The challenge faced by developmental biologists is not an easy one: the embryo is a system under continuous change, where single cells navigate space, time, states and fates accordingly to mechanisms that are still poorly understood. Yet, these mechanisms must clearly work in that they consistently allow for the robust and reliable generation of functional adult living systems. How do we reconcile the quickly-changing reality of the developing embryo with the requirements of precise in vitro experimentation? The short animation above introduces this topic and highlights the mutual relationship between in vivo and in vitro developmental models. By reinterpreting Italian […]
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New publication on “symmetry breaking in ensembles of ES cellsâ€
New publication on “symmetry breaking in ensembles of ES cells†Progress on our attempts to understand the connection between genes, signals, cells and embryos have just been published in Development. In a first paper we describe a new experimental system in which we coax mouse Embryonic Stem cells to make structures with an anterior posterior axis and a germ layer organization that resembles that of an embryo (http://dev.biologists.org/content/141/22/4231.full). In a second paper we use this experimental system to gain some insights into the emergence of the spinal cord (http://dev.biologists.org/content/141/22/4243.full). You can see a movie and some thoughts on the experiments […]
Continue readingβ-catenin mutant videos
These are three videos from our recent publication in Development (“A membrane-associated β-catenin/Oct4 complex correlates with ground-state pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells.†Development. 2013 Mar;140(6):1171-83. doi: 10.1242/dev.085654) which highlight the behaviour of wildtype and ß-catenin mutant cells in 2i conditions. This study tries to resolve the running controversy about the requirement for ß-catenin signalling. Our results are in keeping with those of Wray et al. (Inhibition of glycogen synthase kinase-3 alleviates Tcf3 repression of the pluripotency network and increases embryonic stem cell resistance to differentiation. Nat Cell Biol. 2011 Jun 19;13(7):838-45) and extend them to reveal an important […]
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