We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague, Emili Saló, professor at the University of Barcelona. Emili was a true pioneer in the planarian research community and a mentor to many scientists in the field today. He will be greatly missed and remembered.

Read about PhD student Fabienne Dreier’s scientific journey, interests, and recent work optimizing an HCR protocol for planarians in her First Person Interview with @biologyopen.bsky.social. journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Lab members are presenting at upcoming conferences! Don’t miss . . . Lucie Souriac’s poster “Uncovering the molecular mechanisms underlying genomic plasticity in planarians” at the EMBO YIP Genome Stability Sectoral Meeting

And that’s a wrap! We hope everyone had as enjoyable and productive a time at ISFB XVI as we did. Thanks for attending, and we’ll see you again in Sant Feliu in 2029!

The final event for ISFB XVI is today's taxonomic satellite symposium, organized by Lukas Schärer, at the Biodiversitätsmuseum in Göttingen (ZMUG).

Day 4 of ISFB XVI was devoted to taxonomy and systematics. Great talks capturing flatworm diversity by Lukas Schärer, Miquel Vila-Farré, Alejandro Catalá Jimenez, Marta Riutort (@riutortlab.bsky.social), Aoi Tsuyuki, Srishti Arya, Vitor Milanese, and Marta Álvarez-Presas (@martaalvarez.bsky.social).

A few shots from the two fantastic poster sessions at ISFB XVI. Congratulations to award winners Janan Gawra and Emilia Failache, and thanks to all the presenters for sharing their exciting work!

Our final session for day three of ISFB XVI featured more exciting talks on flatworm cell biology by Ludwik Gąsiorowski (@lgasiorowski.bsky.social), Simone Häberlein, Steffen Werner, and George Wendt.

Jeremias Brand (@brandgefahr.bsky.social), Christopher Laumer (@tendersombrero.bsky.social), Ignacio Tenaguillo-Arriola, and Ulf Jondelius shared the latest in flatworm genomics for our second session of day three at ISFB XVI.

Exciting new tools for researching Macrostomum presented by Nelson Hall, Eugene Berezikov, and Matthew Voas, along with new molecular insights into bioadhesion by Peter Ladurner in the morning session of ISFB XVI.

Day 2 PM talks at ISFB XVI addressed clinically and agriculturally significant flatworm parasites. Fascinating work from Jim Collins, Tania Rozario, Inés Guarnaschelli, Christoph Grevelding, Klaus Brehm, and Uriel Koziol.

Session 2 at ISFB XIV covered the germline (Phil Newmark), stress responses (Blair Benham-Pyle; @blairbenhampyle.bsky.social), stem cell competition (Uri Weill; @uriweill.bsky.social), and alternative regeneration mechanisms (Shuchang Hu).

ISFB XVI kicked off with a keynote by Christoph Bleidorn (@cblei.bsky.social) on the evolution of animal phylogeny. Session 1 on planarian cell biology featured talks by Peter Reddien, Hanh Vu (@hanhtkvu.bsky.social), Jordi Solana (@jordisolana.bsky.social), and Leo Drees (@auricle1.bsky.social).

The first International Symposium on Flatworm Biology took place in Chicago in 1970. Today, we’re excited to welcome our colleagues to Göttingen for the 16th Symposium. Registration is open, and the program begins at 18:00. See you there! events.gwdg.de/event/1168/p...

Only four days left until the XVI International Symposium on Flatworm Biology! Wishing all attendees a good trip. We look forward to welcoming you to Göttingen! events.gwdg.de/event/1168/

Our work optimizing HCR to visualize gene expression in planarians, led by Ph.D. student Fabienne Dreier, is now online at Biology Open. HCR allows simultaneous visualization of multiple probes and is a valuable addition to the planarian toolkit. journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

We’re resuming our posts by sharing a preprint from former postdoc and current group leader at the University of Warsaw, Ludwik Gąsiorowski (@lgasiorowski.bsky.social). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Divergent evolution of the Wnt signaling system in flatworms

Regenerative capacity varies widely across flatworms (Platyhelminthes). Whereas catenulids, microstomids and planarians can regenerate a complete head de novo, other flatworms cannot. This striking di...

biorxiv.org

Rumors of our social media demise have been greatly exaggerated!

Just back from the European Planarian Conference, #empb2024 - obviously, we found the perfect location ;) Thanks everyone for the collaborative spirit and for sharing lots of exciting work; @solana_jordi for spotting the elephant in the room and @teresa_adell for organizing.

Welcome to the lab, Arkadeep, Somdatta and Kalyani! The three are members of the IISER-MPG joint master's programme, which allows students from one of India's leading research institutions to carry out their thesis research at Max Planck Labs. Glad to have you on board!

Thank you - I am honoured and delighted to have been elected as an EMBO member.

An internalising epidermal cell caught in the act (disclaimer: this is in Atrioplana). Coodoos to Tobi, Albert and Jun-Ru for persistently pushing the boundaries of live imaging in the system-this is key to understanding planarian tissue dynamics and the future is bright :)

Planarians never cease to surprise - we show that epidermal cells undergo basal extrusion and a 'death march' to be digested by gut phagocytes. Thus, self-digestion is not only part of pathological cell clearance, but also of steady-state tissue turnover. How? Lots to discover :)

In flatworms, Neoblasts are the only dividing cells outside the reproductive system... REALLY? In collaboration with @PhysPlanaria, we show that things are not so simple. Here's our preprint on the intriguing stem cell system of the Catenulid Stenostomum

Happy to announce the 6th European Meeting on Planarian Biology this year-October 13-15, right by the beach and right after the EMBO regeneration meeting over in Nice. The website with more info will go up soon. Please join us for the latest and greatest in planarianology!

We had the pleasure of hosting a practical of the Goettingen Developmental Biology Masters program in the department, including (winter!) field sampling, bar-coding, inter-species transplants, and imaging. Great bunch of students & instructors!

Amazing- planarians really are everywhere! And we may have to up our sampling game somewhat :) Thanks to @L_Gasiorowski for sharing the link.

Our bioinformatics staff scientist position is still open! We are looking for someone passionate about genome mining and community science to help revitalize PlanMine. Please look at the ad (or message me) and consider retweeting (re-X-ing...?).

Happy to announce the lab's first graduation in Goettingen: Thomas successfully defended his PhD and kindly brought flowers to "Gaenseliesel" on Market Square per the local rite-of-passage custom. Congratulations, Thomas- we're extremely proud of you :)

New genomes for Christmas :) Check out our new preprint, featuring the haplotype-phased S. mediterranea assembly, chromosome-scale assemblies of three additional Schmidteas, and the surprising discovery that flatworm genomes appear to evolve without syntenic constraints.