Master of regeneration – not without stem cells

Planarians are known as masters of regeneration: they can re-build any part of their body after amputation. This ability relies on a large amount of pluripotent stem cells. To further investigate the mechanisms of how planarians maintain their stem cell pool over generations, scientists have now established a method for analyzing the composition of planarian stem cells and the turnover of their proteins. They discovered a protein that is not only required for the maintenance of the stem cell pool in planarians, but which might also be active in the pluripotent stem cells of mammals.