Insects and Regeneration: Nature's Wildest Tricks

Humans can’t regrow a head, but some animals can. Among them, the regenerative abilities of flatworms have fascinated scientists for a long time. Indeed, they can reform any missing body part and regrow an entire body from a fragment. What gives them this ability is the presence of stem cells - cells that can proliferate and give rise to any cell of the body – in adulthood. For researchers, those cells are particularly intriguing, and we are using new methods to study them. Through this study, we hope to deepen the understanding of living organisms and inspire regenerative medicine.

Have you ever wondered how a fly can easily walk up a window, or how an ant can hang upside down from a glass plate while holding 100 times its own body weight in its jaws, yet both are helplessly slipping and falling to their death when they encounter the traps of an insect-eating pitcher plant? Then this session is for you. We will explore how the ingenious arrangement of footpads, hairs and claws allows insects to negotiate all kinds of surfaces, in all kinds of orientations. You will see how insects solve the apparent contradiction between sticking well and moving fast. And you will get to know the rich repertoire of tricks that carnivorous pitcher plants use to overcome the superior stickiness of insect feet.

King prawns are the most farmed aquatic animal on the planet, but current farming practices around the world are severely damaging to our environment and human health. The UK Sustainable King Prawn Project aims to address these issues by exploring the potential for an alternative form of farming using recirculating aquaculture systems. By combining king prawn biology with economics, we show that producing tasty and healthy seafood in the UK can be sustainable, profitable and boost biodiversity.