Pattern formation articles from across Nature Portfolio

The transcription factor TBX5 regulates early cardiac progenitor cells and genes that encode essential patterning cues for the correct formation of the interventricular septum and separation of cardiac chambers in mice. Disruption of a compartment boundary at the developing interventricular septum reveals potential mechanisms that might underlie some congenital heart defects.

This study reveals how temporally restricted enhancers control gene expression over time, highlighting their role in transcription dynamics and enhancer–promoter interactions during mouse limb development.

Kathiriya et al. identify a cardiac progenitor lineage with expression of Tbx5 and anterior heart field-specific expression of Mef2c that bisects the intraventricular septum during development and show that alterations in this lineage lead to congenital heart defects in mice.

By integrating a deep-learning-based cell boundary localization algorithm with the Segment Anything Model, EmbSAM enables accurate 3D cell membrane segmentation across C. elegans embryos and quantitative analysis of cellular-to-multicellular morphodynamics at 10-second resolution.

This Resource provides a detailed atlas of morphogen-induced responses in human neural organoids.

Embryonic patterning requires generation of positional information that defines where cells reside within the embryo. Here, Azambuja, Rothstein and colleagues report that the epigenome is spatially patterned during early development, showing that chromatin organization reflects the embryo’s emerging body plan.

Regeneration varies dramatically even between closely related species. Here they show that the evolutionary loss of foot regeneration observed in Hydra oligactis stems from weak Wnt activation after injury. Transient Wnt activation restores foot regeneration and the expression of foot transcription factor dlx2.

The transcription factor TBX5 regulates early cardiac progenitor cells and genes that encode essential patterning cues for the correct formation of the interventricular septum and separation of cardiac chambers in mice. Disruption of a compartment boundary at the developing interventricular septum reveals potential mechanisms that might underlie some congenital heart defects.

We systematically mapped how morphogen timing and dosage shape early cell fate specification in human neural organoids to unify our understanding of neural regionalization and to accelerate development of organoid models. This defined competence windows for key signaling pathways and benchmarked variability across human pluripotent stem cell lines and protocols.

A method infers tension from spatial transcriptomic data on single cells in tissue context.

Pluripotent stem cells are being used to generate models of early embryogenesis that are promising for discovery and translational research. To be useful, these models require critical consideration of their level of efficiency and fidelity to natural embryos. Here we propose criteria with which to raise the standards of stem-cell-based embryo models of human embryogenesis.

Two new methods enable the study of the mechanics of tissue development.

An article in Nature Communications presents a method to provide local mechanical stimulation to organoids using magnetic nanoparticles.