Mesoderm invagination, the first morphogenetic movement
of gastrulation in the early Drososphila embryo, is controlled by the expression of the twist and snail genes.
Lara Carvalho (Heisenberg, MPG)-- «The role of yolk syncytial layer in blastoderm movements
during gastrulation in zebrafish» (2007)
Second, we analyzed Nodal target gene expression by RNA - Seq at four time points prior to or during early
gastrulation in wild - type and toddler mutants.
His group studies the cellular and genetic control of
gastrulation movements in zebrafish, one of the model organisms studied at the institute besides Drosophila, the C. elegans worm, frogs, mice, and newts.
Alyssa's Ph.D. work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill included elucidation of signaling pathway components necessary
for gastrulation in Drosophila.
To determine what aspects of mesodermal cell migration are affected in toddler mutants, we tracked migrating drl: eGFP - positive ventrolateral mesodermal cells (Mosimann et al., 2015) in wild - type and toddler mutant embryos during
gastrulation using light sheet microscopy (Figure 5C and Video 1).
In animal embryos this stage is followed by a process known
as gastrulation: a choreographed movement of the cells that, using the initial axis as a reference, positions the head and the tail, the front and the back.
This methodology provides insight into the issue of mechano - sensitive gene expression by revealing the correlation of in vivo tissue deformation patterns with Twist protein expression in stomodeal cells
at gastrulation.
(D) RNA - sequencing before and during
early gastrulation reveals no differential transcription of Nodal targets (black dots) between wild - type and toddler mutant embryos.
Vinzenz Link (Heisenberg, MPG)-- «Identification of proteins
controlling gastrulation movements by a proteomic approach in zebrafish» (2006)
Thrilled to be working with @STEMCELLTech and @MTewary in the development of robust PSC
derived gastrulation, blood and neural induction assays.
The H3K4 methyltransferase Setd1a is first required at the epiblast stage, whereas Setd1b becomes essential
after gastrulation.
The phase
of gastrulation, in which the germ layers form through invagination of the outermost cell layer, is the first great cell migration phase in the development of vertebrates.
(C — E) Mesodermal cell migration was tracked during
gastrulation using a drl: eGFP transgene and lightsheet microscopy.
By using a new mounting technique, we became able to observe Tribolium embryogenesis for up to 50 hours along multiple directions, documenting all major embryogenic events such
as gastrulation, germ band elongation, germ band retraction and dorsal closure continuously in the same specimen.
This is true at many stages of embryonic development (e.g. the formation of the three germ layers
during gastrulation, the formation of neural crest, etc.), but also during pathologies like the metastatic progression of carcinomas.
Groups of red and green labelled embryonic cells in a zebrafish during their first migration in
gastrulation.
The zebrafish has two genes resembling the ZEB1 gene that are involved in
gastrulation: zeb1a and zeb1b.
Their observations show that embryos that possess too much or too little of the protein ZEB1 do not develop normally because they can not execute
the gastrulation movements correctly.
(G — L) In situ hybridization of wild - type embryos injected with wild - type (G — I) or mutant ACVR1 (J — L) to detect ventral markers eve1 (G, n = 12/12; J, n = 10/13; onset of
gastrulation) and gata2 (H, n = 14/14; K, n = 15/19; mid-gastrulation) or dorsal marker foxb1.2 (I, n = 12/12; L, n = 6/13, 7/13 showed no expression; mid-gastrulation).
In particular, they analyzed the transcripts of 1,205 single cells to answer how mesoderm lineages diversify during the developmental process of
gastrulation (Nature, 535:289 - 93, 2016).
This is the first time that researchers have been able to elicit axis formation, spatial organisation and
gastrulation - like movements from aggregates of embryonic stem cells.
Gastrulation was described by biologist Professor Lewis Wolpert as being «truly the most important event in your life» because it creates the blueprint of an organism
In research published today in the journal Development, the researchers report a way to coax cells to reorganize in the manner that they do in an embryo, creating an axis and undergoing movements and organisations that mimic the process of
gastrulation.
Using this experimental system, the researchers were able to generate the early stages of a spinal cord, which they showed forms as part of the process of
gastrulation.
Professor Alfonso Martinez - Arias from the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, who led the research, says: «
Gastrulation was described by biologist Professor Lewis Wolpert as being «truly the most important event in your life» because it creates the blueprint of an organism.
Axis formation and
gastrulation are the two central processes that initiate the development of an organism and are inextricably associated with the embryo.
Our long - term observations allowed us to find correlations between morphogenic processes that happen more than 24 hours apart, for example the serosa scar, a transiently formed structure that links serosa window closure during
gastrulation and serosa opening during dorsal closure (Strobl & Stelzer, 2014).
His group has investigated
the gastrulation phase of the embryonic development, where the embryo cells diversify into different cell types and a basic body plan is established.
Together, this new data suggests that the missing endodermal cells observed at the end of
gastrulation (Figure 1B) are not due to initial specification or proliferation defects but instead may result from an increase in cell death in toddler mutants during gastrulation.
Thus, lefty mutants have increased Nodal signaling resulting in increased endodermal and mesodermal gene expression and cell number during
gastrulation (Meno et al., 1999; Rogers et al., unpublished).
Moreover,
the gastrulation phenotype of the homozygous cxcr4a mutant recapitulates the morphant phenotype (Figure 7C)(Mizoguchi et al., 2008; Nair and Schilling, 2008).
During
gastrulation, endoderm is physically tethered to mesoderm (Mizoguchi et al., 2008; Nair and Schilling, 2008).
Third, wild - type and toddler mutant embryos were injected at the one cell stage with increasing levels of Nodal mRNA and Nodal target gene expression was measured just prior to
gastrulation using qRT - PCR.