Planaria model

Planarians (Schmidtea mediterranea) are freshwater flatworms exhibiting extraordinary regenerative capacity powered by pluripotent adult stem cells known as neoblasts. In drug discovery, their conserved signaling pathways, rapid tissue remodeling, and accessible central nervous system enable efficient phenotypic screening for neuroactive, therapeutic, and toxicological compounds. Simultaneously, planarians offer a robust in vivo platform for epigenetic research. Highly conserved chromatin modifiers—such as histone methyltransferases and deacetylases—orchestrate neoblast pluripotency and lineage specification.Pharmacological inhibition or RNAi knockdown of these enzymes elucidates how chromatin remodeling,histone dynamics, and transcriptional regulation control cellular reprogramming, positional memory, and stem cell-driven tissue regeneration.