Identification of Differentially Expressed Genes responding to Ionizing Radiation in Planarians and Mammalian Stem Cells

Radiation therapy (RT) often damages healthy tissues, limiting the dosage level and tumor damage potential due to single-strand and double-strand breaks in the DNA, leading to apoptosis. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the transcriptomic differences between planarian Neoblasts (NBs) and mammalian bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (bmMSCs) to identify key genes in the ionizing radiation (IR) response pathway. NBs are extracted from Schmidtea mediterranea and bmMSCs from C57BL/6 mice and human donors. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) is performed on the cell post-IR to identify differentially expressed genes. Techniques such as BLAST, DESeq2, and OrthoFinder identify homologs and unique genes. Gene ontology (GO) analysis, RNA interference (RNAi), and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-Cas9 (CRISPR-Cas9) study the impact of manipulating these genes on IR tolerance by indirectly validating the function of the candidate genes. This study expects to be able to isolate cell populations and identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to IR tolerance across the three models. Meanwhile, phylogenetic analyses model the evolutionary relationships between conserved and unique genes, providing insight into fundamental cellular processes and alternative pathways for therapeutic intervention. Comparative genomic techniques facilitated the identification and functional validation of homologs and unique genes. However, the holistic identification of candidate genes is limited by the inability to uncover detailed signaling pathways and mode limitations.