Investigating Adult Stem Cell Lineage Specification in the Freshwater Flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea

Adult stem cells (ASCs) serve to facilitate tissue turnover during the lifespan of an organism. The goal of my research has been to deepen our understanding of how ASCs become specified towards differentiation to produce physiologically functional cell types. To this end, I have chosen to use the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, which possess a large pool of ASCs that supports the constant cell turnover of all their tissues. A transcriptomic approach was used to identify a set of candidate genes to screen for potential regulators and markers of ASC progeny. Using gene expression characterization and RNAi functional analysis, I have identified a MEX3 homolog (Smed-mex3-1) and a putative MYB-type transcription factor (Smed-myb-1) as regulators of ASC differentiation. This body of work demonstrates that (A) mex3-1 is a critical factor broadly required for ASC differentiation, and (B) myb-1 is a regulator of the early temporal window of epidermal lineage progression.

Department dc:contributor.department

Molecular and Medical Genetics

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Shu Jun

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pearson, Bret J

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/92049

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/92049