Project
Mechanism of life history trade-offs in planarian flatworms
During the course of evolution, organisms have evolved by optimizing their fitness under environmental and physiological constraints, such as the availability of energy. Having limited resources leads to a trade-off between traits (such as growth, reproduction, body maintenance, energy storage), which might change during the lifetime of an organism. This project aims to reveal mechanisms determining life-history traits and their mediating trade-offs, which are currently poorly understood.
To assess life-history trade-offs, we quantify cell type abundance in planarian flatworms. These worms are not only able to regenerate any body part from even tiny amputation fragments, but they also show reversible growth over almost two orders of magnitude depending on food availability. We expect a change in cell composition related to changing functional requirements at different life stages of the worm.
Together with our collaborators from the Vu group at the EMBL Heidelberg, we are developing single-cell RNA sequencing measurements and quantify cell type abundance in individual worms.
Furthermore, we devise an analysis framework based on Pareto optimality theory to reveal trade-offs between physiological traits, which we will ultimately test using genetic perturbations.
This project is also managed by Amrutha Palavalli from the EMBL Heidelberg.