Geography and molecular anatomy of germ layers in the gastrulating primate embryo

During mammalian embryogenesis, temporal and spatial regulation of gene expression and cell signaling influences lineage specification, the patterning of tissue progenitors and the morphogenesis of embryo. While the mouse model has been instrumental for our understanding of mammalian development, comparatively little is known about early human and non-human primate gastrulation due to the limitation of technical and ethical. Here, we present a morphological and molecular approach that reveals the systematically morphological changes and comprehensive transcriptional landscape of cell types populating the non-human primate embryos during gastrulation. Overall design: By using spatial transcriptome of Geo-seq, we carried out transcriptome profiling on Crab-eating macaque embryo sections at a high resolution of 5-50 cells per sample. We then constructed a comprehensive spatial transcriptome map in gastrulating embryos.