Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi

I have a question about planaria.
I heard that planaria has some kind of stem cell which can be changed to any cell.
I'm thinking about taking out that kind of stem cell and put it in simple bacteria or other small creatures and see what's going on.

Though, I'm not sure this kind of experiment was already done and is this topic look like good one? I'm Junior now and I think I chose too easy topic.....

I also thought other topic about planaria. It is about making mathematic formula for planaria.
When planaria are divided into 2 it can regenerate. However, when it is divided into like 200 pieces , it won't work.
so I was thinking about making formula about that and apply to other places. How this sound?

I want comment about my 2 topics and I am glad if you suggest me some other topics.

I need to submit this research in early January so I guess I need to pump up

Thank you

Hi,

Can you tell us more about what sort of lab facilities you have access to? I very much doubt that you would be able to extract stem cells from Planaria and put them anywhere else without a full scientific lab like you find at a university. I also am not sure why you would want to put it in another organism--what is it that you think that these stem cells would do, and why do you think that? Have you done some research on stem cells?

As to the other topic, I am not sure what you mean by 'apply it to other places'. Can you explain what you mean by that? I do not think that simply making a mathematical formula for duplication would be a valid science fair project as you have no real question or hypothesis.

But, since it sounds like you are very interested in planaria, have you checked out this Science Buddies topic about regeneration and magnetism? https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p018.shtml