Meeting Abstract
Regeneration is characterized as a renewal process that restores lost body parts, organs and tissues in the appropriate dimensions and size. In organisms that can regenerate limbs, a key step in regeneration is the de-differentiation of cells to form a blastema. In this study, we sought to identify blastema specific factors in the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. An RNA-seq analysis identified a POU domain transcription factor as a potential blastema factor. Findings show that upon gene silencing, regenerating limbs were notably smaller, most likely due to decreased duration of blastema maintenance. A GFP enhancer trap line indicated that the expression of this gene is upregulated during the blastema maintenance phase. Thus, the POU domain transcription factor appears to regulate the duration of the blastema stage to ultimately regulate limb size.
