Earthworm regeneration: Bowling Green to join in with CUBE Kalyan, Mumbai and Jaipur

[MC Arunan]

Dear Vishal,
Here is an enthusiastic group of second year BSc students of Ulhasnagar college in Earthworm regeneration studies. It is time we need to pool the resources together.
Over to you.
 Have you been able to join "CUBE" <cu...@gnowledge.org>?
Wassup at CCT group?
Arunan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: MC Arunan <mcar...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 11:06 AM
Subject: Earthworm regeneration: Bowling Green to join in with CUBE Kalyan, Mumbai and Jaipur
To: Dipin Murpani <dipi...@gmail.com>
Cc: CUBE <cu...@gnowledge.org>


Dear Dipin,

Every thing you wrote was good, especially that you are in contact with Wilson college and St Xavier's CUBEists, but that you had a huge problem in your objectives!
Look at this, what you wrote today:
(i) Immediate term objectives- Maintaining the Earthworms.
(ii) Short term objectives- Gustatory Response in Earthworms.
(iii) Long term objectives- Regeneration in Earthworms.

How can Gustatory Response in Earthworm be your short term objective when your question is on regeneration? Even if you want to link that with gustatory behavior to see whether the gustatory receptors are regenerated etc,  it will be a later objective. Currently, even if maintenance of the animals in Tub culture, Bottle culture and Cup culture as your immediate term Objective, in this project, you are addressing questions on Regeneration.( And of course, for that you need the animals to be maintained, in Cup cultures and perhaps Bottle cultures too. And as a good source, you also need to maintain a tub culture or a vermipit).

So, in Regeneration question what is your Short-term Objective?
So, in Regeneration question what is your Long term objective?

In fact, you had already mentioned some ideas that you would like to pursue as part of the regeneration question.
 e.g. You wrote:
"...from now on we are observing them that how much time actually Regeneration takes for it's occurence, which protein,enzyme is responsible for wound healing process and discussion on the STEM CELLS...!" Can you cull out some Long term objective/s from this?

You also wrote: "our future prospective, proceeding further with amputation from both the ends of earthworm(i.e. head & tail region)on specific count of segments and we are too checking the role of clitellium region in cellular plasticity in earthworm + regeneration in earthworms!" can they be counted as your Short-term Objective in Regeneration question? Please discuss among your Earthworm group members and post us your view. This also means you have to list the
(i) Names, Departments  and Colleges of your group members of yours along with
 (ii) Immediate, Short term and Long term Objectives, in every mail.

Looking forward to.
I am forwarding this mail to Vishal of Bowling Green State University who is coordinating similar work with CUBEists at CCT, Jaipur. Perhaps, it is time that Kalyan, Mumbai, Jiapur & Bowling Green State University can start collaborating.
Arunan

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Dipin Murpani <dipi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Arunan Sir,
Yes our current situation lies within my previous write-up & unfortunately represents this only! No sir,because of some issues no experiments were carried out for last past week. I'm extremely sorry for that!
But I had planned to perform Regeneration today itself but as nivedita & komal my collabrator's are busy with their internals exam, bur I didn't perform'd regeneration as if komal is a new collaberator she wanted to learn & also perform this expt. due to my Fault,
never the less everything is managed now from tomorrow I'll be starting with regeneration with my gang!

tomorrow plans are for Regeneration..
6 earthworms will get amputated from the anterior end=(3-EW-5segments),(3-EW-10segments),
6 earthworms will get amputated from the posterior end.=(3-EW--5segments),(3-EW-10segments),

For this we have made 12 cup culture for our experimentation.

we had given special conditions to E.Worm like we will made other different 12 cups for keeping the AMPUTATED part of the E.Worm under our observation and labelled them (eg. that 5 segments&10 segments are cut off from the anterior end & then posterior end) and from now on we are observing them that how much time actually Regeneration takes for it's occurence, which protein,enzyme is responsible for wound healing process and discussion on the STEM CELLS...!

our future prospective, proceeding further with amputation from both the ends of earthworm(i.e. head & tail region)on specific count of segments and we are too checking the role of clitellium region in cellular plasticity in earthworm + regeneration in earthworms!

And Even I had a talk with Kshiteej from willson college,Merlyn from st.xaviers college, they will be reporting soon!

(i) Immediate term objectives- Maintaining the Earthworms.
(ii) Short term objectives- Gustatory Response in Earthworms.
(iii) Long term objectives- Regeneration in Earthworms.

Regards,
Dipin.

[divya bhatia]

Hi Dipin,

Its Divya from CCT, University Of Rajasthan. Nice to know you and your friends are also curious to know the mechanism of regeneration in earthworm. We are doing the same kind of work here. Keep posting..

Regards,

Divya.

[Navkiran Kalsi]

hello everyone,

i am attaching some articles regarding E'worm's regeneration, which I found very interesting. Hope these might be helpful for your experiment. i am also attaching one ppt, made by me earlier, contain some basic information about E'worms, might be helpful for new one's. PFA. 

I'll be happy to provide more information for same, if required.  

 

Regards,

Navkiran Kalsi

[MC Arunan]

Fantastic!
Dear Navkiran,
This is the way we can promote Collaborative Undergraduate Biology Research (CUB Research)  in India in a big way! And in a fast manner too!
The Morgan articles are great: more than a century old, and before he set out a revolution in Genetics by observing and documenting the white eyed fly in colonies of red eyed Drosophila! And the rest is history!

