Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO JAY CASILLAS, STOWERS INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH
In the fall of 1998, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado was celebrating the discovery that he could use the newly developed technique of RNA interference (RNAi) to manipulate gene activity in planarians—a crucial step in turning the flatworm into a model organism for studying regeneration. Then the animals started to die.
“Something happened to our water source,” says Sánchez Alvarado, who was a staff associate at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at the time. “All of a sudden, we didn’t have any more animals. It was an experimental kiss of death.” But rather than throw in the towel, Sánchez Alvarado decided to build a new colony. So he started watching the weather—in Spain. “We knew it had to rain for us to be able to collect planarians ...
