Understanding the Mechanisms of Embryonic Cell Behavior

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During embryonic development, thousands of cells divide and move collectively, sculpting the main body axes from an initially symmetric ensemble of cells. Understanding the mechanisms that coordinate this collective behavior remains a significant challenge in biology and the physics of living systems, but a better understanding could have implications in health and science, from medicine to biomaterials.

Now researchers have discovered that avian embryos — established models for studying human development — control their size and shape using modular, independent physical mechanisms.

Clarifying the modular mechanisms that regulate the emergent embryo geometry (size and shape) helps further our understanding of the evolutionary plasticity of natural embryos and suggests strategies for engineering synthetic ones.