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Mechanisms of tissue-specific regeneration in planarians

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dc.contributor Peter W. Reddien.
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.creator LoCascio, Samuel Alexander
dc.date 2018-03-02T22:20:19Z
dc.date 2018-03-02T22:20:19Z
dc.date 2017
dc.date 2017
dc.date.accessioned 2019-05-10T17:25:58Z
dc.date.available 2019-05-10T17:25:58Z
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113952
dc.identifier 1023434236
dc.identifier.uri https://evidence.thinkportal.org/handle/1721.1/113952
dc.description Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2017.
dc.description Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
dc.description Includes bibliographical references.
dc.description How animals establish and maintain the sizes of myriad tissues and organs in tight proportion to one another is a fundamental question of developmental biology. Planarian flatworms regenerate from diverse injuries, in each case precisely restoring body parts to their appropriate proportions. Underlying this ability is a pluripotent population of dividing cells called neoblasts, which are required for homeostatic maintenance and regeneration of all planarian tissues. Whether neoblasts restore proportion by sensing and responding to the presence or absence of specific tissues during regeneration is unknown. We used the planarian eye lineage to address this problem. Following decapitation, neoblasts normally give rise to a large number of eye progenitors, facilitating eye regeneration. Remarkably, we found that eye absence alone was not sufficient to induce this response. Tissue-specific eye regeneration was achieved by homeostatic eye progenitor production accompanied by a decreased rate of cell death specifically in the regenerating eye. Conversely, large head wounds were sufficient to increase eye progenitors, even in the presence of intact eyes. Therefore, eye absence is not sufficient or necessary for neoblasts to increase eye progenitor production. Our findings suggest a "target-blind" model for planarian regeneration in which progenitor production by neoblasts does not depend on feedback from the presence or absence of specific target tissues to be regenerated.
dc.description by Samuel Alexander LoCascio.
dc.description Ph. D.
dc.format 155 pages
dc.format application/pdf
dc.language eng
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
dc.rights MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
dc.rights http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
dc.subject Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.title Mechanisms of tissue-specific regeneration in planarians
dc.type Thesis


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