Organ formation in early human embryos captured in spatial cell atlas

How a single fertilized cell gives rise to the intricate architecture of the human body is one of biology’s most enduring questions. Writing in Nature , Pan et al. 1 present a high-resolution spatiotemporal atlas of whole human embryos, capturing the molecular details of early organ formation. With this resource, they provide a powerful framework for connecting genetic variation to human disease. Read the paper: Spatiotemporal transcriptome atlas of human embryos after gastrulation The most decisive events in human development occur early in pregnancy, during embryogenesis in the first trimester, when the initially simple embryo rapidly gains cellular and molecular complexity. During this brief window, the body plan is established and the process of organogenesis begins. This is the developmental stage at which the foundations of all major organ systems are laid out and when many congenital disorders originate. Yet much of our understanding of these processes still comes from model organisms such as mice and zebrafish ( Danio rerio ), reflecting the practical and ethical challenges of studying human embryos . Even though single-cell genomics efforts and global initiatives such as the Human Developmental Cell Atlas 2 have begun to catalogue cell types across individual embryonic organs, a comprehensive view of the entire human embryo during organogenesis — including the spatial coordination of developing tissues — has remained elusive 2 , 3 . …