This One, Newly Discovered Cell Can Remake a Whole Animal | Science

Note: MBL Fellow Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado is on the faculty of the MBL Embryology course. Last week, the students heard about this new research, just published in Cell.

Though often no bigger than an apple seed, planaria are the envy of the animal kingdom. Cut them into a dozen pieces, and each piece will regrow into a full new worm—a remarkable feat of regeneration beyond the ability of most other animals. Now, researchers have pinpointed the cell—and a key protein—that kick-starts this process.

The discovery “is a major breakthrough in the field,” says Ricardo Zayas, a developmental biologist at San Diego State University in California who was not involved with the work.

Researchers have known for decades that a group of unspecialized stem cells called neoblasts help planaria regenerate. But they’ve failed to figure out exactly which type of neoblast works this magic. So Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, a developmental biologist at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, tapped new techniques for isolating single cells and characterizing their gene activity.  Read more of the article here.

Source: This one, newly discovered cell can remake a whole animal | Science | AAAS