Topics

• Planarian vision

Planarian vision

Biological systems have evolved to extract relevant information from the environment and have developed unique characteristics based on the unique ecological challenges faced by each organism. One consequence of this is that the animal kingdom contains many different types of vision. However, despite huge phylogenetic differences between species, the basic building blocks of the visual system remain similar across extremely disparate organisms. Opsin expression for example appears to be evolutionarily preserved from invertebrates to mammals. Dr Hutchinson's work on invertebrate vision uses the flatworm planaria. The planarian flatworm is one of the most primitive animals to have developed two simple forward-facing eyespots. Planarian eyes register the presence of light and, because of their cup-like structure, can also encode the direction it came from. Another useful thing about planaria is that if they are deacapitated, they can regenerate their heads and consequently their eyes and central nervous systems. Her work in this area is concerned with quantifying the limits of the planarianvisual system, establishing the links between planarian vision and behaviour, and examining behavioural markers of visual regeneration.