TY - JOUR TI - Construction of a mammalian embryo model from stem cells organized by a morphogen signalling centre AU - Xu, Peng-Fei AU - Borges, Ricardo Moraes AU - Fillatre, Jonathan AU - de Oliveira-Melo, Maraysa AU - Cheng, Tao AU - Thisse, Bernard AU - Thisse, Christine T2 - Nature Communications AB - Generating properly differentiated embryonic structures in vitro from pluripotent stem cells remains a challenge. Here we show that instruction of aggregates of mouse embryonic stem cells with an experimentally engineered morphogen signalling centre, that functions as an organizer, results in the development of embryo-like entities (embryoids). In situ hybridization, immunolabelling, cell tracking and transcriptomic analyses show that these embryoids form the three germ layers through a gastrulation process and that they exhibit a wide range of developmental structures, highly similar to neurula-stage mouse embryos. Embryoids are organized around an axial chordamesoderm, with a dorsal neural plate that displays histological properties similar to the murine embryo neuroepithelium and that folds into a neural tube patterned antero-posteriorly from the posterior midbrain to the tip of the tail. Lateral to the chordamesoderm, embryoids display somitic and intermediate mesoderm, with beating cardiac tissue anteriorly and formation of a vasculature network. Ventrally, embryoids differentiate a primitive gut tube, which is patterned both antero-posteriorly and dorso-ventrally. Altogether, embryoids provide an in vitro model of mammalian embryo that displays extensive development of germ layer derivatives and that promises to be a powerful tool for in vitro studies and disease modelling. DA - 2021/06/02/ PY - 2021 DO - 10.1038/s41467-021-23653-4 DP - www.nature.com VL - 12 IS - 1 SP - 3277 J2 - Nat Commun LA - en SN - 2041-1723 UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23653-4 Y2 - 2021/06/02/17:17:05 ER -