The early embryo of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, initially consists of a single-layered blastoderm covering the yolk uniformly that differentiates into an embryonic rudiment as well as extraembryonic amnion and serosa. The germband anlage forms inside the egg during gastrulation when the embryonic rudiment condenses and folds along the ventral midline; this process is accompanied...
Light sheet microscopy of early embryo developmental stages is challenging. A significant number of time-lapse acquisitions, started at the onset of development, need to be stopped due to suboptimal sample orientation, poor image quality, not-fertilised eggs or because the development process arrests due to the phototoxicity induced by the imaging process itself. To increase the likelihood of...
Emergence of multicellular forms (tissues, organs and organisms) from cells through changes in their shape, size, number and organization is central to understanding the process of morphogenesis. While molecular players are known, we do not know how the activity of genes and proteins is translated into 3D structures in space and time. Preexisting spatial cues, species-specific geometry and...
