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Salamanders can regrow limbs, now you can too! Assuming scientists manage to develop the means. Scientists claim to have successfully regrown a chicken wing after having removed the limb from a chick embryo.

Chop off a salamander’s leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. Now, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo — a species not known to be able to regrow limbs — suggesting that the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans.

If all vertebrates had an innate quality which would allow for limbs to regrow, wouldn’t evolution have kicked in over the past few years?

“In this simple experiment, we removed part of the chick embryo’s wing, activated Wnt signaling, and got the whole limb back – a beautiful and perfect wing,” said the lead author, Juan Carlos Izpisa Belmonte, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory. “By changing the expression of a few genes, you can change the ability of a vertebrate to regenerate their limbs, rebuilding blood vessels, bone, muscles, and skin – everything that is needed.”

Anyone watch Heroes? You know, “Save the cheerleader, save the world”? Claire has a little of that “regrowth” as her power right?