First real-time video of embryo growth may solve ‘mystery’ of human development

What do the earliest stages of pregnancy look like?

Embryonic development has been studied extensively, but most of our knowledge of the earliest stages of a growing baby comes from still images. However, understanding the dynamic processes that occur during these early stages can help us learn more about how congenital birth defects develop and how to stop them.

Now, for the first time, scientists have captured real-time images and video of these early developmental stages, offering exciting insights into a long-standing “mystery” of human development.

“It is very difficult to film these stages of embryonic development as they occur after human embryos are implanted in the mother’s womb,” said Melanie White, who leads the Dynamics of Morphogenesis Laboratory at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Biosciences. Newsweek.

“We know quite a lot about individual stages and key milestones during development, but most of our knowledge comes from examining static images of fixed samples at different time points.

“One of the key things we’re missing is dynamic information about how the embryo coordinates the movement, position and fate of its cells to move from one stage to the next. This information can only be obtained using live imaging approaches where we can watch how how embryonic tissue changes over time, how cells interact and move in real time to organize themselves into complex tissues in the forming embryo, is still largely a mystery.

Much of what we know about embryonic development comes from mouse studies (for obvious ethical reasons). But mouse embryos also implant in the uterus before these early embryonic stages, so they have the same accessibility issues as human embryos when it comes to live imaging.

“Additionally, mouse embryos at these early stages do not develop with the same morphology as humans,” White said.

However, unlike mammals, bird embryos develop outside the female’s body, in a suitable outer egg shell. “Avian (avian) embryos are an excellent model of human development because they have very similar morphology and development to humans at the post-implantation stage,” White said. “The development of many major organs, including the heart and the neural tube (which goes on to form the brain and spinal cord), is very similar.

“They also have the advantage of developing outside of the mother in the egg, so they are much more accessible to study.”

In a new article published in Journal of Cell BiologyWhite and colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Biology used quail embryos with fluorescently labeled cellular components, which allowed them to visualize the dynamic growth of the early embryo in real time. Specifically, they observed changes in the growth of long cell filaments called the cytoskeleton, which play an important role in cell structure, movement and transport.

As you can see in the video above, the fluorescent filaments clearly show how cells move relative to each other during these early developmental processes.

“We hope this will be a useful tool for other researchers in the field trying to understand cell biology and embryonic development more broadly,” White said. “In our lab, we are now building on the initial experiments we did to try to understand how the heart and neural tube form in real time. We are also studying how mutations identified in patients or maternal factors (diabetes, nutritional deficiencies) disrupt this development and lead to birth defects.

“In the long term, we aim to identify new pathways that can be used to screen for birth defects and ultimately develop treatments to prevent these devastating disorders.”

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