Sunday, September 6, 2015

Scientists map gene activity of human embryo's first days

      Up until recently, the order to which each of the humans approximately 23,000 activated during development as an embryo was entirely unknown. It is still very greatly unknown, but for the first time a team of researchers led by Outi Hovatta, a professor of clinical science at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, have mapped all the genes that are activated in the first few days of embryo development from the point of fertilization. 

     By the second day, only 32 genes are activated of a possible 23,000. By the third day this number rises to 129, seven of those 129 hadn't been identified until this study. Furthermore, it was found that a lot of these genes, once thought to be "junk", were actually playing a large part in regulating protein synthesis that is critical for embryo development which one researcher describes as "a discovery that is akin to finding the 'ignition key' that switches on human development."

The link to the article can be found here.

2 comments:

  1. Great work is being done to unlock the unknown about development, which can only help future generation, great article!

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  2. Interesting work being done to be more educated on how embryos develop and how, for example, a human becomes a human. Hope to see more research done on this topic in the future.

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