The planarian S. mediterranea is a platyhelminth with worldwide distribution that can regenerate any part of its body after amputation and has the capacity to eliminate large spectrum human bacterial pathogens. Surprisingly, microbiota remains poorly investigated. Using culturomics strategy study component planarians, we isolated new strain, Marseille-Q2390, which characterized taxono-genomic a...

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 ...

Changes in animal behavior resulting from genetic or chemical intervention are frequently used for phenotype characterizations. The majority of these studies are qualitative in nature, especially in systems that go beyond the classical model organisms. Here, we introduce a quantitative method to characterize behavior in the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. Wild-type locomotion in co...

Planarians regenerate all body parts after injury, including the central nervous system (CNS). We capitalized on this distinctive trait and completed a gene expression-guided functional screen to identify factors that regulate diverse aspects of neural regeneration in Schmidtea mediterranea. Our screen revealed molecules that influence neural cell fates, support the formation of a major connect...

Conserved axon guidance mechanisms are essential for proper wiring of the nervous system during embryogenesis; however, the functions of these cues in adults and during regeneration remain poorly understood. Because freshwater planarians can regenerate a functional central nervous system (CNS) from almost any portion of their body, they are useful models in which to study the roles of guidance ...

After amputation, freshwater planarians properly regenerate a head or tail from the resulting anterior or posterior wound. The mechanisms that differentiate anterior from posterior and direct the replacement of the appropriate missing body parts are unknown. We found that in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, RNA interference (RNAi) of beta-catenin or dishevelled causes the inappropriate reg...