How does a multi-cellular organism with specialized organs and tissues develop from a single cell? A team of genomics researchers has moved closer to answering this question by creating the first comprehensive diagram of the molecular interactions that orchestrate early embryo development. The work--a collaborative effort by scientists from New York University (NYU), Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute and Cenix BioScience in Dresden, Germany--appears in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Nature.The team examined the first two cell divisions of Caenorhabditis elegans--a small, transparent, soil-dwelling roundworm widely used as a model organism for studying embryo development and the first animal to have its entire genome sequenced. They used a new approach to combine information from several large-scale, genomics studies on the functions and activity profiles of C. elegans genes and proteins. From their efforts emerged a detailed view of the molecular interaction networks that drive early embryo development.
