Recently, Jiang Xiangxiang, member of the Key Laboratory of Gamete and Reproductive Tract Abnormalities Research of the National Health Commission of our university, published an article, Primate gastrulation and early organgenesis at single cell resolution online in Nature, cooperating with Wang Hongmei and Guo Fan teams from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wu Jun team from the Southwestern Medical Center of University of Texas in the United States. Jiang Xiangxiang, university-employed professor of Anhui Medical University, is the co-corresponding author, and the Key Laboratory of Gamete and Reproductive Tract Abnormalities Research of the National Health Commission and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University are the co-corresponding author affiliations.
The researchers collected cynomolgus monkey embryos in the CS8-CS11 period (E20-E29), captured 56636 single cell transcriptome derived from embryos by using 10X single cell transcriptome sequencing technology, and conducted bioinformatics analysis. The article clearly defined 38 major cell groups of cynomolgus monkey in this period, and drew the first high-throughput single cell transcriptome map of primate CS8-CS11 embryos in the world. Besides, the article revealed the characteristics of important cell groups and their lineage occurrence and regulatory mechanisms in the process of intestinal motility and three embryonic layer differentiations (development of neural tubes, somites, and intestinal tubes).
The early embryonic development process in mammals is highly conserved in evolution, but there are still specific molecular characteristics in the early embryonic development process of different species of mammals. The researchers comprehensively compared the transcriptome differences between mouse and cynomolgus monkey embryos at the same developmental stage, revealing the differences and similarities in the differentiation regulation of corresponding cell types in the embryos of the two species.
The human embryonic model (embryoid) based on stem cells is crucial for studying the early development of human embryos. In recent years, gastrulas, neuroid embryo, organoid of heart and somite models have been successfully constructed. However, due to the lack of data on the development of corresponding embryos in primates, the degree to which these embryo models simulate real embryos in vivo cannot be directly confirmed. This study fills this gap and provides in vivo comparative data for the construction of corresponding embryonic models in the future.