By Wright Seneres – Princeton Engineering –
For decades, scientists have puzzled over how a symmetrical ball of cells becomes an embryo, with the beginnings of a head and tail. Now Princeton engineers have discovered that this transformation from perfect symmetry to different shapes and functions can be predicted much earlier than previously thought. They developed a tool to trace chemical messages that spur the changes in mammals, with implications for better understanding developmental disorders.
The researchers started with a basic question: What’s the earliest chemical signal we can find in this ball of cells that predicts whether a cell ends up on the “head” side or the “tail” side of the embryo?
