🧫Looking for a PhD to start Autumn 2025? We're recruiting! 🧪. The project will focus on using #embryomodels to explore #development & could cover a range of specific questions. Please RT! 🙏. Apply via the portal, and get more details here:

This work was led by postdoc, Komal, and research scientist, Louise, @theCrick with the help of lots of others. The link to our biorxiv manuscript can be found here: Feedback welcome, thanks for reading! 🙏 (7/7).

Thus, we found feedback in both directions, causing patterning important for organogenesis. The simple ‘modularity’ of hTLS that let us investigate in the presence/absence of certain tissues, could help us understand co-development, esp in a human context (6/7)

BUT without a notochord, hTLS are dorsal. Exposure to SAG makes them ‘ventralise’ dose-dependently. Doing this, we noticed something interesting… the NT cells next to the somites were different from the other side. Communication between tissues was setting up an axis. (4/7)

hTLS show self-organised wavefront signalling and oscillations to form somites; Neuromesodermal progenitors support elongation and become depleted over time; HOX genes show we’re at thoracic/lumbar regions… (3/7)

hTLS are an embryo model that mirrors development using human cells. We used 7 cell lines + optimised to make it robust. The neural tube forms through a 2ndry neurulation-like process. Bioinformatically, hTLS cells are most like Carnegie Stage13-14 embryos (~day 28!) (2/7)

Have you ever wondered how your back formed? The human embryo makes a neural tube (future spinal cord) and somites (trunk muscle/bone) from ~d20. They’re formed at the same time and place, so we used human Trunk-like Structures (hTLS) to investigate their ‘co-development’… (1/7)

Incredibly proud of Jesús from the lab for this stellar achievement! ☺️ Doing good science is not just done with a pipette, it also involves engaging with the various contextual issues and the wider community as well.

Very interesting, and important, set of recommendations from Nuffield. Suggests 'bespoke' regulation of embryo models (not just the same as for embryos), supports the Code of Practice for case-by-case evaluation, but also suggests a 'red line' limit. .

RT @SmritiMallapaty: Models of human embryos are getting more realistic but still nowhere near the real thing. Ethicists and regulators are….

RT @Nuffbioethics: 1/2 A new UK Code of Practice has been developed to support #researchers working with stem cell-based #embryo models.📢….

RT @HFEA: Today, the HFEA has issued a statement in response to Cambridge Reproduction’s newly unveiled SCBEM Code of Practice. You can fi….

RT @Nature: The United Kingdom has developed its first rules to guide research using human embryo models

New UK voluntary Code of Practice published today, aiming to provide more clarity about how to evaluate stem cell-based embryo models. See piece in the Guardian for a brief explainer (and I learnt a new word too, thanks Sandy @PET_BioNews 😂) @Cam_Repro.

RT @kayaburgess: 💓🧠🦵 Is it beating heart muscles? The first flicker of brain activity? Budding limbs?. Scientists at @TheCrick are asking t….

RT @matthewcobb: The event where the DNA double helix was first shown to the public in 1953, with Rosalind Franklin as the presenter, and W….

@PoloAug @PeterBeej @TheCrick Or, take a couple minutes to tell us YOUR opinion of embryo models. What excites/concerns you? Where should we draw the lines? What do you want to see in the future? How would you want regulations to be achieved?

@PoloAug @PeterBeej Become a stem cell and navigate the Waddington landscape to become a differentiated stem cell type! Modelled here (successfully, I might add) by Prof Robin Lovell Badge from @TheCrick

Or, chat to the awesome team of volunteers who are manning the stand! They are a treasure trove of information about all things stem cells and embryo models, so ask them anything you want to know! (Here’s @PoloAug with the 3D-printed models designed by Jesus! 🤩)