the-golden-apple-snail-pomacea-canaliculata-from-zygotes-to-stable

The Golden Apple Snail <em>Pomacea canaliculata</em>: From Zygotes to Stable Mutant Lines

The freshwater golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata) is emerging as a powerful model organism for regenerative biology, particularly for studying the ...

University of California, Davis

Regeneration is the remarkable phenomenon through which an organism can regrow lost or damaged parts with fully functional replacements, including complex anatomical structures, such as limbs. In 2019, Development launched its 'Model systems for regeneration' collection, a series of articles introducing some of the most popular model organisms for studying regeneration in vivo. To expand this topic further, this Perspective conveys the voices of five expert biologists from the field of regenerative biology, each of whom showcases some less well-known, but equally extraordinary, species for studying regeneration.

Extraordinary model systems for regeneration.

Camera-type eyes are complex sensory organs susceptible to irreversible damage. Their repair is difficult to study due to the paucity of camera-type eye regeneration models. Identifying a genetically tractable organism with the ability to fully regenerate complete camera-type eyes would help overcome this difficulty. Here, we introduce the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata, capable of full regeneration of camera-type eyes even after complete resection. We defined anatomical components of P. canaliculata eyes and genes expressed during crucial steps of their regeneration. By exploiting the unique features of this organism, we successfully established stable mutant lines in apple snails. Our studies reveal that, akin to humans, pax6 is indispensable for eye development in apple snails, establishing this as a research organism to unravel the mechanisms of camera-type eye regeneration. This work expands our understanding of complex sensory organ regeneration and offers a way to explore this process.

Article	Year
Extraordinary model systems for regeneration. Development (Cambridge, England)\| PubMed ID: 39012059	2024
A genetically tractable non-vertebrate system to study complete camera-type eye regeneration. Nature communications\| PubMed ID: 40770180	2025

Alice Accorsi

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