Effect of Apelin receptor signaling on Nodal activity during mesendoderm development

动物发育的基本过程是从单个细胞（受精卵）奇迹般地转变为构成我们身体的大量不同细胞类型。这个过程的第一步是产生干细胞，这些干细胞随后将产生动物的所有细胞类型。在胚胎中，这一过程发生在原肠胚形成期间，此时有协调的细胞运动和细胞间通讯，产生我们的身体轴，并使动物所需的干细胞群多样化。在我的研究中，我们使用斑马鱼胚胎来研究这个过程，这是一个很好的模型来研究早期发育是如何发生的。胚胎被放置在水中，发育迅速，光学清晰，使我们能够观察原肠胚形成和干细胞生成过程中发生的所有细胞运动和分子事件。由于我们可以对这些生物体进行遗传修饰，我们可以很容易地确定基因如何调节动物发育中的这一关键里程碑。

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.