Livers: Better late than never
By John Travis
From Boston, Mass., at a meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology
After stealing fire for mankind from the gods, Prometheus faced the wrath of Zeus. The god chained Prometheus to a mountain crag where each morning an eagle would devour his liver, but the organ would grow back during the night. This ancient myth remarkably reflects the unusual capacity of a mature liver to regenerate lost tissue. Inspired by this tale, researchers have given the name prometheus to a mutant strain of zebrafish that appear to have no liver early in their lives.