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11 July 2026
Controlled by Axin
Immediately after implantation, formation of the embryo begins. From early cells called the pluripotent epiblast, the differentiation into the myriad cell types of the body begins to unfold, first into a layer called the mesoderm, but how this specification is controlled remains to be fully elucidated. The Wnt signalling pathway of molecules underlies the steps towards specific cell type commitment, and here, a study of mouse embryo development reveals that proteins AXIN1 and AXIN2 regulate Wnt to prevent the epiblast committing to mesoderm differentiation until the time is right
Read the published research article here
Written by
- Image from work by Rocío Hernández-Martínez and colleagues
- Developmental Biology Program, Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
- Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- Published in Developmental Cell, July 2026
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