ArticleScientific reports2020
Anatomical and histological analyses reveal that tail repair is coupled with regrowth in wild-caught, juvenile American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis).
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Skeletal pathologies in extant crocodilians as a window into the paleopathology of fossil archosaurs.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Injuries in deep time: interpreting competitive behaviours in extinct reptiles via palaeopathology.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- The evolutionary origin and mechanism of chordate tail regeneration. An ancient tale?Cells & development · 2025Review
- Biological Significance of the Komodo Dragon's Tail (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Identification of an integrated stress and growth response signaling switch that directs vertebrate intestinal regeneration.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- The Diverse Manifestations of Regeneration and Why We Need to Study Them.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2021Article
- Future Tail Tales: A Forward-Looking, Integrative Perspective on Tail Research.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Review
- Regeneration in Reptiles Generally and the New Zealand Tuatara in Particular as a Model to Analyse Organ Regrowth in Amniotes: A Review.Journal of developmental biology · 2021Review
- The Review of the Autotomy of Agamid Lizards with Considerations about the Types of Autotomy and Regeneration.Journal of developmental biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reptiles are the only amniotes that maintain the capacity to regenerate appendages. This study presents the first anatomical and histological evidence of tail repair with regrowth in an archosaur, the American alligator. The regrown alligator tails constituted approximately 6-18% of the total body length and were morphologically distinct from original tail segments. Gross dissection, radiographs, and magnetic resonance imaging revealed that caudal vertebrae were replaced by a ventrally-positioned, unsegmented endoskeleton. This contrasts with lepidosaurs, where the regenerated tail is radially organized around a central endoskeleton. Furthermore, the regrown alligator tail lacked skeletal muscle and instead consisted of fibrous connective tissue composed of type I and type III collagen fibers. The overproduction of connective tissue shares features with mammalian wound healing or fibrosis. The lack of skeletal muscle contrasts with lizards, but shares similarities with regenerated tails in the tuatara and regenerated limbs in Xenopus adult frogs, which have a cartilaginous endoskeleton surrounded by connective tissue, but lack skeletal muscle. Overall, this study of wild-caught, juvenile American alligator tails identifies a distinct pattern of wound repair in mammals while exhibiting features in common with regeneration in lepidosaurs and amphibia.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.