Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey,
I have a quick question about this project about the regeneration of planaria under different strengths of magnets. https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p018.shtml. I have to write a bit of background information about this but I'm not quite sure about the link between magnetic forces and regeneration. Where is the link? Why might this work or not work? I'm a little confused, if you could help out that would be great. This is for a physics based biology project.

-Emma

Hi emma222,

My understanding is that magnetic fields may influence cell signaling processes, which are some of the processes associated with healing. If you would like more details, try a Google search for "magnetic fields regeneration". You'll find several articles and abstracts with information about the link between magnetic fields and regeneration. Many of these references are written at a very high-level. So, if you run into trouble either understanding or accessing some of the papers that come up, post back with your questions and we'll try to clear things up for you. The abstracts in PubMed are a good resource, and they are available freely. Links that have [PDF] next to them are links to PDF documents that you should be able to download without problems; other links may require you be logged in to a university's network to access them.