Chemical Amputation and Regeneration of the Pharynx in the Planarian Schmidtea mediterranea

The overall goal of this amputation procedure is to selectively and completely remove the pharynx from planarians without damaging other organs. This method can help answer key questions in the regeneration field. Such as how stem cells recognize missing organs and initiate their regeneration.

The main advantage of this technique is that it is very precise and that other organs are not damaged during the process. I first had the idea for this method when I was anesthetizing planarians with sodium azide. I noticed that exposure to sodium azide caused the pharynx to pop out.