a EURATOM/UKAEA Fusion Association, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB, UK b Association EURATOM-ENEA-CREATE, DIMET Univ. Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria Via Graziella, Loc. Feo di Vito, I-89060 Reggio Calabria, Italy c EURATOM-ENEA Consorzio RFX, C.so Stati Uniti 4, I-35127 Padova, Italy d University of Padova, Department of Management and Engineering, Stradella San Nicola 3, I-361...

The asexual freshwater planarian is a constitutive adult, whose central nervous system (CNS) is in a state of constant homeostatic neurogenesis. However, very little is known about the extrinsic signals that act on planarian stem cells to modulate rates of neurogenesis. We have identified two planarian homeobox transcription factors, Smed-nkx2.1 and Smed-arx, which are required for the maintena...

Planaria possess a population of pluripotent adult stem cells called neoblasts, capable of differentiating into all cell types required to regenerate entire animals from almost any fragment. The regeneration of different fragments is catalogued in a body of classical experiments by many eminent scientists. Here, we endeavour to explore these classical observations and insights and combine them ...

Many long-lived organisms, including humans, can regenerate some adult tissues lost to physical injury or disease. Much of the previous research on mechanisms of regeneration has focused on adult stem cells, which give rise to new tissue necessary for the replacement of missing body parts. Here we report that apoptosis of differentiated cells complements stem cell division during regeneration i...

trans-Splicing, in which a spliced-leader (SL) RNA is appended to the most 5' exon of independently transcribed pre-mRNAs, has been described in a wide range of eukaryotes, from protozoans to chordates. Here we describe trans-splicing in the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, a free-living member of the phylum Platyhelminthes. Analysis of an expressed sequence tag (EST) collection fro...