细胞自噬是真核细胞在长期进化过程中形成的一种生存机制，与细胞内许多重要活动有关系。淡水涡虫是一个非常独特的动物，具有惊人的再生能力和极强的耐饥饿能力。无论是饥饿过程中退行生长（degrowth）还是再生中体型重塑，涡虫需要利用自噬机制去清除非必需细胞。因此，涡虫是研究细胞自噬的理想模式动物。目前涡虫再生研究的兴趣主要集中于干细胞和体轴重建上，很少涉及细胞自噬在体型重塑中的作用。我们初步研究了持久饥饿对日本三角涡虫细胞形态结构、生化代谢和基因表达的影响，具有良好的工作基础。本项目拟采用激光共聚焦显微镜和透射电镜系统观察涡虫细胞自噬的形态学变化、采用转录组测序技术获取细胞自噬相关基因、采用整体原位杂交技术研究细胞自噬相关基因的表达模式、采用RNAi技术分析细胞自噬相关基因在涡虫再生和饥饿中的作用，从分子、细胞和整体水平研究细胞自噬在涡虫体型重塑中的作用。

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved survival mechanism in eukaryotic cells, involved in many important intracellular processes. Freshwater planarians are unique animals, showing extraordinary regenerative capabilities and strong tolerance to starvation. Whether planarians undergo de-growth during starvation or body remodeling during regeneration, autophagy is required to remove the nonessential cells. Therefore, planarians have been an ideal model for the study of autophagy. Currently, many reports of planarian regeneration have often been focused on the importance of the stem cells and the re-establishment of body-axis, leaving aside issues related to autophagy in body remodeling. We preliminary investigated the effects of prolonged starvation on the cytomorphology, metablic change and genes expression in planarians Dugesia japonica, which played a good foundation for the following works. In this research project, we will detailedly observe the morphocytological changes of autophagy in planarians by confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, identify the autophagy-related genes by transcriptome sequencing, determine the expression patterns of autophagy-related genes using the whole-mount in situ hybridization, and further analyze the function of autophagy-related genes during planarians regeneration and starvation by RNAi technique. According to the above studies, we explore the role of autophagy in planarian body remodeling at the molecular, cellular and whole-mount level.