Our latest paper, "Single-cell reconstruction of developmental trajectories during zebrafish embryogenesis" was published in Science.
In a collaboration with Aviv Regev's lab, co-first authors Jeff and Yiqun performed single-cell RNA-sequencing of early zebrafish embryos at multiple time points during development. They reconstructed the developmental trajectories of embryonic cells using a novel computational technique called URD. By creating a branching tree that describes the specification of the 25 cell types in a zebrafish embryo, their work revealed some fundamental features of early development, including: (i) how cells acquire their fates, (ii) what happens to cell specification when embryos lack an important embryonic signal, Nodal, and (iii) that cells can trans-specify from one fate to another in a previously unrecognized manner.
You can access a free copy of the article here. You can download URD here.
Complementary studies by the Klein, Kirschner and Megason labs were co-published with our study. The work has been described in news articles in Science, the Harvard Gazette and the MCB website.
Congratulations Jeff and Yiqun!
