Jana Ka
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Longhua Guo
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Molecular and Integrative Physiology; Geriatrics Center / Medicine
Program:
Authors: Longhua Guo, Jana Ka
Session: Session 3: 11:00 am – 11: 50 am
Poster: 78
Abstract
Planarians have the unique ability to regenerate body parts, making them useful subjects in the study of stem cells and regeneration. Planarians are traditionally considered immortal animals with extremely long lifespans. The Guo Lab recently demonstrated that sexual planarians undergo aging and physiological decline in a year. However, regeneration restores youthfulness to the old planarians (Dai et al. 2023 biorxiv). In order to investigate one of the lab’s areas of interest, differences in feeding behavior, data is collected by recording 2-hour videos of up to 24 isolated planarians in the presence of liver paste. The videos are used to record and identify key details of their feeding behavior, which are then used to determine if there is a significant change in the animals’ behavior during aging.
