The robustness of the developmental process for multicellular organisms suggests a dedicated regulatory program that governs the trajectories of cell-fate decisions. According to Waddington’s epigenetic landscape theory, differentiated cell types arise from an unstable stem/progenitor state and eventually fall into stable cell-fate attractors. The emerging concept of the state manifold derived from single-cell data has further enhanced our understanding of lineage progression. What are the gene-regulatory programs underlying these state manifolds? How are they regulated? These two questions remain enigmatic in this field.
Click here for original story, Scientists identify cell-fate regulatory programs using single-cell atlas of mouse development
Source: Phys.org