Planarians are a striking model for studying regeneration owing to their extraordinary capacity to reform entire body structures from small tissue fragments. This ability is mediated primarily by ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Imagine waking in the morning with no brain, and no memory ...

Stem cells in most organisms typically take cues from adjacent cells. But new research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research has found that stem cells in the freshwater planarian Schmidtea ...

Planarians are flatworms that have a simple central nervous system (CNS) but an extraordinary ability to regenerate neural tissue. Their CNS is divided into distinct molecular and functional domains ...