Following Fate

You may be the master of your own fate, but for your cells, destiny is predetermined. In the first stages of life, the embryo morphs from a blob of similar cells to increasingly distinct groups. One such group, known as neuromesodermal progenitors, ultimately forms the spinal cord and the paraxial mesoderm – crucial tissue along the midline of the embryo. Understanding this transformation is important, since small errors at this stage can be fatal to human development, so researchers observe the process in animals for comparison. Recent evidence had suggested significant differences between zebrafish and mice (two classic model animals), so the team tracked the precise movement of different cell groups in a zebrafish embryo (one such observation pictured). Mapping the fate of particular cells showed that although their trajectories are alike across species, the intricate timing of their behaviour varies – an important consideration when extrapolating findings from animal experiments to humans.

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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• Video from work by Andrea Attardi and Timothy Fulton, and colleagues
• Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
• Video originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in Development, November 2018