Immortal worms and stem cells: how do planarians replace and rescale during regeneration?

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Growing a new head, arm or leg is something humans obviously can’t do. But we do have cells that have some capacity to generate other cell types when they are needed, for example in response to cuts or bruises we are able to heal and replace damaged cells. In this study, a planarian worm will be used to understand the basic biology of stem cells, regeneration and healing. Planarians have a large number of stem cells which are capable of giving rise to every other cell type. For example, if a planarian is cut into small pieces, these cells will allow each piece of the worm to regenerate into a whole new, albeit smaller, worm. The intention of this research is to understand how the planarian worm’s stem cells are able to divide and give rise to the right cells at the right place in the new worm. If we can understand this process we may be closer to understanding our own capacity to regenerate lost or damaged cells. This type of research is particularly important for understanding diseases in which cells have been lost or damaged and new cells are needed (such as Alzheimers), or for diseases like leukemia where our own stem cells go haywire and divide too quickly and/or produce the wrong types of cells.