Meeting Abstract
Environmental endocrine disruptors such as BPA and BPS, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics, thermal printing systems, epoxy resins and other industrial processes, have been shown to depress and delay regeneration in a variety of flatworms and are lethal at high doses. The estrogen receptor (ER) antagonist tamoxifen can rescue the worms from these effects. In this work we examine the effects of much lower concentrations of BPA which are more environmentally relevant and find a concentration dependent increase in blastema growth with decreasing dosage. In vertebrate systems, weak ER agonists like BPA are known to have non-monotonic dose-responses which are similar to the decrease and increase in growth we observe in regenerating planaria. Prior work in our lab has suggested that bisphenol compounds are interacting with an ER-like pathway in planaria, and our current finding is consistent with this mechanism.
