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- Planarian is a free-living flatworm known for its soft, broad, leaf-shaped ciliated body and a three-branched digestive tract.[3]
- Planarian is well-known for its regeneration capabilities.
- The behaviors of freshwater planarians have been extensively studied for many years.
- Planarian behavior has been used to study the animal’s development, regeneration, molecular evolution, memory, and many more.
- The nervous system of the planarian is one of the simplest of bilaterally symmetric animals.
- Bilateral symmetry is an animal with body shapes that are mirror images along a midline, such as a butterfly.[1]
- Planarian has an anterior brain connected to ventral nerve cords interconnected by multiple commissures.
- Commissures are nerve tissues that connect the hemispheres of the brain and the two sides of the spinal cord.[2]
- Researchers found that when an intact planarian is stimulated by mechanical means and electromagnetic radiation, the head turns, the tail contracts, and the trunk elongates.
- When the planarian was cut into three pieces, the front of the headless middle part behaved like the head and started to turn instead of elongating.
- Additionally, the end of the head and midbody sometimes contracts instead of elongating.
- Each of the body pieces seems to behave like a whole animal.
- The results suggest that the planarian nervous system can quickly reorganize to fix functional problems complementing the slower regeneration processes.
- The reorganization allows the planarian to survive while regenerating the other tissues.
Sources:
Le, D., Sabry, Z., Chandra, A., Kristan, W. B., 3rd, Collins, E. S., & Kristan, W. B., Jr (2021). Planarian fragments behave as whole animals. Current biology : CB, 31(22), 5111–5117.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.09.056
[1] https://biologydictionary.net/bilateral-symmetry
[3] https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Planarian
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The Chromoscience uses AI-assisted tools to support the preparation and editing of science articles. Content is reviewed by the editor for clarity and consistency with the cited research before publication. Readers are encouraged to consult the original scientific publications for complete findings, methods, and limitations.
