Karge, A. et al. elife 9, e47293 (2020)

Planarians are ideal model organisms to study neurogenesis. Their brain undergoes extensive neural differentiation through adulthood and can fully regenerate after injury. An RNAi screen to identify regulators of neurogenesis in Schmidtea mediterranea revealed that tec-1 knockdown could increase the abundance of different types of neurons in the central and peripheral nervous system.

Using BrdU labeling, the investigators showed that tec-1 inhibition increased the numbers of neurons without modifying the rate of neuronal differentiation, suggesting that tec-1 negatively regulates neurogenesis by acting on neuron survival; TUNEL staining on head fragments after amputation confirmed that tec-1 promotes cell death. Future studies are needed to determine whether tec-1 orthologs have similar functions in vertebrates and could be targeted to promote neural tissue repair.