Rapid cell regeneration

Rapid cell regeneration
	; Claire watches her toe grow back.
Originally held by:	Claire Bennet
Absorbed by:	Peter Petrelli (lost),; Sylar,; Arthur Petrelli (deceased)
Ability to:	Rapidly regenerate cells
	Examples of rapid cell regeneration

Rapid cell regeneration (also referred to as rapid cellular regeneration, spontaneous regeneration, tissue regeneration, epithelial cell regeneration, or simply regeneration or healing) is the ability to regenerate cells at an increased rate, resulting in physical injuries healing in a matter of seconds or minutes.

Characters

Confirmed

Claire Bennet is the first character (by episode) to demonstrate this ability and has shown the "regeneration" and "healing" aspects. (Genesis)
Peter Petrelli absorbed this ability from Claire (Homecoming), but lost it when Arthur Petrelli stole it from him (Dying of the Light).
Sylar has acquired this ability from Claire. (The Second Coming)
Arthur Petrelli has stolen this ability from Adam and Peter. (Dying of the Light)

Future

A future incarnation of Sylar kills Claire and obtains her ability in an alternate timeline. (Five Years Gone)

Unconfirmed

According to Chandra's journal, a male individual potentially has the ability of "tissue regeneration". (Seven Minutes to Midnight)

Limits

Regeneration

This ability does not move displaced parts of the body back into the correct location. After filming the videotape, Claire had to manually re-insert her displaced ribs before the flesh on her ribcage would heal (Genesis), and Peter Petrelli had to manually rotate his broken foot to the correct orientation before it would heal while he was mimicking Claire's power (Homecoming).

Regeneration also does not work correctly if a foreign object obstructs the wound. This is especially true of foreign objects lodged in the brain. After Brody "killed" Claire, she did not begin to regenerate until the coroner removed the tree branch lodged in her brain. Peter experienced a similar situation with a piece of glass in the back of his head (.07%). This limitation is presumably related to the importance of the brain in the nature of evolved humans, as theorized by Chandra Suresh (One Giant Leap). A more graphic example of this is Future Claire's presumed death at the hands of Sylar (Five Years Gone); when Sylar removes her brain after slicing her head open, she presumably dies afterward. However, in The Second Coming, Sylar not only leaves her brain in place, he claims that he cannot kill her, nor can he be killed. Despite this limitation, Claire's power can expel small objects (such as a bullet) lodged in her body as long as they are not disrupting her brain functions (Company Man). Typically, Claire's blood does not return to its place in her body when an associated wound heals, although it can if the wound is small and her blood has not spread far from it (the only example being when her brother stapled her hand). She is consistently covered with blood following a serious injury; Mr. Muggles even ingested some.

As demonstrated for the first time in Lizards, Claire is able to regrow body parts that have been removed. She experimented with this for the first time by cutting off her little toe with a pair of scissors, then watching it grow back with much surprise. In Resistance, Future Claire's arm is blown off by a grenade and she re-grows it.

Claire certainly feels her injuries--she cried out from having a staple put into her hand and winced in pain at other times--but the pain does not incapacitate her in the way it would an ordinary person. She has stated that the pain she feels from injuries diminishes very rapidly (Kindred). However, since having her brain examined by Sylar (The Second Coming), Claire has stated that she no longer feels pain of any kind.

Peter has shown that this power has the capability to reverse memory damage caused by the Haitian. However, unlike most instances of the ability's usage, memory damage reversal requires active concentration (Four Months Ago...).

Angela Petrelli has stated that beheading or catastrophic brain damage would kill someone with this ability (Powerless). However, Claire has had the top of her head cut off by Sylar, and lived, because as Sylar said after examining her brain, "You can never die, and now, I guess, neither can I." (The Second Coming) Additionally, users of this ability or even blood recipients are capable of recovering from damage caused to the brain: Claire and Peter started to regenerate once the foreign object was removed from their brain, and Noah, through blood transfusion, recovered from a gunshot in his head.

