RNA Seq analysis of sorted Schmidtea mediterranea X1 and Xins cells to identify factors specific to neoblasts

Adult stem cells are tissue-specific cells with the capacity to self-renew and differentiate to continually replace cells lost to normal physiological turnover or injury. Neoblasts, the planarian stem cells, are widely distributed throughout the body mesenchyme, driving constitutive renewal of tissues during homeostasis and endowing planarians with the remarkable capacity to regenerate wholly from tiny tissue fragments. Neoblasts are the only dividing cells in planarians and are believed to be collectively comprised of both a heterogeneous population of pluripotent cells with broad differentiation potential and also lineage-committed progenitor cells that give rise to specific tissues. Recent technology has allowed one to isolate stem cells so we used a well-established method to isolate planarian stem cells by Hoechst blue staining and flow cytometry. To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying neoblast differentiation, we performed an RNA-Seq analysis of X1 and Xins cells looking at the differentially expressed genes between the two populations.