Mice regrow hearts, amputated limbs and damaged organs. The self-healing strain of mice could regenerate any damaged body part except the brain. Scientists at the Wistar Institue, a US biomedical research center, serendipitously discovered the regenerating ability of the strain of mice when the identification holes they punch in the ears of the mice healed without a scar. The ability seems to be controlled by about a dozen genes, comparable genes to which are “almost certain” to exist in humans. When fetal cells from the self-healing strain were transferred to other mice, the recipients too acquired the ability to regenerate. To my knowledge, this is the first demonstration of this phenomenon, well-known in less complex vertebrates, in a mammalian species. (The Australian)