The people behind the papers – Cecilia Pellegrini and Peter Reddien

Whilst many animals can regenerate lost or damaged tissues following injury, the mechanisms that allow them to identify which specific cell type needs to be regenerated remains unclear. To address this, Cecilia Pellegrini and Peter Reddien map out the response mechanisms to a multitude of different injuries in the planarian flatworm, demonstrating that a general ‘bystander’ response in areas near injury sites might be sufficient for robust regeneration without the need for precise identification of missing tissues. To learn more about this paper and the people behind it, we spoke to first author Cecilia Pellegrini and corresponding author Peter Reddien, Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.