Planarians are able to survive long periods of starvation unscathed by maintaining their stem cell pool and regenerative capacity. The molecular processes behind this are not yet known. Jena researchers from the Leibniz Institute on Aging—Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) were able to show that the suppression of the chaperonin subunits TRiC/CCT abolishes the regenerative capacity of planarians only during starvation. During food restriction, TRiC/CCT is necessary to control cell division and tissue formation and modulates the unfolded protein response (UPR), which promotes regeneration in planarians.