Meeting Abstract
Animals vary in their ability to regenerate and restore tissue function after traumatic injury. Many invertebrates, such as hydra and planarians, display an exceptional ability to regenerate lost body parts while most vertebrates possess limited regenerative abilities, typically leading to the formation of non-functional scar tissue. The annelid Lumbriculus variegatus has become a useful model system for studies of body axis development, wound healing and regeneration. Lumbriculus is capable of regenerating a new worm from three segments of the original worm and can recover structure and function along the anterior-posterior axis. Using this species, we aim to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate wound healing and regeneration within the central nervous system and wound blastema. Previous studies in our lab found elevated levels of beta-catenin protein in regenerating heads. Beta-catenin is known to function as a transcription factor activated by members of the Wnt signaling pathways or function as a component of E-cadherin-based adherens junctional coupling between cells. Increased protein expression of beta-catenin suggests it plays an important role during Lumbriculid regeneration. Genomic work is limited in Lumbriculus. To further dissect the role of beta-catenin, we are developing a real-time QPCR assay to measure beta-catenin mRNA levels during regeneration. In the future we plan to evaluate transcripts of other Wnt signaling proteins as well as other putative regenerative proteins. Our results may provide a more effective way of directly measuring the contributions of different regenerative genes utilized by Lumbriculus and could subsequently identify cellular and molecular regeneration mechanisms that have been conserved in annelids and across animal phyla.
