One of the fundamental and timeless questions of life concerns the mechanics of its inception. Take human development, for example: how do individual cells come together to form complex structures like skin, muscles, bones, or even a brain, a finger, or a spine?
Although the answers to such questions remain unknown, one line of scientific inquiry lies in understanding gastrulation — the stage at which embryo cells develop from a single layer to a multidimensional structure with a main body axis. In humans, gastrulation happens around 14 days after conception.
It’s not possible to study human embryos at this stage, so researchers at the University of California San Diego, the University of Dundee (UK), and Harvard University were able to study gastrulation in chick embryos, which have many similarities to human embryos at this stage.
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