Flatworms grow a second head instead of a tail, if influenced by electric field

newscientist.com

4 pointslukan3 comments

"Cut off the head of a planarian flatworm, and a new one will grow in its place. The worm is one of many creatures that have some kind of memory for lost limbs, enabling them to regenerate what was there before.

Now it seems that this memory can be altered by meddling with the electrical activity of the animals’ cells. Shifting the bioelectric current at the site of the cut changes the type of appendage regenerated – allowing a head to be regrown in place of a tail, for instance."

That seems to have quite some implications I think. If a flatworm can significantly change its growth under a electric field, maybe also higher developed organisms?

Worth noting, this is not an externally applied electric field but rather voltage potential gradients between the cells in the tissue, and it's mostly altered using chemicals that open and close gap junctions/pores between cells to change ion flow.

That indeed changes it a bit for me (I did not looked into it in detail)

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