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Human embryonic stem cells get organized

An embryo’s body plan is established by a structure called the organizer. Evidence of this structure in humans has been lacking, but a stem-cell-based protocol has now enabled researchers to demonstrate its existence.
  1. Olivier Pourquié

    1. Olivier Pourquié is in the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, and in the Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.

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In 1924, Hilde Mangold and Hans Spemann performed what became one of the most famous experiments in developmental biology. They grafted various parts of a pigmented salamander embryo onto an unpigmented host embryo, and showed that one grafted region induced unpigmented cells from the host to form an extra embryo, resulting in a ‘double embryo’ reminiscent of conjoined twins1 (Fig. 1a). The duo named the grafted region the organizer, because of its extraordinary ability to organize the host cells around it. But in the almost 100 years since this experiment, technical and ethical difficulties have prevented researchers from demonstrating the presence of an organizer in human embryos. In a paper in Nature, Martyn et al.2 use stem cells to circumvent these challenges and provide the first experimental description of the human organizer.

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Nature 558, 35-36 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05115-y

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