What is it about?
Land slugs are fascinating animals that live in gardens and humid forests. They can regenerate diverse parts of their body when damaged or lost, they decrease drastically in size when they lack food for a long time, and grow again upon feeding. Little is known, however, of how the organs of these animals are capable of such intriguing feats. As an essential first step to study regeneration in slugs, we analyzed the tissues of all organs of the globally dispersed slugs Deroceras laeve and Ambigolimax valentianus. We also built SlugAtlas, an online resource with visual information on their tissues and 3D viewing tools of their organs (https://slugatlas.lavis.unam.mx).
Featured Image
Photo by Sharon Waldron on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Studying garden slugs we will uncover the mechanisms of how their tissues and organs are regenerated. This will help us understand better regeneration from an evolutionary perspective by comparing the knowledge on this species with that of other animal groups. This could also reveal why regeneration is very limited in diverse animals including humans.
Perspectives
Developing this work has been fascinating. Coming from the study of the developing brain in mice and from administrative duties, the work with slugs we collected in our backyards, has been a highly stimulating endeavor which reveals completely unknown things at every turn. An essential complement to this effort is the great interest it elicits in students who join our research group and are soon exploring uncharted territory regarding regeneration and other interesting aspects of slugs. These animals have been also great to teach science to kids and teenagers.
Alfredo Varela-Echavarria
Instituto de Neurobiología, UNAM
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: SlugAtlas, a histological and 3D online resource of the land slugs Deroceras laeve and Ambigolimax valentianus, PLoS ONE, October 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312407.
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