Signaling Boundary Conditions Drive Self-Organization of Human "Gastruloids".
Morphogenesis requires tissues to sense and respond to their geometry. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Etoc et al. (2016) show that a confined colony of human embryonic stem cells can spontaneously sense its boundary, generating a self-organized TGF-β signaling gradient that patterns it into a tissue resembling a gastrulating embryo.
Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, University of California San Francisco, Genentech Hall Rm. S472, 600 16th St., San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Biology and Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address: matthew.thomson@ucsf.edu.
Matthew
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Thomson
D006801:Humans; D009024:Morphogenesis; D015398:Signal Transduction; D016212:Transforming Growth Factor beta
D016212:Transforming Growth Factor beta