Mammalian embryogenesis is a highly orchestrated series of events leading to the development of a multicellular organism from a single cell. Although recent methods have enabled novel analyses of developmental dynamics, they have been unable to provide a comprehensive view of the processes involved.

To generate a more continuous picture of development, a team at Washington University and Jackson Labs have deeply sampled single nuclei from mouse embryos from gastrulation to birth to create a cell-type relationship tree. “We were most inspired in this by the richness of mouse development, as well as the extent to which the postgastrulation period remained unexplored by new technologies. Although a lot of systems have been looked at in detail, the literature is quite fragmented, and we saw an opportunity here to really synthesize throughout all developmental systems and across time, from conception to birth. Our dataset represents a significant improvement over previous atlases, offering increased numbers of profiled nuclei, greater depth of profiling, finer temporal resolution and broader developmental coverage,” says co-corresponding author Jay Shendure.

哺乳动物胚胎发生是一系列高度精心策划的事件，导致从单细胞发育成多细胞生物。尽管最近的方法已经能够对发育动态进行新颖的分析，但它们无法提供所涉及过程的全面视图。

为了生成更连续的发育图，华盛顿大学和杰克逊实验室的一个团队对小鼠胚胎从原肠胚形成到出生的单个细胞核进行了深度采样，以创建细胞类型关系树。 “我们最受启发的是小鼠发育的丰富性，以及新技术尚未探索的原肠胚后时期的程度。尽管对许多系统进行了详细研究，但文献相当分散，我们在这里看到了一个真正综合所有发育系统和跨时间（从受孕到出生）的机会。我们的数据集比以前的图集有了显着的改进，提供了更多的分析核、更大的分析深度、更精细的时间分辨率和更广泛的发育覆盖范围，”共同通讯作者 Jay Shendure 说。