When it comes to regeneration, some animals are capable of amazing feats — if you cut the leg off a salamander, it will grow back. When threatened, some geckos drop their tails as a distraction, and regrow them later.

Other animals take the process even further. Planarian worms, jellyfish, and sea anemones can actually regenerate their entire bodies after being cut in half.

Led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava, a team of researchers is shedding new light on how animals pull off the feat, and uncovered a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes for whole-body regeneration. The study is described in a March 15 paper in Science.