Grant: Operating Grant

How does our body form from a tiny simple fertilized egg? Current methodology used to study early mammalian embryonic development limits our understanding of what is an extremely complex and dynamic process. I have developed unique tools and methods to observe living mouse embryos in real-time in test tubes. Now changes in embryonic structure, cell shape and cell movement can be observed directly. We will document the processes generating complexity in embryos and address its mechanisms. Through focused experimental disruption of important variables such as chemical cell-cell communication and physical cell-cell contacts, we can both document their relative importance in development, and observe the dynamic responses in living embryos to such insults. The knowledge we obtain from this work, how the embryo works, will serve as a basic foundation to devise strategies to generate various types of cells in our body in test tubes, such as neuron, cardiac cells and hepatocytes. This will allow us doing drug screening and toxicology in test tubes as well as generating repair parts for diseases or injuries such as pancreatic beta cells for diabetes or red blood cells for blood transfusion in the future.