teashirt is required for head-versus-tail regeneration polarity in planarians
Author(s)
Owen, Jared H. (Jared Huntsman)
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology.
Advisor
Peter Reddien.
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Regeneration requires that the identities of new cells are properly specified to replace missing tissues. The Wnt signaling pathway serves a central role in specifying posterior cell fates during planarian regeneration. We identified a gene encoding a homolog of the Teashirt family of zinc finger proteins in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea to be a target of Wnt signaling in intact animals and at posterior-facing wounds. Inhibition of Smed-teashirt (teashirt) by RNA interference (RNAi) resulted in the regeneration of heads in place of tails, a phenotype previously observed with RNAi of the Wnt pathway genes [beta]-catenin-1, wntl, Dvl-1/2, or wntless. teashirt was required for [beta]-catenin-I-dependent activation of posterior genes during regeneration. These findings identify teashirt as a transcriptional target of Wnt signaling required for Wnt-mediated specification of posterior blastemas.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biology, 2017. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "t" at beginning of title is letter "t" in lower case. Includes bibliographical references (pages 28-33).
Date issued
2017Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of BiologyPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Biology.