bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/179986; this version posted August 24, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Cellular, ultrastructural and molecular analyses of epidermal cell development in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. Li-Chun Cheng1, Kimberly C. Tu1, Chris W. Seidel1, Sofia M.C. Robb1, Fengli Guo1, and Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado1,2* 1Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States 2Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States *Corresponding author. E-mail:
[email protected] Short title: transcriptional regulation of epidermal differentiation Key words: epidermis, stem cells, transcription, p53, zfp-1, pax-2/5/8, soxP-3 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/179986; this version posted August 24, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Abstract The epidermis is essential for animal survival, providing both a protective barrier and cellular sensor to external environments. The generally conserved embryonic origin of the epidermis, but the broad morphological and functional diversity of this organ across animals is puzzling. We define the transcriptional regulators underlying epidermal lineage differentiation in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, an invertebrate organism that, unlike fruitflies and nematodes, continuously replaces its epidermal cells.