Ultrafast and long-range coordination of wound responses is essential for whole-body regeneration.

ABSTRACT: Injury induces systemic, global responses whose functions remain elusive. In addition, mechanisms that rapidly synchronize wound responses through long distances across the organismal scale are mostly unknown. Using planarians, which have extreme regenerative ability, we report that injury induces Erk activity to travel in a wave-like manner at an unexpected speed (∼1 mm/h), 10-100 times faster than those measured in other multicellular tissues. This ultrafast signal propagation requires longitudinal body-wall muscles, elongated cells forming dense parallel tracks running the length of the organism. Combining experiments and computational models, we show that the morphological properties of muscles allow them to minimize the number of slow intercellular signaling steps and act as bidirec

SUBMITTER: Fan Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10055111 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature