It all starts with establishing polarity - in other words, figuring out which side of the cell is the top, and which is the bottom. This cell has an essential role in setting out the body plan for the rest of an organism. Read on to learn about these scientists' work, and more.Īll multicellular organisms begin with a single cell, the fertilized egg. Jonathan Weissman and his lab have created a “map” which researchers can use to find the function of a given gene, allowing them access to an organism’s most fundamental plans. Work on regeneration in Peter Reddien’s lab shows how some creatures can access their body blueprint throughout their lives to repair nearly any injury, and Yukiko Yamashita’s group studies how organisms pass on their body blueprints to their offspring through germ cells. For the lab led by Pulin Li, research comes in at a later stage of development, when multiple cells combine to form a tissue and must communicate with each other to become an organized whole.

Researchers in Iain Cheeseman’s lab, including Swartz, have delved into the mysterious forces that underlie the polarity of an organism’s first cell.

Whitehead Institute researchers are tackling this question through a variety of different lenses. “How do you take a single cell and pattern into a body that has different functions and features along it?” “How that multifunctional body plan is created is one of the deepest questions in developmental biology,” said Zak Swartz, until recently a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman. With each generation, tiny worms, lavishly plumed birds, and even humans must create themselves anew from a single cell. Multicellular organisms evolved over millennia into a dazzling array of differently adapted creatures. This article is part of our Building a Body story collection.

Blueprint gene