#gastruloids

[qupritsuvwix]

The fusion of two sisters into a single woman suggests that human identity is not in our DNA

The biologist Alfonso Martínez Arias defends that genes do not define the uniqueness of a person, citing the example of Karen Keegan, who ha

[pknoepfl]

Headless little bananas? Check out new duo of stem cell pubs

Headless little bananas? Check out new duo of stem cell pubs

If you are sick of the general news lately, I recommend turning to the wonder of cool science like the thought-provoking data in the duo of new stem cell pubs discussed below.

Beccari et al Nature 2018 pub Fig 1a Synthetic embryos

A team led by Alfonso Martinez-Arias reports new findings in their Nature letter in the growing area of synthetic or artificial embryo-like structures. See my reviewof…

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[currentsinbiology]

Stem cells organize themselves into pseudo-embryos

The definitive architecture of the mammalian body is established shortly after implantation of the embryo in the uterus. The antero-posterior, dorso-ventral and medio-lateral axes of the body become organized under the control of gene networks that coordinate the transcription of DNA in various regions of the embryo. 

Researchers now report the ability of mouse stem cells to produce pseudo-embryos that display similar capacities. Established from about 300 embryonic stem cells only, these structures, called gastruloids, show developmental features comparable to that of the posterior part of embryos aged from 6 to 10 days. The study, published in the journal Nature, shows that the three main embryonic axes are formed according to a gene expression program similar to that of embryos. Gastruloids thus possess a remarkable potential for the study of the early stages of normal or pathological embryonic development in mammals. 

Seven-day old gastruloid. The cell nuclei are marked in blue. Neural progenitor cells (green) are distributed along the antero-posterior axis. Progenitor cells of the tail bud (pink) are confined to the posterior extremity of the gastruloid and indicate the direction of its elongation.Credit: © Mehmet Girgin, EPFL