How Stem Cells and Positional Information Lead to Planarian Regeneration

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Peter Reddien, Ph.D., professor of biology, associate department head, member and associate director, Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Speaker bio(s)

Regeneration is one of the great mysteries of biology. Planarians are flatworms capable of dramatic feats of regeneration, which have been studied for over two centuries. Recent findings identify key cellular and molecular principles underlying these feats. A stem cell population (neoblasts) generates new cells and is comprised of pluripotent stem cells (cNeoblasts) and fate-specified cells (specialized neoblasts). Positional information is constitutively active and harbored primarily in muscle, where it acts to guide stem-cell-mediated tissue turnover and regeneration. These findings lead to a model in which positional information and stem cells combine to enable regeneration.

Reddien obtained his Ph.D. at MIT studying programmed cell death in C. elegans and studied planarian regeneration as a postdoc at the University of Utah. He started his lab at MIT in the Whitehead Institute in 2005 and is an HHMI Investigator and associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Open to

Public

Host

Elaine Fuchs

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Justin Sloboda

Phone

(212) 327-7785

Sponsor

Justin Sloboda
(212) 327-7785
jsloboda@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=5648