Recording morphogen signals reveals origins of gastruloid symmetry breaking.

ABSTRACT: When cultured in three dimensional spheroids, mammalian stem cells can reproducibly self-organize a single anterior-posterior axis and sequentially differentiate into structures resembling the primitive streak and tailbud. Whereas the embryo's body axes are instructed by spatially patterned extra-embryonic cues, it is unknown how these stem cell gastruloids break symmetry to reproducibly define a single anterior-posterior (A-P) axis. Here, we use synthetic gene circuits to trace how early intracellular signals predict cells' future anterior-posterior position in the gastruloid. We show that Wnt signaling evolves from a homogeneous state to a polarized state, and identify a critical 6-hour time period when single-cell Wnt activity predicts future cellular position, prior to the appearance o

SUBMITTER: McNamara HM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10274695 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature