Publications related to Development of the human body

Touch and Closeness in Naturally Organized Activities

Countless aspects of touch and closeness have been questioned in an unprecedented way during the recent Covid epidemic. Social practices as banal as greetings were both reflexively and practically challenged and sometimes deeply altered, resulting in painf ...

2024

Proliferation-driven mechanical compression induces signalling centre formation during mammalian organ development

Sangwoo Kim, Pengfei Xu

Localized sources of morphogens, called signalling centres, play a fundamental role in coordinating tissue growth and cell fate specification during organogenesis. However, how these signalling centres are established in tissues during embryonic developmen ...

Nature Portfolio2024

DNA methylation sites in early adulthood characterised by pubertal timing and development: a twin study

Markus Kirolos Youssef

Background Puberty is a highly heritable and variable trait, with environmental factors having a role in its eventual timing and development. Early and late pubertal onset are both associated with various diseases developing later in life, and epigenetic c ...

BMC2023

3DHumanGAN: 3D-Aware Human Image Generation with 3D Pose Mapping

Zhuoqian Yang, Siyuan Li

We present 3DHumanGAN, a 3D-aware generative adversarial network that synthesizes photo-like images of fullbody humans with consistent appearances under different view-angles and body-poses. To tackle the representational and computational challenges in sy ...

Ieee Computer Soc2023

Deconstructing body axis morphogenesis in zebrafish embryos using robot-assisted tissue micromanipulation

Andrew Charles Oates, Mahmut Selman Sakar, Ece Özelçi, Erik Mailand, Matthias Rüegg

Classic microsurgical techniques, such as those used in the early 1900s by Mangold and Spemann, have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of embryonic development. However, these techniques are highly specialized, leading to issues of inter-ope ...

Nature Research2022

Prenatal auditory experience and its sequelae

Lukas Vogelsang, Marin Vogelsang

Towards the end of the second trimester of gestation, a human fetus is able to register environmental sounds. This in utero auditory experience is characterized by comprising strongly low-pass-filtered versions of sounds from the external world. Here, we p ...

2022

KRAB zinc-finger proteins and their transposable element targets: between antagonism and cooperation

Jonas Caspar De Tribolet-Hardy

There are 377 Krüppel-associated box (KRAB) domain-containing zinc finger proteins (KZFPs) in the human genome, making them the largest family of transcription factors. KZFPs are defined by a N-terminal KRAB domain and several zinc-finger domains arranged ...

EPFL2022

Human reproduction is regulated by retrotransposons derived from ancient Hominidae-specific viral infections

Didier Trono, Julien Paul André Pontis, Yu Tao

The transcription factor network required for primordial germ cell (PGC) specification is known to diverge in mammals. Here the authors show that hominidae-specific transposable element (TE) LTR5Hs becomes transcriptionally active during PGC specification, ...

Nature Portfolio2022

High-throughput Microfluidic Platforms for S. cerevisiae Single Cell Studies

Hon Ming Andrew Yip

Cells consume extra-cellular nutrients and resources to maintain cellular fitness. Extra-cellular conditions vary over time. Cellular programs encoded in genes adjust to adapt to the environments. Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) have evolved to be responsi ...

EPFL2022

KRAB zinc finger protein-mediated control of transposon-embedded regulatory sequences from human germline to early embryos

Alexandra Iouranova

Transposable elements (TEs), also called jumping genes, are genetic elements capable of changing their position within the genome of their host. They make up large fractions of genomes, including 45% of human DNA content, according to current estimates. S ...

EPFL2021

Identifying neurodevelopmental anomalies of white matter microstructure associated with high risk for psychosis in 22q11.2DS

Maude Schneider, Daniela Maria Zöller, Marie Schaer, Maria Carmela Padula

Disruptions of white matter microstructure have been widely reported in schizophrenia. However, the emergence of these alterations during preclinical stages remains poorly understood. 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11.2DS) represents a unique model to study ...

SPRINGERNATURE2020

Dynamic spatiotemporal patterns of brain connectivity reorganize across development

Alessandra Griffa, Patric Hagmann, Marie Schaer, Emeline Mullier

Late human development is characterized by the maturation of high-level functional processes, which rely on reshaping of white matter connections, as well as synaptic density. However, the relationship between the whole-brain dynamics and the underlying wh ...

MIT PRESS2020

Automated phenotyping of Caenorhabditis elegans embryos with a high-throughput-screening microfluidic platform

Martinus Gijs, Matteo Cornaglia, Raphaël Etienne Jean Trouillon, Hüseyin Baris Atakan, Tunç Alkanat

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been extensively used as a model multicellular organism to study the influence of osmotic stress conditions and the toxicity of chemical compounds on developmental and motility-associated phenotypes. However, the sev ...

2020

Comparative Transcriptomics Analyses across Species, Organs, and Developmental Stages Reveal Functionally Constrained lncRNAs

Fabrice Daniel Darbellay, Anamaria Necsulea

The functionality of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) is disputed. In general, lncRNAs are under weak selective pressures, suggesting that the majority of lncRNAs may be nonfunctional. However, although some surveys showed negligible phenotypic effects upon l ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2020

DUX is a non-essential synchronizer of zygotic genome activation

Didier Trono, Sandra Eloise Kjeldsen, Sonia Verp, Delphine Yvette L Grun, Alberto De Iaco

Some of the earliest transcripts produced in fertilized human and mouse oocytes code for DUX, a double homeodomain protein that promotes embryonic genome activation (EGA). Deleting Dux by genome editing at the 1- to 2-cell stage in the mouse impairs EGA an ...

2019

Feasibility of neurochemically profiling mouse embryonic brain and its development in utero using 1 H MRS at 14.1 T

Hongxia Lei, Sébastien Robert Victor Herzig

We aimed to evaluate the feasibility of neurochemical profiling of embryonic mouse brain developments in utero and to seek potential in vivo evidence of an energy shift in a mitochondrial pyruvate carrier 1 (MPC1) deficient mouse model. C57BL/6 embryonic m ...

2019

Automated Platform for Long-Term Culture and High-Content Phenotyping of Single C. elegans Worms

Johan Auwerx, Martinus Gijs, Matteo Cornaglia, Laurent Mouchiroud, Rongrong Xiang, Elena Katsyuba, Hüseyin Baris Atakan

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a suitable model organism in drug screening. Traditionally worms are grown on agar plates, posing many challenges for long-term culture and phenotyping of animals under identical conditions. Microfluidics allows for ' ...

Nature Research2019

Embryonic lateral inhibition as optical modes: An analytical framework for mesoscopic pattern formation

Andrew Charles Oates, Jose Negrete Jr

Cellular checkerboard patterns are observed at many stages of embryonic development. We study an analytically tractable model for lateral inhibition and show that the steady states are analogous to optical phonons at the Gamma point, which have the wave nu ...

2019

Dynamic organization of human brain function and its relevance for psychosis vulnerability

Daniela Maria Zöller

The brain is the substrate of a complex dynamic system providing a remarkably varied range of functionalities, going from simple perception to higher-level cognition. Disturbances in its complex dynamics can cause an equally vast variety of mental disorder ...

EPFL2019

Mining the Potential of Label-Free Biosensors for In Vitro Antipsychotic Drug Screening

Sandro Carrara, Tugba Kilic, Hatice Altug, Maria Soler Aznar

The pharmaceutical industry is facing enormous challenges due to high drug attribution rates. For the past decades, novel methods have been developed for safety and efficacy testing, as well as for improving early development stages. In vitro screening met ...

2018