Planarian body size: Why are some animals small and others large?

Body size is a defining feature of every animal with important implications for physiology, ecology and evolution. Yet, how each species gets its characteristic size and why size varies so dramatically across the animal kingdom is not well understood. This project aims to address these questions by harnessing the extreme body size diversity of planarian flatworms. First, we will determine size-dependent GRNs in the model species Schmidtea mediterranea using single-cell RNA/ATAC approaches developed in the lab last year. Second, we will investigate how size-dependent GRNs have evolved in different planarian species and whether these changes underlie planarian body size diversification.

Collaborators

Sarah Dyer, Non-vertebrate Genomics, EMBL-EBI Hinxton