{"id":79655,"date":"2018-06-16T01:42:56","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T08:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/scientists-have-captured-the-elusive-cell-that-can-regenerate-an-entire-flatworm"},"modified":"2018-06-21T00:07:02","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T07:07:02","slug":"scientists-have-captured-the-elusive-cell-that-can-regenerate-an-entire-flatworm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/scientists-have-captured-the-elusive-cell-that-can-regenerate-an-entire-flatworm","title":{"rendered":"Scientists have captured the elusive cell that can regenerate an entire flatworm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-have-captured-the-elusive-cell-that-can-regenerate-an-entire-flatworm2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>KANSAS CITY, MO \u2014 Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have captured the one cell that is capable of regenerating an entire organism. For over a century, scientists have witnessed the effects of this cellular marvel, which enables creatures such as the planarian flatworm to perform death-defying feats like regrowing a severed head. But until recently, they lacked the tools necessary to target and track this cell, so they could watch it in action and discover its secrets.<\/p>\n<p>Now, by pioneering a technique that combines genomics, single-cell analysis, flow cytometry and imaging, scientists have isolated this amazing regenerative cell \u2013 a subtype of the long-studied adult pluripotent stem cell \u2013 before it performs its remarkable act. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell\/fulltext\/S0092-8674(18)30583-X\" target=\"_blank\">findings<\/a>, published in the June 14, 2018, issue of the journal <em>Cell<\/em>, will likely propel biological studies on highly regenerative organisms like planarians and also inform regenerative medicine efforts for other organisms like humans that have less regenerative capacity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time that an adult pluripotent stem cell has been isolated prospectively,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stowers.org\/faculty\/s%C3%A1nchez-lab\">Alejandro S\u00e1nchez Alvarado<\/a>, Ph.D., an investigator at the Stowers Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute and senior author of the study. \u201cOur finding essentially says that this is no longer an abstraction, that there truly is a cellular entity that can restore regenerative capacities to animals that have lost it and that such entity can now be purified alive and studied in detail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stowers.org\/media\/news\/jun-14-2018\">https:\/\/www.stowers.org\/media\/news\/jun-14&#45;2018<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KANSAS CITY, MO \u2014 Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have captured the one cell that is capable of regenerating an entire organism. For over a century, scientists have witnessed the effects of this cellular marvel, which enables creatures such as the planarian flatworm to perform death-defying feats like regrowing a severed head. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79804,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79655\/revisions\/79804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}