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Development

Splitting off

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 10, pages 738–739 (2009)Cite this article

To track early development in mouse embryos, Tzouanacou and colleagues used a single-cell labelling method that relies on the spontaneous reversion of an inactive lacZ gene (laacZ) carrying a sequence duplication to an active lacZ reporter through a rare recombination event. Clones derived from laacZ/lacZ-revertant progenitor cells were followed to see which tissues of the embryo they contributed to, and the size of the clones allowed the authors to estimate the time at which the progenitor cells were labelled.

The tissue distribution and size of over 1,000 clones detected in embryonic day (E)8.5 (early organogenesis stage) embryos revealed that the endoderm and surface ectoderm segregated from other lineages before the end of gastrulation but, intriguingly, a large proportion of the neuroectoderm clones also showed labelling in the mesoderm, which suggests that common neuromesodermal progenitors persist at least into late gastrulation.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Tzouanacou, E., Wegener, A., Wymeersch, F. J., Wilson, V. & Nicolas, J. F. Redefining the progression of lineage segregations during mammalian embryogenesis by clonal analysis. Dev. Cell 17, 365–376 (2009)

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  1. Meera Swami
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Swami, M. Splitting off. Nat Rev Genet 10, 738–739 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2688

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