Born with a genetic skeletal disease, the developmental biologist initially established an in vitro model to study the transient mouse embryonic tissues called somites that form the spinal column.1 She then joined Miki Ebisuyas lab at the EMBL campus in Barcelona as a postdoctoral fellow to continue this work with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).2 In a current Nature Communications study, Sanaki-Matsumiya described how to produce human somite organoids, or somitoids, that mimic the tissues development in vivo.Q. Why is there a need to study human somite formation in vitro?Somitogenesis is an intricate developmental procedure that sends out waves of gene expression changes at exact intervals, called the segmentation clock, through the presomitic mesoderm to bud off somites at the anterior end of the tissue. Because somite formation takes place throughout embryogenesis, we can not study how this tissue establishes in human beings, or how anomalies that cause skeletal illness in humans impact the procedure.
Born with a genetic skeletal disease, the developmental biologist initially established an in vitro design to study the short-term mouse embryonic tissues called somites that form the spinal column.1 She then signed up with Miki Ebisuyas laboratory at the EMBL campus in Barcelona as a postdoctoral fellow to continue this work with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).2 In a recent Nature Communications study, Sanaki-Matsumiya explained how to create human somite organoids, or somitoids, that simulate the tissues advancement in vivo.Q. Why is there a need to study human somite formation in vitro?Somitogenesis is a complicated developmental process that sends waves of gene expression modifications at accurate intervals, called the segmentation clock, through the presomitic mesoderm to bud off somites at the anterior end of the tissue. Since somite development takes location throughout embryogenesis, we can not study how this tissue establishes in people, or how anomalies that trigger skeletal illness in human beings affect the process. Researchers developed human organoids that mimic how and when somites bud off from the presomitic mesoderm. M. Sanaki-Matsumiya et al., “Periodic formation of epithelial somites from human pluripotent stem cells,” Nat Commun, 13( 1 ):2325, 2022.