~20-40 days after autotomy), however it is projected that the tails would eventually become the same size as the control group's, and that it was found that there is no evidence of a metabolic trade off other than the fact that a tail consists of about 14% of the lizard's body weight

Tail length within 160 days

Lizards, like the Madagascar Ground Gecko, have evolved to have such a cool and advantageous ability in order to better their survival rate, and with not much extra energy. This is such a really cool thing since there is not much difference in metabolic rate or limb regeneration, so the amount of energy to regrow a limb is the exact same as growing the original limb. Could this be a door opening into the possibility of human tissue regeneration?

Source:

Starostova, Zuzana, Lumir Gvozdik, and Lukas Kratochvil. "An Energetic Perspective on Tissue Regeneration: The Costs of Tail Autotomy in Growing Geckos." Eslevier 206 (2017): 82-86.