TY - JOUR TI - Physiological and molecular characterisation of cadmium stress in Schmidtea mediterranea AU - Plusquin, Michelle AU - Stevens, An-Sofie AU - Van-Belleghem, Frank AU - Degheselle, Olivier AU - Van-Roten, Andromeda AU - Vroonen, Jessica AU - Blust, Ronny AU - Cuypers, Ann AU - Artois, Tom AU - Smeets, Karen T2 - The International Journal of Developmental Biology AB - The planarian Schmidtea mediterranea is a well-studied model organism for developmental research, because of its stem cell system. This characteristic also provides a unique opportunity to study stress management and the effect of stress on stem cells. In this study, we characterised the stress signature at different levels of biological organization. The carcinogenic metal cadmium was used as a model chemical stressor. We focused on stem cell activity and its interaction with other known stress parameters. Here, we have found that S. mediterranea is able to cope with high internal levels of cadmium. At endpoints such as size and mobility, cadmium-related stress effects were detected but all of these responses were transient. Correspondingly, cadmium exposure led to an elevated mitotic activity of the neob-lasts, at the same time points when the other responses disappeared. At the molecular level, we observed redox-related responses that can be linked with both repair as well as proliferation mechanisms. Together, our results suggest that these animals have a high plasticity. The induc-tion of stem cell activity may underlie this ‘restoring’ effect, although a carcinogenic outcome after longer exposure times cannot be excluded. PY - 2012 DO - 10.1387/ijdb.113485mp VL - 56 IS - 1-2-3 SP - 183 EP - 191 J2 - Int. J. Dev. Biol. LA - en SN - 0214-6282 SN - 1696-3547 UR - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/113485mp Y2 - 2024/11/05/17:18:08 ER -