Identification of immunological reagents for use in the study of freshwater planarians by means of whole-mount immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy.

In recent years, interest in planarians as a model system for the study of metazoan regeneration, adult stem cell biology, and the evolution of metazoan body plans has been growing steadily. The availability of RNA interference (RNAi), BrdU-labeling of planarian stem cells, and thousands of planarian cDNA sequences soon to be released into public databases has opened planarians to molecular dissection. However, the successful application of large-scale RNAi-based screens, for example, will depend in part on the availability of markers to characterize the resulting phenotypes. Given the paucity of antibodies available for the study of planarian biology, we have screened various public and commercial antibody resources to identify immunoreagents capable of cross-reacting with planarian tissues. Here we report the identification and characterization of 33 such antibodies recognizing a wide variety of tissues in freshwater planarians. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.