Human embryonic stem cells (red) in a live, grafted chick embryoI. MARTIN ET AL., NATURE, 2018
The organizer, a group of cells in the embryo that directs the developmental fates and morphogenesis of other embryonic cells, has been identified in human tissue for the first time, according to a study published today (May 23) in Nature. The discovery demonstrates that the organizer is evolutionarily conserved from amphibians to humans.
This is as close as we’ll get to a definitive demonstration that these principles and mechanisms apply in the human embryo.—Daniel Kessler,
University of Pennsylvania
“For many of us this was always the Holy Grail” of developmental biology, says Guillermo Oliver, the director of the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Vascular and Developmental Biology, who was not involved in the study. “The fact that now you can take stem cells ...
