{"id":7294,"date":"2016-07-07T13:43:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T11:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.embl.de\/?p=7294"},"modified":"2024-07-23T16:01:16","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T14:01:16","slug":"1607-mapping-early-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping early development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In the first genome-scale experiment of its kind, researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins to transform from a ball of unfocussed cells into a small, structured entity. Published in <em>Nature<\/em>, the single-cell genomics study was led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Wellcome Trust\u2013MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gastrulation is the point when an animal\u2019s whole body plan is set, just before individual organs start to develop. Understanding this point in very early development is vital to understanding how animals develop and how things go wrong. One of the biggest challenges in studying gastrulation is the very small number of cells that make up an embryo at this stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf we want to better understand the natural world around us, one of the fundamental questions is, how do animals develop?\u201d says Bertie Gottgens, Research Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust \u2013 Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. \u201cHow do you turn from an egg into an animal, with all sorts of tissues? Many of the things that go wrong, like birth defects, are caused by problems in early development. We need to have an atlas of normal development for comparison when things go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"vf-blockquote\"><p>[Single-cell sequencing]&nbsp;gives us a completely different perspective on development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, thanks to advances in single-cell sequencing, the team was able to analyse over 1000 individual cells of gastrulating mouse embryos. The result is an atlas of gene expression during very early, healthy mammalian development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSingle-cell technologies are a major change over what we\u2019ve used before \u2013 we can now make direct observations to see what\u2019s going on during the earliest stages of development,\u201d says John Marioni, Research Group Leader at EMBL-EBI, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. \u201cWe can look at individual cells and see the whole set of genes that are active at stages of development, which until now have been very difficult to access. Once we have that, we can take cells from embryos in which some genetic factors are not working properly at a specific developmental stage, and map them to the healthy atlas to better understand what might be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A direct view on development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>To illustrate the usefulness of the atlas, the team studied what happened when a genetic factor essential for the formation of blood cells was removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t what we expected at all. We found that cells which in healthy embryos would commit to becoming blood cells would actually become confused in the embryos lacking the key gene, effectively getting stuck,\u201d says John. \u201cWhat is so exciting about this is that it demonstrates how we can now look at the very small number of cells that are actually making the decision at the precise time point when the decision is being made. It gives us a completely different perspective on development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat is really exciting for me is that we can look at things that we know are important but were never able to see before \u2013 perhaps like people felt when they got hold of a microscope for the first time, suddenly seeing worlds they\u2019d never thought of,\u201d says Bertie. \u201cThis is just the beginning of how single cell genomics will transform our understanding of early development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Funding<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This work was funded as part of Wellcome Trust Strategic Award \u2018Tracing early mammalian lineage decisions by single-cell genomics\u2019 awarded to W. Reik, S. Teichmann, J. Nichols, B. Simons, T. Voet, S. Srinivas, L. Vallier, B. G\u00f6ttgens and J. Marioni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Data<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>RNAseq data are available in <a href=\"arrayexpress\">ArrayExpress<\/a> under accession numbers E-MTAB-4079 and E-MTAB-4026. Processed RNAseq data are also available at <a href=\"http:\/\/gastrulation.stemcells.cam.ac.uk\/scialdone2016\">http:\/\/gastrulation.stemcells.cam.ac.uk\/scialdone2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ebi.ac.uk\/about\/news\/press-releases\/anatomy-of-a-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"canonical nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.ebi.ac.uk\/about\/news\/press-releases\/anatomy-of-a-decision\">EMBL-EBI News.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cLike getting hold of a microscope for the first time\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17591],"tags":[28,55,36,42,408,400],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-7294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-science-technology","tag-bioinformatics","tag-development","tag-embl-ebi","tag-genomics","tag-marioni","tag-rnaseq"],"acf":{"article_intro":"<p>A new atlas of gene expression during the earliest stages of life boosts studies of development.<\/p>\n","related_links":false,"article_sources":[{"source_description":"<p>Scialdone A, et al. (2016). Resolving early mesoderm diversification through single-cell expression profiling. <em>Nature<\/em> (in press); published online 6 July. DOI: 10.1038\/nature18633<\/p>\n","source_link_url":"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/nature18633"}],"vf_locked":false,"featured":false,"color":"#007B53","show_featured_image":false,"field_target_display":"embl","field_article_language":{"value":"english","label":"English"},"source_article":false,"in_this_article":false,"press_contact":"None","article_translations":false,"languages":""},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Anatomy of a decision: mapping early development<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins to develop from a ball of unfocussed cells into a small, structured entity.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anatomy of a decision: mapping early development\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins to develop from a ball of unfocussed cells into a small, structured entity.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"EMBL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/embl.org\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"www.facebook.com\/EMBLEBI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-07T11:43:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-07-23T14:01:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/EMBL_logo_colour.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1638\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"783\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mary Todd Bergman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@EMBLEBI\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@embl\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mary Todd Bergman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"NewsArticle\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mary Todd Bergman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/052a43af2beb3860bffa67c0f0474875\"},\"headline\":\"Mapping early development\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-07T11:43:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-07-23T14:01:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/1607-mapping-early-development\/\"},\"wordCount\":627,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"bioinformatics\",\"development\",\"embl-ebi\",\"genomics\",\"marioni\",\"rnaseq\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Science\",\"Science &amp; 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