Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado

The planarian has been known for many years as uniquely able to regenerate any part of its body. It had been studied only by surgical and pharmacological methods until he applied the techniques of modern molecular biology and genetics to it. With colleagues he made the planarian a model organism for the study of regeneration. In just a few years he identified crucial genes that are involved in the regeneration of body parts. The planarian model now has all of the molecular tools previously only available for traditional genetic organisms.