Standards of State

If you think of our body as a big tube (I know I do), the epithelium is the sheet of specialised cells that cover the outside and line the inside (the gut; as well as covering and lining organs). In the process called epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is normal and necessary in embryo/organ development and wound healing, epithelial cells can switch to being multi-potent, migratory stem cells. But EMT also has a dark side underlying cancer initiation and migration and so, alongside advancing the understanding of normal activity, studying EMT is central to wide-ranging research. Here, aiming to standardise approaches so that results can be meaningfully compared between laboratories, an imaging-based framework has been developed for studying this state change from many different angles in both 2D and 3D

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Video from work by Caroline Hookway, Antoine Borensztejn and Leigh K. Harris, and colleagues
• Allen Institute for Cell Science Seattle, Seattle, WA, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Nature Methods, June 2026