Findings and publication of the Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering’s work will herald a major shift in interpreting tissue data obtained from living versus dead organisms as well how biomedical research is conducted in the future. This could have broad impact in closely allied fields, including medicine, therapeutics, and transplantation. Some areas have already recognized a shift, including infectious disease and cancer. In medical science, there is an increased focus on self-regulatory response systems such as the microbiome and the immune system as potentially powerful therapeutic tools. In conservation biology, there may be a greater emphasis on rapid adaptation to environmental challenges via plastic and epigenetically inherited responses.