(7/8) There’s more inside: signaling landscapes, PGCs, primary-to-secondary yolk sac transition…

(6/8) The molecular signatures show strong alignment and high identity scores with human embryo references.

(5/8) ….And they keep going, entering gastrulation!

(4/8) If these cells can generate all early fates, then they should be able to do so in a self-organized manner, forming embryo-like structures……. and they did! (All we had to do was sit back and let the cells do their work.)

(3/8) The results went beyond expectations: alongside naïve epi, TE & hypoblast, we also saw extraembryonic mesoderm emerge 🤯

(2/8) From our work in the mouse system we hypothesised that STAT3 could reprogram human cells from a post- to a pre-implantation fate, but the breakthrough came only after we also added TGFβ inhibition.

(3/3) Fast forward ⏩ @cc0447.bsky.social Jinyi Wu et al. investigated this in human cells. Curious to see what they pulled off? Stay tuned!

(1/3) A while back, my then-PhD student @htstuart.bsky.social stumbled on a finding that changed our lab’s direction 👀✨. Turns out, STAT3 mediated reprogramming generates intermediates (Gata6GFP+ cells) going through an earlier developmental stage with increased developmental potential 🚀

A big thanks to all authors, especially Professor Naihe Jing and Penglei Shen for guiding our embryo model into organogenesis, and to our PhD students Jiahui Huang and Wei Guan for their efforts. And of course, to Huanhuan Li, the driving force behind this work.( 3/3)

Very happy to share the work of Huanhuan Li et al. While not a natural embryo, you might not have known that if I hadn’t told you. (1/3)