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Gastrulation

Gastrulation

Gastrulation establishes the three primary tissues of an embryo: the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. This developmental process relies on a series of intricate cellular movements, which in humans transforms a flat, “bilaminar disc” composed of two cell sheets into a three-tiered structure. In the resulting embryo, the endoderm serves as the bottom layer, and stacked directly above it is the intermediate mesoderm, and then the uppermost ectoderm. Respectively, these tissue strata...

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After a large-single-celled zygote is produced via fertilization, the process of cleavage occurs while zygotes travel through the uterine tube. Cleavage is a mitotic cell division that does not result in growth. With each round of successive cell division, daughter cells get increasingly smaller.

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Human gastrulation: The embryo and its models.

Sabitri Ghimire¹, Veronika Mantziou¹, Naomi Moris¹

¹Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EH, UK.

Developmental Biology

|January 23, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Studying human gastrulation is crucial for understanding early development, but ethical limits hinder research. This work reviews human gastrulation and its relation to human pluripotent stem cell models.

Keywords:

Embryology Human gastrulation Stem cell models

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Area of Science:

Developmental Biology
Stem Cell Biology
Human Embryology

Background:

Studying early human development, particularly gastrulation, is limited by technical and ethical constraints.
Current knowledge relies heavily on outdated anatomical studies and animal model extrapolations.
The 14-day rule restricts experimental research on human embryos.

Purpose of the Study:

To summarize the cellular, molecular, and temporal aspects of human gastrulation.
To discuss the relevance of these aspects to human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-based models.
To highlight the need for direct human embryo studies.

Main Methods:

Review of existing literature on human gastrulation.
Analysis of cellular and molecular events during human gastrulation.
Comparison with established hPSC-based developmental models.

Main Results:

Gastrulation establishes the human body plan within the first three weeks post-fertilization.
Significant differences exist between human and animal developmental models.
hPSC models offer a framework for studying human gastrulation.

Conclusions:

Direct study of human embryos is essential for a complete understanding of human development.
hPSC-based models provide valuable insights into human gastrulation processes.
Further research integrating cellular, molecular, and temporal data is needed.