Freshwater planarians (Platyhelminthes) possess remarkably powerful regenerative capabilities: they can regenerate a complete animal from a tiny piece of their bodies. Since this ability was reported already in 1766 by Pallas, scientists have been attracted to the study of these animals, considered to be “immortal under the edge of the knife” (Dalyell, 1814). Planarian regeneration depends upon the existence of a population of totipotent stem cells, called neoblasts. A key question to answer in the field of planarian regeneration is how the neoblasts are instructed to differentiate into the missing structures. After cutting a planarian along any of its body axes, neoblasts close to the wound proliferate, differentiate into any cell type and restore the original pattern in very few days. My main research interest is to study the influence of the nervous system on planarian regeneration.

In other species with regenerative capabilities, such as amphibian and annelids several experiments indicate that the nervous system may play an important role in the regeneration process. Similarly, several studies suggest that the nervous system would have an important play also during planarian regeneration. However, most of the evidences are indirect and we don’t know yet which signals or factors coming from the nervous system might be regulating important aspects such as neoblast proliferation, migration and differentiation. The main goal of this project is to characterize such signals and their functions during planarian regeneration. The sequencing of the genome of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea has represented a big burst in the field of planarian regeneration. The approach we follow in our laboratory consists in characterizing a high number of growth factors and neurotransmitters and studying their function, based on RNAi experiments, during planarian regeneration.