For decades, scientists have been able to look at individual moments in the development of an embryo: a snapshot of a developing brain, a picture of how the heart takes shape, or a glimpse of cells beginning to form the nervous system.
But what if instead of taking snapshots, they could watch the entire process unfold?
A new study out of the lab of MIT Professor Jonathan Weissman, a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, offers one of the most detailed views yet of how a mammal is built, cell by cell.