2024-09-26 19:11:23
Scientists have been trying for decades to understand how vertebrate development occurs.
This discovery has the potential to catapult regenerative medicine
The technological development that human beings have achieved is overwhelming, especially if we keep in mind that our starting point has been the total absence of technology. However, despite this indisputable achievement in many areas of science our ignorance surpasses more than what we know. Scientists have some notable clues about the origin of life and the mechanisms that have triggered the evolution of living beings, but they are still far from understanding these phenomena to their full extent.
In this area, perseverance and effort are the best tools available to researchers in general, and in particular those who strive to understand how gastrulation works. This term is a little intimidating, but it’s actually a simpler idea than it seems. We can define it in a simple but not entirely precise way as the first stages of the process involved in the development of the embryo that allows the cells of the original organism to give rise to the formation of organs and tissues.
If we stop for a moment and think about it, it is surprising that the alliance of just a few cells is capable of triggering the mechanisms that give rise to the formation of an extremely complex living being. Many scientists have flirted for decades with the idea of better understanding gastrulation in humans, but they face a great challenge: it is not possible to study embryos in the early stage in which this phenomenon occurs.
Chicken embryos are our best allies to understand gastrulation
Three teams of researchers from Harvard University (USA), the University of California at San Diego (USA) and the University of Dundee (Scotland) have devised an ingenious strategy to address this challenge. Chicken embryos are very similar to human embryos in the early phase in which gastrulation occurs, making them ideal candidates to study this phenomenon in depth. However, these scientists have approached this process with a very original multidisciplinary approach.
And physicists at the University of California in San Diego have implemented a mathematical model capable of identifying patterns in complex biological systems using the information collected by biologists at the University of Dundee. This tool is capable of predict displacement of tens of thousands of cells throughout the chick embryo, a mechanism known in biology as gastrulation flows.
Until now, this phenomenon could not be predicted by observing an embryo, so these researchers have used the predictive capacity of the mathematical model they have designed to study how gastrulation occurs based on very different initial conditions. And they have obtained a very surprising result: their model has predicted a cell flow different from that observed in chicken embryos, but essentially identical to that experienced by two other species of vertebrate animals; the frogs and the fish.
By: XAKATA