Whitehead Institute researchers are making discoveries that are helping us rethink what we know about the brain and paving the way for therapies to treat some of the most challenging brain disorders and diseases.
Planarians, a type of aquatic flatworm, are a super regenerator, able to restore their bodies by growing back anything from an eye or a tail to a head. Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien seeks to understand how planarians are able to regenerate so effectively.
Stay up-to-date with recent research from Whitehead Institute, a world-renowned, non-profit scientific institution dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. Learn how competition between mother and father plants can influence gene expression; how a newly-identified gene facilitates regeneration in planarians; and more.
Research from Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien’s lab identifies a gene expressed in the skin that covers a wound as essential for regeneration to occur after large injuries in planarians.
Lucila Scimone is a staff scientist in Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien’s lab studying how cells build and regenerate body parts in the flatworm planarian. We sat down with Lucila to talk about her experiences as a staff scientist and her interests in and out of the lab.
Some of the most important tools in researchers’ toolkits are the model organisms they use to study biological questions. How do researchers decide which species, out of the millions that exist, to develop as models? Whitehead Institute researchers have had a hand in establishing and promoting the use of several model organisms over the years.
Learn about the role of swarm cells in ovarian development; the single-step fate model in planarian neoblasts; and a new gene-editing technique, CRISPRoff. Our latest research highlights video features work from the labs of Ruth Lehmann, Peter Reddien and Jonathan Weissman.
Researchers at Whitehead Institute propose a new model for how the stem cells in aquatic worms called planarians commit to a specific fate. Instead of a long, slow process that occurs over many generations, the researchers suggest that the transition from “blank” stem cells to specialized cells could happen in a single division.
