Looking Inside

The early stages of human development are something of an enigma. Safely contained within its mother’s womb, a burgeoning embryo is shielded from the world. But this protective cocoon presents something of a barrier to doctors and scientists keen to understand the fundamental processes that give rise to life, and decipher the causes of malfunctions that lead to a whole raft of developmental diseases. A new resource may pull back the curtain, though. Using a technique that can render the physical barriers transparent and allow 3D-visualisation of the inner workings of an embryo, without any invasive probes, an atlas of the developing body is being formed. It's providing insights such as the image above, which shows the key developing nerves in the brain of a seven week-old embryo. With the resource open for anyone to use, it’s giving everyone a glimpse into one of life’s greatest mysteries.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Morgane Belle and colleagues
• Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, INSERM, CNRS, Institut de la Vision, Paris, France
• Image copyright Elsevier 2017
• Published in Cell, March 2017