When I was a kid, I always wondered how a lizard’s tail could grow back after it had been cut. I always thought that lizards were immortal. They lose a leg or a tail and after awhile they would have new legs and tails. Then I found out, through biology classes and reading scientific journals, that lizards and flatworms share something that enables their body parts to grow back. These are neoblasts, a bunch of stem cells that can generate new heads or tails. A lot of scientists have scratched their heads about how exactly the planaria can grow parts in exactly where they want them to. What if it’s head got decapitated, and in its place, a tail regenerated? These complex questions are still being answered today, despite decades of research and continuous upgrades of high technology equipment like the binocular zoom stereoscopic microscope, which is not your ordinary microscope, but a microscope that is used for things like this.

In the laboratory of Whitehead Member Peter Reddien, scientists believe they have the answer to that one question about the planaria re-growing their parts at the right places. They discovered a gene called Smed-beta-catenin-1, which is said to be responsible for deciding whether a head or a tail should be regenerated in flatworms. For this to be done, the scientists put the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea under a binocular zoom stereoscopic microscope and studied the poor animal very closely. In experiments where the worm was subject to the manipulation of the gene Smed-beta-catenin-1, the researchers found that by inhibiting the gene, the worm produced a head instead of a tail. Looking at the worm through a binocular zoom stereoscopic microscope, the poor flatworm with little Smed-beta-catenin-1 had two heads. They claim that the advent of evolution has allowed the organism to perform awesome feats of regeneration. The findings are quite exciting and are considered to be a breakthrough for science. The applications in medical science are endless, and already independent studies are branching off from this research.

There are genes that are similar in structure and function to Smed-beta-catenin-1 that are found in various animals, even humans. Although as previously said, more studies have to be done to realize how this discovery can help in medical science. It could be associated with stem cell research, and used in the regeneration of a body organ. Imagine the potential – organs made out of the person’s own stem cells, reducing or entirely avoiding the risk of transplant rejection in the long run, which is a problem in organ transplantations. Burn patients may be optimistic about their grafts being made from their own skins instead of someone else’s.

Going back to the planarian experiment, the researchers also found a protein called Beta-catenin that live in the cell’s cytoplasm. Their function is to turn on crucial genes for development when the cell is exposed to another protein in the Wnt family. After further study of the Wnt gene in the regeneration process, it was found that the Wnt gene regulated the Smed-beta-catenin-1 in the head region, therefore heads are grown. It does not however inhibit Smed-beta-catenin-1 in the tail region, which is why tails are re-grown at the site. Therefore, the Wnt genes are responsible for the positions in the regeneration process of the flatworm. Who knew we could learn so much from flatworms? Continue research on this page