New view of how embryos develop: Imaging technique allows researchers to see how cells form early spinal cord structures

April 29, 2013

Movies of early development show that neural cells decide what fate to adopt while rapidly traveling from place to place, making it hard to see how the textbook model can be true. Megason and colleagues propose that instead of the location telling a cell what identity to adopt, the cell’s identity is fixed first and then determines the location. (Phys.org)