Regenerative Powers of the Sea Cucumber
Scientists are already hard at work on the biochemistry of salamanders and zebrafish, deer antlers and MRL mice, to see if the ability to regenerate organs can be ported to humans. The sea cucumber is another target of research, as noted by EurekAlert!: "Sea cucumbers should be viewed as the tissue regeneration equivalent of the squid for our knowledge of nerves and Drosophila for genes and the genome. They can help us learn to fix ourselves. Many people, including scientists, regard sea cucumbers and other echinoderms like star fish and brittle stars as bizarre, exceptional outcasts because of their regenerative abilities. But we've shown that they use the same 'ordinary' mechanisms and processes to both regenerate and heal wounds. ... There must be some unusual properties of the healing processes found in animals capable of organ regeneration. So it remains to be seen at a molecular level what limits healing processes being used for regeneration by all animals in all tissue. ... Many of these regenerative mechanisms are the same as those being used by other animals to heal and repair - this includes us humans. Sea cucumbers will probably provide us with the key to deciphering how to regenerate our tissues, or at least find out what is needed to do this."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/bc-scf101207.php