Effect of Apelin receptor signaling on Nodal activity during mesendoderm development

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The fundamental process in animal development is the miraculous transition of a single cell (the fertilized egg) into the large numbers of diverse cell types that make up our bodies. One of the first steps in this process is the generation of the stem cells that will later make all the cell types of the animal. In the embryo, this process occurs during gastrulation, when there are coordinated cell movements and cell-to-cell communication that generate our body axis and diversify the stem cell populations needed to make the animal. For my research, we study this process using the zebrafish embryo, a fantastic model to examine how early development occurs. Embryos are laid in water, develop rapidly, and are optically clear, allowing us to watch all the cell movements and molecular events that happen during gastrulation and stem cell generation. As we can genetically modify these organisms, we can easily determine how genes regulate this key milestone in animal development.