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What makes flatworms go to pieces

Flatworms called planarians can break off fragments of themselves that regenerate to form new, complete worms. The molecular cues that regulate the frequency of such fission events have been revealed.
  1. Thomas W. Holstein

    1. Thomas W. Holstein is in the Department of Molecular Evolution and Genomics, Centre for Organismal Studies, Heidelberg University, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.

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Understanding how tissues and organs can regenerate requires an appreciation of the mechanisms and factors that organize cells and tissues, both in space and through time. Planarian flatworms are a widely used model for studying such pattern formation because pieces of these animals that are cut off can regrow missing body parts and form complete worms. Planarians also have a self-scission behaviour called fission — they stretch and contract their tail tissue, which leads to detachment of parts of their posterior body that then grow into clones. Whether or not fission occurs depends on the size of the parent worm, but the underlying molecular and cellular processes have not been well understood. Writing in Nature, Arnold et al.1 establish a method to reliably induce fission in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, and show that cell-signalling pathways involving the proteins Wnt and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) are key regulators of this process.

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Nature 572, 593-594 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02376-z

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