TY - JOUR T1 - DDX24 is required for muscle fiber organization and the suppression of wound-induced Wnt activity necessary for pole re-establishment during planarian regeneration. JF - Dev Biol Y1 - 2022 A1 - Sarkar, Souradeep R A1 - Dubey, Vinay Kumar A1 - Jahagirdar, Anusha A1 - Lakshmanan, Vairavan A1 - Haroon, Mohamed Mohamed A1 - Sowndarya, Sai A1 - Sowdhamini, Ramanathan A1 - Palakodeti, Dasaradhi AB -

Planarians have a remarkable ability to undergo whole-body regeneration. Successful regeneration outcome is determined by processes like polarity establishment at the wound site, which is followed by pole (organizer) specification. Interestingly, these determinants are almost exclusively expressed by muscles in these animals. However, the molecular toolkit that enables the functional versatility of planarian muscles remains poorly understood. Here we report that SMED_DDX24, a D-E-A-D Box RNA helicase, is necessary for planarian survival and regeneration. We found that DDX24 is enriched in muscles and its knockdown disrupts muscle fiber organization. This leads to defective pole specification, which in turn results in misregulation of many positional control genes specifically during regeneration. ddx24 RNAi also upregulates wound-induced Wnt signalling. Suppressing this ectopic Wnt activity rescues the knockdown phenotype by enabling better anterior pole regeneration. To summarize, our work highlights the role of an RNA helicase in muscle fiber organization, and modulating amputation-induced wnt levels, both of which seem critical for pole re-organization, thereby regulating whole-body regeneration.

VL - 488 ER -