The Regeneration of Planaria through the Dissection Experiment

Results

In our experiment, we chose three different dissection cuts to apply on planarians. We received four planarian worm we applied three different cuts to three of the worms while the fourth was used as an control. One of the cuts was to cut one of the worms in a tri-cut that was supposed to result in three different worms. This cut was a success and did result in three individual worms. Another cut that was chosen was to do bisect the worm, in which the worm was regenerate into two worms. The result was successful and after applying this cut resulted into two individual worms. The last cut was to do a two-head cut. The results were partially successful due to the worm not forming two separate heads. Instead the worm head regenerated back one single head but the head was slightly larger than it was before the cut as well as there were three eyes located on the top of the head while the rest of the worms only had two black eyes found on the top of their heads. However, in each of the plate including the control there were extra worms that were not a part of the cuts or the regeneration, they did not appear in the plates until after we cut the worms. In our group, we think that the worms reproduced and that is the reason for there being more worms in the plates than expected.

Discussion

Apart from the cut of bi-head since it did not fully form two heads but reformed one head with three eyes, we were successful in our experiment since we were able to form individual worms from the cuts. The significance of the experiment was to study the regeneration of the flatworm planarians and their stem cells. This experiment shows the importance of the planarians being a model organism in the field of genetics. The research of regeneration and stems cells are of great importance in science and medicine because of its usefulness in regeneration in humans. discovering the possibility of regeneration in humans would be an advancement in medicine because people with certain conditions would have the ability to regenerate damaged tissues or cells that could improve people’s lives. Studying planarians and their capability to regenerate will allow researchers to identify the genes that are responsible for the ability of regeneration.