Morphological, cellular and molecular characterization of posterior regeneration in the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii.

Regeneration, the ability to restore body parts after an injury or an amputation, is a widespread but highly variable and complex phenomenon in animals. While having fascinated scientists for centuries, fundamental questions about the cellular basis of animal regeneration as well as its evolutionary history remain largely unanswered. Here, we present a study of regeneration of the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, an emerging comparative developmental biology model, which, like many other annelids, displays important regenerative abilities.