NAME: Sultan Hashmi

CLASS: 2
DATE
PLANARIA LAB REPORT

PROBLEM: If trisected, which piece of a planarian will regenerate first?

HYPOTHESIS: If trisected, then the Mid section will regenerate first.

THEORY:

Planaria are flat worms that have the ability to reproduce sexually or
asexually. Planaria are Hermaphrodites, which means that they have male and
female gonads. Gonads are the sexual organs such as testes and ovaries. When
a Planaria lays its eggs, they will be genetically diverse.

Planaria reproduce asexually by a process called tail dropping or
fragmentation. The Planaria contracts muscles in its lower region, and its tail
will fall off. Eventually, it will grow a midsection and a head. This is possible
because the Planaria have stem cells. The stem cells can migrate to the wound
or cut and repair it. The offspring of this Planaria will be a clone and will have
the same genes as its parent, which means it would be a clone.

Planarians can reproduce a sexually though the process of
regeneration. You might be asking what do you mean regeneration?
Regeneration is a special ability of the planarian, it allows them to make a
clone of them selfs. These flatworms cells are composed of 30%
neoblasts/stem cells this allows them to be cut into multiple pieces and they
will still live. Blastemas will form on the wounds, which later form body parts.
Neoblasts are the only cells that regenerate in their body, for every
regenerated cell there will be a stem cell made for it. These neoblasts help the
planarian a lot because they can be multiple worms in a matter of 10
days. This is one of the many ways Planaria can reproduce. I predicted that
the midsection would regenerate the fastest because it contains all the
internal organs. I figured that these organs would take the longest to
reproduce.




CONCLUSION:

In this lab we trisected a planaria to figure out which piece would regenerate
first. I hypothesized that the Mid Section would regenerate first because it contains
the pharynx (feeding tube) and the stomach. My data shows by day 4 ghost tissues
or Blastemas were forming on the wounds of each piece. I noticed that the mid
section had regenerated the fastest by the 9
th
day. 58% or 7 of 12 mid section pieces
regenerated first. For P7, 6 out of 14 regenerate first, and in P4, 4 out of 12
regenerate first. These classes are: P7 and P4. In conclusion, planaria will regenerate
when trisected and the mid section regenerated first.

ANALYSIS:
For this lab, our results were valid. They were valid because we cut the
planaria into 3 equal pieces. It was difficult for us to cut the planaria because they
were very quick and squirmy. I noticed that at the end of the lab, we had two tails
instead of one. This could have influenced the result because the planaria tail
dropped. This means that the mid section or head had dropped a piece of its tail, so
it could reproduce. For these reasons, I assume that my data was not completely
valid.
Pluripotent cells in the embryo can generate all cell types, but lineage-
restricted cells are generally thought to recharge adult tissues. Planarians are
flatworms and regenerate from tiny body fragments, a process requiring a
population of proliferating cells (neoblasts). Whether regeneration is accomplished
by pluripotent cells or by the collective activity of multiple lineage-restricted cell
types is unknown. We used ionizing radiation and single-cell transplantation to
identify neoblasts that can form large descendant-cell colonies in vivo. These
clonogenic neoblasts produce cells that differentiate into neuronal, intestinal, and
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Anterior Mid Section Posterior
2014 Regeneration Graph
2nd Period
7th Grade
other known postmitotic cell types and are distributed throughout the body in
clusters. Single transplanted Neoblasts restored regeneration in lethally irradiated
hosts. I conclude that broadly distributed, adult pluripotent stem cells underlie the
amazing regenerative abilities of planarians.

There is less controversy over stem cells, because they are being used to help
victims of diseases recover faster, and cure injured who are on the verge of dyeing.
hES involves destroying a human embryo and for a while that was the only way to
obtain stem cells but now there are two new ways called IPS and STAP. IPS involves
adding genes to differentiated cells to undifferentiated it and STAP invokes stressing
a differentiated cell until it returns to its undifferentiated form. In my opinion,
society should ban hES, because of how cruel it is to humanity, however embrace
the other forms of creating stem cells.