All about regeneration, Alejandro Sanchez talks about stem cells and developmental plasticity of Planarians

I am a huge fan of Heroes, “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World“.

I am a big believer of regeneration medicine.

Today’s topic is about a fresh water worm – Planarian.

Planarian is an amazing creature – you can cut it into 128 pieces and they will survive and become 128 Planarians.

Alejandro’s lab focus on the molecular mechanics of regeneration. On iBioSeminars, Alejandro has a seminar titled “The Problem of Regeneration” (part I and II), which is pretty good.

I taped today’s talk and put here for people who are interested. The first half of the talk is about the history of regeneration, the second part is about how Planarians adjust their body size based on the surrounding environment and related molecular mechanisms. The take-home message is that increased apoptosis is the reason for body size shrinkage and neoblasts asymmetric cell division continuously supplies differentiated cells for body size increase.

Click to Watch!

To generate a whole animal with just one cell! I believe it will come true.