Stammzellen in Hydra. Evolutionäres Vermächtnis

The basis for Hydra's enormous regeneration capacity and potential immortality is a life cycle in which proliferation occurs mostly asexual by budding. That requires that each polyp contains a large number of cells which continuously undergo self‐renewing mitotic divisions and also have the option to follow differentiation pathways. Now, emerging molecular tools for the first time shed light on the molecular processes controlling these pathways. Studies of stem cells in Hydra, therefore, promise critical insights of general relevance into stem cell biology and the evolutionary origin of these cells.