First real-time video of embryo growth could solve ‘mystery’ of human development

What do the early stages of pregnancy look like?

Embryonic development has been studied extensively, but most of our knowledge about the earliest stages of a growing baby comes from stationary snapshots. However, understanding the dynamic processes that occur during these early stages can help us learn more about how congenital birth defects develop and how we can stop them.

For the first time, scientists have now captured images and videos of these early developmental stages in real time, providing interesting insights into the long-standing ‘mystery’ of human development.

“It is very difficult to film these stages of embryonic development because they occur after human embryos have implanted in the mother’s womb,” said Melanie White, head of the Dynamics of Morphogenesis Lab at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Biosciences. Newsweek.

“We know a lot about the different stages and important milestones in development, but most of our knowledge comes from studying static images of fixed specimens at different times.

“One of the key things we are missing is the dynamic information about how the embryo coordinates the movement, positioning and fate of its cells to progress from one stage to another. This information can only be obtained using live imaging approaches that allow us to follow how embryonic tissue changes over time. How cells interact with each other and move in real time to organize into complex tissues in the forming embryo is still largely a mystery.”

Much of what we know about embryonic development comes from studies in mice (for obvious ethical reasons). However, mouse embryos also implant in the uterus before these early embryonic stages, which makes them subject to the same accessibility issues as human embryos when it comes to live imaging.

“Moreover, mouse embryos do not develop with the same morphology as human embryos at these early stages,” White said.

Unlike mammals, however, bird embryos develop outside the female’s body, in the convenient housing of an external egg. “Bird embryos are an excellent model for human development because they have very similar morphology and development to humans in the post-implantation stage,” White said. “The development of many important organs, including the heart and neural tube (which goes on to form the brain and spinal cord), is very similar.

“They also have the advantage of developing outside the mother in an egg, which makes them much easier to study.”

In a new article published in the Journal of Cell BiologyWhite and colleagues at the Institute of Molecular Biology used quail embryos with fluorescently labeled cellular components, allowing them to record the dynamic growth of the early embryo in real time. In particular, they observed changes in the growth of long cellular filaments called the cytoskeleton, which play a key role in cell structure, movement and transport.

As you can see in the video above, the fluorescent filaments clearly show how cells move relative to each other during these early developmental processes.

“We hope this will be a useful tool for other researchers in the field who are trying to understand cell biology and embryonic development more broadly,” White said. “In our lab, we’re now building on the initial experiments we did to try to understand how the heart and neural tube are forming in real time. We’re also investigating how mutations identified in patients or maternal factors (diabetes, nutritional deficiencies) disrupt this development and lead to birth defects.

“In the long term, we want to find new ways to detect birth defects and ultimately develop treatments to prevent these devastating conditions.”

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