Publications related to Reaction wavefront theory of notochord segment patterning

How are cells instructed to form somite boundaries by the zebrafish segmentation clock?

In vertebrate embryos, the elongating body axis is patterned via the sequential and rhyth-mic production of segments from a posterior unsegmented tissue called the presomitic mesoderm (PSM). This process is controlled by a population of cellular oscillator ...

EPFL2023

Development of a Robotic Microsurgeon for Embryonic Research

Ece Özelçi

Understanding how biological matter takes its shape is instrumental to biology, bioengineering, medicine, and bioinspired engineering. Gaining information on the principles of morphogenesis could enable clinicians to correct developmental abnormalities, ev ...

EPFL2023

Preparation of Single-Somite Explants from Zebrafish Embryos

Andrew Charles Oates, Sundar Ram Naganathan

The body axis of vertebrate embryos is periodically subdivided into 3D multicellular units called somites. While genetic oscillations and molecular prepatterns determine the initial length-scale of somites, mechanical processes have been implicated in sett ...

JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS2022

Hunting for the wavefront: investigation of somite boundary positioning in zebrafish

Arianne Bercowsky Rama

Somitogenesis is the rhythmic and sequential formation of somites, which are tissue blocks that give rise to segmented adult body structures including the vertebrae and associated muscle. Somite formation is controlled by the segmentation clock, a populati ...

EPFL2022

In vitro endoderm emergence and self-organisation in the absence of extraembryonic tissues and embryonic architecture

Stefano Davide Vianello

In humans, mice, and other mammals key internal organs such as the gut, the lungs, the pancreas, and the liver all derive from the same embryonic tissue: the endoderm. The development of all of these structures thus depends on a same set of early cells, an ...

EPFL2022

Deconstructing body axis morphogenesis in zebrafish embryos using robot-assisted tissue micromanipulation

Andrew Charles Oates, Mahmut Selman Sakar, Ece Özelçi, Erik Mailand, Matthias Rüegg

Classic microsurgical techniques, such as those used in the early 1900s by Mangold and Spemann, have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of embryonic development. However, these techniques are highly specialized, leading to issues of inter-ope ...

Nature Research2022

Targeted search for scaling genes reveals matrix metalloproteinase 3 as a scaler of the dorsal-ventral pattern in Xenopus laevis embryos

Daria Korotkova

How embryos scale patterning according to size is still not fully understood. Through in silico screening and analysis of reaction-diffusion systems that could be responsible for scaling, we predicted the existence of genes whose expression is sensitive to ...

Cell Press - Elsevier2022

Towards engineering an artificial neural tube

Jisoo Park

In this thesis, I present a self-organizing neural tube organoid that is strikingly similar in morphology, cell-type composition, and patterning to the mouse embryonic neural tube. When exposed to a sequence of epiblast culture conditions and neural differ ...

EPFL2021

Patterning and mechanics of somite boundaries in zebrafish embryos

Andrew Charles Oates, Sundar Ram Naganathan

The body axis of vertebrates is subdivided into repetitive compartments called somites, which give rise primarily to the segmented architecture of the musculoskeletal system in the adult body. Somites form in a sequential and rhythmic manner in embryos and ...

2020

In vitro modeling of early mouse development

Mehmet Ugur Girgin

Previous attempts to recapitulate embryogenesis in a developmentally relevant context started with aggregates composed of a few thousand ESCs, termed embryoid bodies (EB), that upon induction of differentiation reveal a surprising level of autonomous cell ...

EPFL2020