Planarian cell number depends on blitzschnell, a novel gene family that balances cell proliferation and cell death.

Control of cell number is crucial to define body size during animal development and to restrict tumoral transformation. The cell number is determined by the balance between cell proliferation and cell death. Although many genes are known to regulate those processes, the molecular mechanisms underlying the relationship between cell number and body size remain poorly understood. This relationship can be better understood by studying planarians, flatworms that continuously change their body size according to nutrient availability. We identified a novel gene family, blitzschnell (bls), that consists of de novo and taxonomically restricted genes that control cell proliferation:cell death ratio. Their silencing promotes faster regeneration and increases cell number during homeostasis. Importantly, this increase in cell number leads to an increase in body size only in a nutrient-rich environment; in starved planarians, silencing results in a decrease in cell size and cell accumulation that ultimately produces overgrowths. bls expression is downregulated after feeding and is related to activity of the insulin/Akt/mTOR network, suggesting that the bls family evolved in planarians as an additional mechanism for restricting cell number in nutrient-fluctuating environments.

An allosteric modulator to control endogenous G protein-coupled receptors with light.

Controlling drug activity with light offers the possibility of enhancing pharmacological selectivity with spatial and temporal regulation, thus enabling highly localized therapeutic effects and precise dosing patterns. Here we report on the development and characterization of what is to our knowledge the first photoswitchable allosteric modulator of a G protein-coupled receptor. Alloswitch-1 is selective for the metabotropic glutamate receptor mGlu5 and enables the optical control of endogenous mGlu5 receptors.

Light-regulated stapled peptides to inhibit protein-protein interactions involved in clathrin-mediated endocytosis.

Control of membrane traffic: Photoswitchable inhibitors of protein-protein interactions were applied to photoregulate clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) in living cells. Traffic light (TL) peptides acting as "stop" and "go" signals for membrane traffic can be used to dissect the role of CME in receptor internalization and in cell growth, division, and differentiation.

Targeted Nanoswitchable Inhibitors of Protein-Protein Interactions Involved in Apoptosis.

Progress in drug delivery is hampered by a lack of efficient strategies to target drugs with high specificity and precise spatiotemporal regulation. The remote control of nanoparticles and drugs with light allows regulation of their action site and dosage. Peptide-based drugs are highly specific, non-immunogenic, and can be designed to cross the plasma membrane. In order to combine target specificity and remote control of drug action, here we describe a versatile strategy based on a generalized template to design nanoswitchable peptides that modulate protein-protein interactions upon light activation. This approach is demonstrated to promote photomodulation of two important targets involved in apoptosis (the interactions Bcl-xL-Bak and MDM2-p53), but can be also applied to a large pool of therapeutically relevant protein-protein interactions mediated by α-helical motifs. The template can be adjusted using readily available information about hot spots (residues contributing most to the binding energy) at the protein-protein interface of interest.

Absence of a stable secondary structure is not a limitation for photoswitchable inhibitors of ß-arrestin/ß-Adaptin 2 protein-protein interaction.

Many protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are mediated by short, often helical, linear peptides. Molecules mimicking these peptides have been used to inhibit their PPIs. Recently, photoswitchable peptides with little secondary structure have been developed as modulators of clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Here we perform a systematic analysis of a series of azobenzene-crosslinked peptides based on a ß-arrestin P-long 20-mer peptide (BAP-long) sequence to assess the relevance of secondary structure in their interaction with ß-adaptin 2 and to identify the design requirements for photoswitchable inhibitors of PPI (PIPPIs). We observe that flexible structures show a greater inhibitory capacity and enhanced photoswitching ability and that the absence of helical structures in free inhibitor peptide is not a limitation for PIPPI candidates. Therefore, our PIPPIs expand the field of potential inhibitors of PPIs to the wide group of flexible peptides, and we argue against using a stable secondary structure as a sole criterion when designing PIPPI candidates.

Planarian regeneration: achievements and future directions after 20 years of research.

Planarians can undergo dramatic changes in body size and regenerate their entire body plan from small pieces after cutting. This remarkable morphological plasticity has made them an excellent model in which to analyze phenomena such as morphogenesis, restoration of pattern and polarity, control of tissue proportions and tissue homeostasis. They have a unique population of pluripotent stem cells in the adult that can give rise to all differentiated cell types, including the germ cells. These cellular characteristics provide an excellent opportunity to study the mechanisms involved in the maintenance and differentiation of cell populations in intact and regenerating animals. Until recently, the planarian model system lacked opportunities for genetic analysis; however, this handicap was overcome in the last decade through the development of new molecular methods which have been successfully applied to planarians. These techniques have allowed analysis of the temporal and spatial expression of genes, as well as interference with gene function, generating the first phenotypes by loss or gain of function. Finally, the sequencing of the planarian genome has provided the essential tools for an in-depth analysis of the genomic regulation of this model system. In this review, we provide an overview of planarians as a model system for research into development and regeneration and describe new lines of investigation in this area.

An Ambystoma mexicanum EST sequencing project: analysis of 17,352 expressed sequence tags from embryonic and regenerating blastema cDNA libraries.

BACKGROUND: The ambystomatid salamander, Ambystoma mexicanum (axolotl), is an important model organism in evolutionary and regeneration research but relatively little sequence information has so far been available. This is a major limitation for molecular studies on caudate development, regeneration and evolution. To address this lack of sequence information we have generated an expressed sequence tag (EST) database for A. mexicanum. RESULTS: Two cDNA libraries, one made from stage 18-22 embryos and the other from day-6 regenerating tail blastemas, generated 17,352 sequences. From the sequenced ESTs, 6,377 contigs were assembled that probably represent 25% of the expressed genes in this organism. Sequence comparison revealed significant homology to entries in the NCBI non-redundant database. Further examination of this gene set revealed the presence of genes involved in important cell and developmental processes, including cell proliferation, cell differentiation and cell-cell communication. On the basis of these data, we have performed phylogenetic analysis of key cell-cycle regulators. Interestingly, while cell-cycle proteins such as the cyclin B family display expected evolutionary relationships, the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1 gene family shows an unusual evolutionary behavior among the amphibians. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis reveals the importance of a comprehensive sequence set from a representative of the Caudata and illustrates that the EST sequence database is a rich source of molecular, developmental and regeneration studies. To aid in data mining, the ESTs have been organized into an easily searchable database that is freely available online.