A cellular family treeAARON MCKENNAMutating a specific synthetic DNA element in engineered zebrafish embryos has enabled researchers to irreversibly tag cells and their progeny during development, according to a report published in Science today (May 26). The technique allows the family trees of adult cells to be traced back to their embryonic beginnings.
The authors “have developed a very powerful technique that allows us to lineage trace cell and organ development . . . in the whole organism,” said stem cell biologist Rong Lu of the University of Southern California who was not involved in the work. “I think it will also be very interesting for studying diseases such as cancer and for understanding tissue regeneration,” she said.
The overriding—if not defining—goal of developmental biology is to understand how a single fertilized cell gives rise to a complex multicellular organism. Basically, developmental biologists want to know “what does a given cell become, and when does it become what it becomes,” said geneticist Aravinda Chakravarti of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who also did not participate in the ...
