How does your body know where to heal?

Submitted by JavaScriptBest t3_y4eniz in askscience

For example, when i cut my finger it heals, ok cool, but lemme give another example,

lets say hypothetically someone ripped the skin off the tip of both index fingers and stuck them together for a bunch of weeks without the fingers moving at all.

when healing will the fingers fuse together or will they heal separately? If so how does it know where to heal? How does your body distinguish where to heal?

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exphysed t1_isi5byw wrote

The damaged cells release chemical signals that signal to nearby cells which starts the healing process. Many tissues have stem cells sitting there just waiting for that signal and they jump into action when they get the signal.

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Towerss t1_islip8q wrote

In theory your fingers would get fused as long as the site is undisturbed, moist, and won't get infected. In fact, you can transplant almost any body part to anywhere else on the body because the body part only needs blood circulation to be healthy. It is done in cases where the site of an injury/disease temporarily can't sustain the limb, so the healthy part is transplanted somewhere else temporarily.

Here's an arricle about a case where they transplanted a hand to someones thigh: https://parjournal.net/article/view/62

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pressurecan t1_isvp1vn wrote

I’m pretty sure that the space between your fingers is larger than the space between the cells regrowing in your respective fingers, because when you touch something you’re not actually touching it, you’re just feeling the pressure.

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