SRA

Regeneration is pervasive among the metazoa, but to vastly varying degrees. Platyhelminthes, Cnidaria, and Echinodermata are examples of phyla whose members are capable of whole-body regeneration (WBR). While planaria and hydra have been exemplary models of this phenomenon, the molecular details of echinoderm WBR are less established. It remains unclear to what degree such a dramatic regenerative capacity is due to the operation of conserved mechanisms and, in particular, whether any of these are involved in a regenerating Deuterostome. We characterize regeneration in the larval sea star (Patiria miniata) via transcriptome assessment. Transcriptome profiling highlight functions common to regeneration, such as wound healing, axis patterning and proliferation. This dataset was used as a basis for comparison to published Platyhelminth and Cnidarian regeneration datasets. These analyses show that sea star larvae undergo regeneration through a trajectory including wound response, axis respecification, and blastemal proliferation. Commonalities between this Deuterostome model and other WBR models suggest a deep conservation of whole-body regeneration among the metazoa. Overall design: Regenerating anterior and posterior segments were measured at three separate time points during regeneration along with sibling, non-bisected control larvae. Two replicate measurements were made for a total of 18 samples.