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SUMMARY:Size sensing in biological systems- new insights from planarians -
  Jochen Rink\, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry\, Gottingen\
 ,Germany.
DTSTART:20210517T133000Z
DTEND:20210517T143000Z
UID:TALK159118@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Elena Scarpa
DESCRIPTION:Planarians are remarkable animals. They can regenerate from ti
 ny tissue pieces\, maintain continuous cell turn over via abundant pluripo
 tent stem cells and continuously grow or literally shrink their bodies in 
 a food-supply dependent manner. Such astonishing adult size plasticity is 
 accompanied by the size dependence of multiple aspects of planarian physio
 logy\, including the organismal growth and de-growth rates\, levels of met
 abolic energy stores or the formation of the reproductive system at a prec
 ise size threshold. This implies the existence of mechanisms that sense sy
 stem size and elicit size-dependent physiological changes\, the elucidatio
 n of which is a long-standing goal of my laboratory. My talk will present 
 recent findings\, including direct size-dependencies in planarian gene exp
 ression\, their upstream control via a size dependent hormone and downstre
 am functional consequences. Our results thus far suggest the existence of 
 magnigens\, the levels of which encode system size and that\, via dose-dep
 endent effects on target gene expression\, tune physiology to the momentar
 y size of the animal. \n\n \n
LOCATION:Online
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