This integrated research and educational project will yield fundamental knowledge on how wound healing is regulated by cell growth and its contribution to an animal’s defense against infection. The project will train and instruct graduate and undergraduate students in both the laboratory and classroom. Students will gain hands-on research experience, applying an interdisciplinary approach utilizing principles of cell biology, genetics, and microbiology. Undergraduate students (up to 120 per year) enrolled in an annual Introduction to Genetic course at Boston College will learn and apply quantitative analysis skills in how to conduct, score, and identify mutants from a genetic screen, revealing previously unknown regulators of cell growth and wound healing. The identification of genes that regulate wound healing will provide a pipeline to discover novel therapeutic targets to improve human health and prevent disease. The scientific and educational discoveries from this project will be published and shared with the general public as a model for how to enhance scientific communication, discovery, and rigor in the next-generation of STEM researchers in the biological sciences. Wound healing requires either cell division or cell growth. Cells can grow orders of magnitude by becoming polyploid, which is due to the more than doubling of a cell’s diploid genome. Polyploid cells often arise under conditions of stress to adapt to abiotic and biotic stressors, including tissue injury