Scientists reveal the mechanism behind sea urchin twinning

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have examined how twin organizations can emerge from a single fertilized egg by studying sea urchin. Their results have revealed that when an embryo at an early stage is divided in two, each party is able to regenerate its own development plan. The team discovered dynamic cellular processes and genetic programs that allow each fragment to reorganize and become a complete individual.

At the end of the 19th century, the German embryologist Hans Driesch showed that when eggs fertilized sections were separated at the two cell stage, each cell could still become a complete organism. However, for more than a century, the development process and the molecular mechanisms which allow the embryo to restore its body axes (anterior-posterior, dorsal-ventral and left-right) and resuming normal development remained largely unclear.

For a new study published in Nature communicationsThe researchers combined advanced microscopy with molecular biology to discover how each fragment of embryos is capable of resetting their development plan and becoming an individual in its own right. They also succeeded in visualizing the reconstruction of the axis by following the cellular movements and the activation of the gene which leads to this remarkable self-organization capacity.

This discovery offers a new idea of ​​a long -standing question in the life sciences: how two complete individuals can emerge from a fertilized egg. The sea urchin model can also provide valuable information for future development studies, including the origins of monozygotic twinning in humans.