Molecular markers to characterize the hermaphroditic reproductive system of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea

Investigation of differences in gene expression between two strains of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. The sexual strain are cross-fertilizing hermaphrodites with reproductive organs that develop post-embryonically and the asexual strain reproduces exclusively by transverse fission and fail to develop reproductive organs. A two chip study using total RNA recovered from asexual and sexual animals. Each chip measures the expression level of 16,797 ESTs from S. mediterranea with 10 60-mer probe pairs (PM/MM) per gene, with two-fold technical redundancy.