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Research Field:

Developmental Biology

Research Interest:

Elucidate both the cellular and molecular mechanisms that are involved in planarian regeneration. In order to do this we have three specific objectives:
1. Study the genomic and proteomic properties of the neoblasts (totipotent mother cells present in Plathelminthes), to allow us to characterise functional genes and genetics products responsible for cell maintenance, determination and differentiation.
2. Search for and study the functional genes involved in the pattern reformation during regeneration, especially with regard to signal molecules and other genes, which are related to the process of cell competence.
3. Functional characterisation of the gene networks, which control the morphogenesis of the eyes during regeneration.

Excerpt of my Publications:

+ Saló, E. (2006). "The power of regeneration and the stem cells kingdom: The freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea (Platyhelminth)." Bioessays, 28(5):546-559.
+ Gonzalez-Estevez, C., Momose, T., Gehring, W.J. and Saló, E. (2003). "Planarian transgenic lines obtained by electroporation using transposon-derived vectors and eye-specific GFP marker." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 100(24):14046-14051.
+ Pineda, D., Rossi, A., Batistoni, R., Salvetti, A., Marsal, M., Gremigni, V., Falleni, A., Gonzalez, J., Deri, P. and Saló, E. (2002). "The genetic network of prototypic planarian eye regeneration is Pax-6 independent." Development 129:1423-1434.