Peter Reddien

researcher, Whitehead Institute

Regeneration of tissues and organs is one of the great unsolved mysteries of biology. Whitehead Member Peter W. Reddien works to shed light on that mystery through research on the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, a flatworm with regenerative powers that have captured the imagination of biologists for more than a century. Reddien is working to create a body of knowledge and research tools that will establish the planarian as a model organism with which to study the molecular genetics of regeneration. He and co-workers recently developed methods for high-throughput RNA interference (RNAi), which employs customized RNAs to silence production of proteins from a given gene. Exploiting these methods, Reddien then led the first large-scale study of gene function in planaria, discovering multiple genes needed for regeneration. Reddien joined Whitehead Institute in 2005. He obtained his PhD in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed his undergraduate studies in molecular biology at the University of Texas at Austin.