In just 30 days, a fertilized egg grows into a tiny 4–5 millimetre embryo, giving rise to complex communities where different cell types communicate with each other and their surroundings to lay the foundations of future organs. In this research, we create a 3D transcriptional map of a human embryo to reveal these interactions, helping us understand development and improve stem-cell-based personalised medicine.
reNEW research
The Alemany lab investigate cell fate commitment in early development using stem-cell derived embryo models, sequencing approaches and computational algorithms. This spatial transcriptomics map of a human embryo provides us with a cellular and anatomical reference to benchmark our models with single cell resolution.
Image description
In this transcriptional map of a 4 week human embryo, cells are coloured by similarity and reveal the early organs.
Credits
Jamilla Beek, research technician, Alemany Lab, reNEW Leiden.
