ABOVE: Each cell in the C. elegans embryo arranged by transcriptome similarity and color coded for when in development they are present.
© COLE TRAPNELL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
The paper
J.S. Packer et al., “A lineage-resolved molecular atlas of C. elegans embryogenesis at single-cell resolution,” Science, 365:eaax1971, 2019.
Since the late Sydney Brenner first slid a C. elegans under the microscope more than a half century ago, scientists have used the species in one of the most exhaustive investigations of any animal—one that continues to this day. They have tracked each of the nematode’s cells as it blinks in and out of existence during development, sequenced the animal’s genome, and cataloged the transcriptome of the whole organism or the occasional tissue or cell. Now, Junhyong Kim, a developmental biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues have traced the gene expression in nearly every cell, one by one, in developing ...
