Newts have a remarkable ability to regenerate body parts – in this case the lenses in their eyes – time and time again.
Over a 16-year period, Panagiotis Tsonis at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and colleagues removed the lenses of six Japanese newts (Cynops pyrrhogaster) 18 times. After each excision, the lenses regenerated. They did so not from remaining lens tissue, but from pigment epithelial cells in the upper part of the iris.
By the end of the study the newts were 30 years old, five years older than their average lifespan in the wild. Even so, the regenerated lenses from the last two excisions were indistinguishable from lenses of 14-year-old adults that had never regenerated a lens.
Full story at New Scientist
well, Newt certainly does seem to be able to regenerate his CAREER indefinitely!
Wow. Hey, that’s like flatulence in a cow, but eye-ier. There’s only one thing more amazing than that…the gift of Life…no wait, I meant how my friend is able to drink a unnamed fizzy drink (Coke), then able to generate a column of saliva about two feet long (with out it breaking!!) and much like a a lizard (I knew this would relate to the story above in the end) would be able to retrieve small pieces of paper from a table and return them to his waiting mouth. I’m pretty sure he’s dead now but what a full life he lead.
Newts are Timelords!
Maybe Monty Python was right after all. “Well, she turned me into a newt!… I got better…”