I am asking Dipin to upload at beta.metastudio.org for the whole world to access!

More from you guys at CCT. Navkiran, please remind me of your app deadlines.

Arunan

M.C.Arunan, PhD.
Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, TIFR,
V.N.Purav Marg, Mumbai-400088, India
Phone: +91 2225072441
aru...@hbcse.tifr.res.in
mcar...@gmail.com

[Vishal Sharma]

Hello everyone,

Dr. Arunan, thanks lot for connecting with so many enthusiasts, it is wonderful feeling. In 2004 when I was presenting the regeneration work at NBRC, not too many people paid attention to my poster except for few like Torsten Wiesel and Vidita Vaidya. Then in 2004 again in Bangalore apart from M M Panicker not too many people really paid attention to what my poster had to say. But I think all those who did not think that this model system could find too many admirers, then the number of enthusiastic students listed in this mailing list should be a very strong answer to the critics.

Yes, I have subscribed with CUBE and have also included the cube mailing address to this email.

I got an e-mail from Divya bhatia from jaipur group today with some interesting questions.

For all regeneration studying students at mumbai and jaipur,

Since this is now a larger group what I am going to attempt to do is share some of my experiences with the model system (I believe Ramya should too when ever she has time, since she worked with them during her Sophia days). Then raise some questions very systematically to steer you in a particular direction. The attempt will be to make you think about your model system and at them same time generate some very specific questions that are testable. 

My experiences,

The very first time when we asked the question whether Eworm can regenerate or not (because we did not know the answer to this question when a physicist asked as the same question). We simply picked some worms from the terrace of Arunan sir's office and started amputating their head. most of them died because we cultured them in the pot with soil. Only one showed a blastema formation. 

Problem no. 1 we encountered was to identify the species.Since we did not know the species of this worm, I traveled to pune and bought a specific species, E foetida (tiger like stripes, most commonly used in vermiculite and gives a fetid smell). 

Problem no. 2 we encountered was to clear the gut of this organism because  it had tons of soil and bacteria which could be a potential problem for our experiments (I will leave it up to you to think in what many ways these could be a problem and you can list out all the reasons that comes to your mind, I am sure you will find great answers). 

Problem no. 3 we encountered was how to anesthetize this animal before we amputate, I tried several different ways, Ethanol was cruel, but 5% CO2 worked best for me in a desiccator the effect of anesthesia could be reversed simply by putting the worm in fresh water for 2-3 mins.

Problem no. 4 how to study regeneration these animals? there are several ways, one of the ways we tried was taking ~20 micron sections (lateral) at various time points starting at zero hours upto 15-20 days. Sections were then subjected to H and E staining and observed for cellular redeployment features.

Now the idea of writing this down was not to simplify your work, but instead to give you a sense that you should approach the problem in hand very methodically. So,

1) since you are working with worms, here are some of my questions to you,

a) have you been able to optimize lab conditions so that they feel at home?

b) How many worms are you culturing right now? Are you aware of the Eworm life cycle? do you think you will have sufficient with you to carry out regeneration experiment/s ?

2) I think some of you have mentioned cups in one of your e-mails. 

a) can you please describe how you are housing them in cups, what material you are using, is it perforated, what is the bedding made of etc.. (The best way to do that is list out step wise with reasons for each step).

b) Some of you have/are going to amputate the worms and put them cups. Have you cleared their gut? if yes, how do you know you have cleared their gut (Kindly list the indicators with which you can determine their gut is cleared).

I am very impressed with questions you all (Divya bhatia from CCT jaipur and Dipin et al. from CHM?) are asking. But you need to organize your questions in to Long-Term question/objective which is further broken down in to short-term and immediate question/objectives.

Himanshu,

Could you please attach the beveridge copy to this email, as the new students who did not get it earlier can get it as well.

All again please read this book "Art of scientific investigation"- by Beveridge. Very important and very helpful.

Now most important thing,

When you dive in to address an important question such as regeneration in earthworms you are starting with practically no information about regenerative capabilities in this animal, right?

but is the concept of regeneration new? No. Have others studied regeneration in other model organisms? Yes

So the question is what do we know about those studies?

May be each student can share their findings with all of us, about various other organisms those are used for regeneration studies around the globe.

When I tried finding more about regeneration across other organisms I learned a great deal on development of organisms. And if you actually look at adult tissue regeneration it is actually post-embryonic development... right?

Also, when we work with any model organism, it comes with a set of advantages and disadvantages. Do you know the advantages and disadvantages of your (E. foetida) model organisms? If yes, can you please share it with every one?

Finally, I am attaching two review articles to get you started on acquiring more information about regeneration. Kindly read them very CRITICALLY. Then we can discuss with more question in our mind. Also, please use these as starting resources to commence your literature review (meaning identifying more variety of key words and using them in combination for your search--> pubmed or any other source you are familiar with).

Dear Navkiran,

Thanks much for uploading the TH Morgan paper.

All please read that paper carefully and see how he approached the problem

Let's study regeneration systematically and together.

Cheers,

Vishal.

[Arunan]

Are there any in this group working on Earthworms as model system?