Editor's Summary

25 October 2007

Gastrulation the movie

Gastrulation is a key event in embryogenesis. The mechanisms controlling gastrulation movements in amniotes are not well known and are often extrapolated from studies in other species. Now Voiculescu et al. report the first time-lapse analysis of individual cell movements in living chick embryos during gastrulation. Multi-photon time-lapse microscopy reveals movements that differ from those described in fish and amphibians, with important implications for embryology and evolution of gastrulation in vertebrates. In particular the work reveals an early pregastrulation intercalation event that may hold the key to the classic question of how the amniote primitive streak evolved from the ancestral blastopore.

Letter: The amniote primitive streak is defined by epithelial cell intercalation before gastrulation

Octavian Voiculescu, Federica Bertocchini, Lewis Wolpert, Ray E. Keller & Claudio D. Stern

doi:10.1038/nature06211

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,152K) | Supplementary information