Ricardo Zayas, Ph.D

Bio

My laboratory studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying tissue regeneration. To investigate this long-standing biological problem we examine the process of regeneration in freshwater planarians. These animals are able to form entire worms and replace lost body parts from very small body pieces. Planarians are endowed with a population of adult pluripotent stem cells (called neoblasts) that serve to replace cells lost during physiological cell turnover and after amputation. Thus, planarians provide an excellent opportunity to explore conserved molecular mechanisms that regulate maintenance, proliferation and differentiation of stem cells in vivo.