Establishment of a novel non-integrated human pluripotent stem cell-based gastruloid model
The limited access to embryonic tissues severely hampers our understanding of early human development, especially during the period from gastrulation to early organogenesis when major embryonic cell types are dynamically specified. To ensure biologically meaningful and clinically relevant knowledge, creating high-fidelity human embryo models in vitro is an immediate challenge. To address this challenge, we developed a stage-induced developmental model of gastruloids based on human pluripotent stem cells. We collected gastruloids from the entire induction process and performed in-depth transcriptome analyses of 27,737 single cells that passed quality control. This model can showcase the developmental process of human embryos from peri-implantation to gastrulation by generating characteristic structures such as the primitive streak, primary yolk sac, secondary yolk sac, and blood islets. The comprehensive single-cell transcriptome atlas generated from this model serves as an invaluable resource for understanding human embryogenesis and developmental disorders.