Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, Ph.D.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy
RESEARCH SUMMARY
My laboratory's goal is to identify and characterize the molecular components underpinning regeneration using the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea as a model. The choice of these animals as a model system is based upon four of their most salient biological properties: 1) robust regenerative abilities; 2) uncanny developmental plasticity; 3) the existence of sexual and asexual biotypes; and 4) the presence of a large subpopulation of stem cells in their body plan. In addition, an extensive and detailed body of "pre-molecular" literature exists on these animals, dating back to the work of the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811), and reaching its zenith at the turn of the 20th century under the inquisitive minds of Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) and C. M. Child (1869-1954). For most of the remainder of the 20th century, however, planarians failed to attract the attention of modern molecular biology.
BIOGRAPHY
Please see the lab website below.
LABORATORY
INFORMATION
http://planaria.neuro.utah.edu/index.php
