This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Many organisms exhibit a remarkable capacity for tissue regeneration. Most dramatic is the ability of free-living flatworms known as planarians to regenerate an entire new body plan from small excised pieces of tissue. This regenerative ability is driven by specialized stem cells known as neoblasts. Understanding the properties of these cells, and their behavior during regeneration is key to unlocking the secrets of regenerative biology in these organisms, and consequently why this ability is lacking in other animals. Specifically, this project will seek to understand the role of intracellular calcium and Wnt signaling pathways in controlling how neoblasts generate discrete cell types with appropriate positional identity during regeneration.
Broader Impacts. Broader impacts of the project encompass an annual outreach course to High School Teachers that provides a retraining and "hands-on" opportunity to gain lab experience in basic molecular and genetic methods. NSF-supported undergraduates participate in these activities, and in research projects relating to the interest of the PI's laboratory in planarian regenerative biology. Consequently, trainees gain skill sets appropriate for future careers as both researchers and scientific educators.