While the ability protects an individual from infections and other pathogens, it works independently from one's immune system: when Claire was shot while her ability wasn't working, her immune system was too weak to fight off infections, leading to a system wide critical condition that lead to her death. When her ability started working again, she came back to life. (The Eclipse, Part 2)

It has been proven that a bullet through the head will kill a person with this power: in order to kill Arthur who has absorbed this ability, Peter, with the help of The Haitian attempts to shoot Arthur through the head with a Company gun. Sylar stops the bullet in mid-air, but lets go when he learns the truth of his parentage. The bullet goes through Arthur's head and he is unable to regenerate and dies. This is the first character with this ability who is actually killed without being able to regenerate from a temporary death. (Our Father)

Plant manipulation

One of the aspects of Brendan Lewis's plant manipulation ability allows him to heal himself by mimicking regenerative properties of plants. (Assignment Tracker)

Lewis survived numerous rounds from several automatic rifles fired by a Company support team, and a nearby explosion of several oil drums. (The Kill Squad, Part 2, The Kill Squad, Part 3)

Healing

In Out of Time, Bob suggests that Claire's blood could be used to make a new cure for the Shanti virus. Bob informs Claire that her blood could help a lot of people, and proceeds to take some of her blood. Later, Noah Bennet is resurrected using her blood after being shot and killed by Mohinder (Cautionary Tales).

Mohinder Suresh is able to combine Claire's blood with the antibodies from his own to make a cure for the fortified Shanti Virus that Niki contracted (Truth & Consequences). The blood combination not only healed Maya of her gunshot wound, but also cured Sylar of the virus (Powerless).

Selected Examples

Claire awakens on the autopsy table after a tree branch was removed from her brain, effectively having regenerated back to life.
(One Giant Leap)
Claire heals a gunshot wound, a small radiation burn on her neck, and massive radiation burns.
(Company Man, Family Man)
Claire cuts off her toe, which then grows back, much to Claire's surprise.
(Lizards)
Peter's body regurgitates a bullet, then heals itself.
(Kindred)
Noah Bennet regenerates an eye, after being transfused following a bullet wound.
(Cautionary Tales)
Much to her disturbance, Claire remains quite alive while Sylar prods around her brain, but she is unable to feel the pain.
(The Second Coming)

Memorable Quotes

"I have busted, like, every bone in my body, stabbed myself in the chest, I've shoved a two-foot steel rod through my neck, and I don't have a scratch on me!"

- Claire (Genesis)

"I think I died."

"I've died before. It's no big deal."

- Peter, Claire (Fallout)

Notes

In Claire & the Cat, a promotional Flash animation, a much younger Claire is hit by a truck, and then able to walk away.
Claire and Adam's ability is frequently called by different names through the episodes, graphic novels, and Heroes Evolutions. Claire's ability is commonly referred to as "healing", most notably in her tip in the assignment tracker map (Heroes Evolutions). However, Adam's own tip names this ability "rapid cell regeneration" (Heroes Evolutions). Chandra gave different names to this ability: his Genesis files similarly call it "rapid cellular regeneration" (Genesis), while in his journal he notes that a young man in Sweden potentially had "tissue regeneration" (Seven Minutes to Midnight). Additionally, the Mozaic file refers to "epithelial cell regeneration" (The Fix). Also, Lewis's profile in the assignment tracker simply calls it "regeneration" (Heroes Evolutions).
Claire and her mother mention an incident at the dog park in which a "big dog was gonna chew [Claire's] hand off." Claire says that "it looked worse than it was." (Better Halves)
After healing, Claire coughs up the bullet that Matt shoots at her. This is unusual, in that she usually has to remove the foreign body before healing (Company Man). However, after Peter Petrelli is shot in the chest with two bullets, one of the bullets is shown to be regurgitated out of the wound before the wound itself heals (Kindred).
Claire's healing ability does not seem to affect her pierced ears. This presumably results from the earring posts obstructing the wounds, although it's not clear whether she has to "re-pierce" her ears whenever she removes her earrings.
Arthur is unable to survive being shot through the head by Peter and dies despite having regeneration.
It would seem that rapid cellular regeneration has an Achilles's Heel: obstruction of the brain seems to prevent regeneration. This is demonstrated when Peter gets a shard of glass lodged into his cranium by Sylar at Mohinder's apartment and is not able to regenerate until Claire removes the shard of glass. (.07%)
Brendan Lewis's plant manipulation ability gives him the "regeneration" aspect of rapid cell regeneration. (Heroes Evolutions)

Trivia

The exact nature of Claire not being able to experience pain is unknown. In real life, there is a medical condition called hypoalgesia (aka hypalgesia), which notes a decreased sensitivity to painful stimuli and potential loss of the ability to distinguish between temperatures. Some people are born with a severe case of the disorder, called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (aka CIPA, congenital analgia). The anhidrosis means that the person cannot sweat.

Rapid cell regeneration

Contents

Characters