Prime Movers

From its earliest stages, life is on the move. As these lively mouse embryonic cells swirl around they also divide, setting their descendants on different paths to become tissues and organs, even before they imbed in the womb. The fragile nature of embryonic cells, coupled with their erratic movement, makes following early development a challenge, even with advanced microscope tracking software. But here researchers give the cells a special fluorescent protein ‘primed’ to change from green to red (seen in purple here). Triggering this switch in one of the embryo’s first four cells provides a reference point to light sheet microscopy coupled with new computer software, reorienting the embryo and stabilising the video. These techniques should make it easier to study the lineage of embryonic cells, revealing the secrets of these first moments of life.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Videos from work by Maaike Welling and Manuel Alexander Mohr, and colleagues
• Department for Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE), ETH Zurich, Basel, Switzerland and Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
• Videos originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, January 2019