Fate mapping is a method used in

developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

to study the embryonic origin of various adult tissues and structures. The "fate" of each cell or group of cells is mapped onto the embryo, showing which parts of the embryo will develop into which tissue. When carried out at single-cell resolution, this process is called

cell lineage Cell lineage denotes the developmental history of a tissue or organ from the fertilized egg. This is based on the tracking of an organism's cellular ancestry due to the cell divisions and relocation as time progresses. This starts with the origina ...

tracing. It is also used to trace the development of

tumors A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

. Fate mapping and cell lineage are similar methods for tracing the history of cells.

History

Fate maps were created with the intent of tracing a specified region during the early developmental transition of an embryo to a distinct body structure. The first fate maps originate in the 1880s. The early fate maps in 1905 were created by Edwin Conklin and were based on direct observation of the embryos of ascidians (sea squirts) and other marine invertebrates. Modern fate mapping began in 1929 when Walter Vogt invented a process which involved marking a specific region of a developing embryo using a dyed agar chip and tracking the cells through

gastrulation Gastrulation is the stage in the early embryonic development of most animals, during which the blastula (a single-layered hollow sphere of cells), or in mammals, the blastocyst, is reorganized into a two-layered or three-layered embryo known as ...

. To achieve this experiment, Vogt allowed dye and agar to dry on a microscope plate, and placed small pieces onto specific embryo locations. As the embryo developed, he repeated this process to analyze the movement of cells. This procedure enabled Vogt to create accurate fate maps, introducing an innovative approach to morphogenesis reearch. In 1978, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was introduced as a more effective marker that required embryos to be fixed before viewing. Fate mapping can also be done through the use of molecular barcodes, which are introduced to the cell by

retroviruses A retrovirus is a type of virus that inserts a DNA copy of its RNA genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. After invading a host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase ...

. Genetic fate mapping is a technique developed in 1981 which uses a site-specific

recombinase Recombinases are genetic recombination enzymes. Site specific recombinases DNA recombinases are widely used in multicellular organisms to manipulate the structure of genomes, and to control gene expression. These enzymes, derived from bacteria ( ...

to track cell lineage genetically. This process does not require manipulating the embryo or the organ. The genetic basis of the labelling guarantees the inheritance of the marker by all offspring originating from the initially labelled cells, overcoming the issue of dilution associated with dye markers during cell division, thus offering high precision and resolution. Overall, fate mapping serves an important tool in many fields of biology research today, such as developmental biology,

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can change into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell ...

research, and

kidney In humans, the kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped blood-filtering organ (anatomy), organs that are a multilobar, multipapillary form of mammalian kidneys, usually without signs of external lobulation. They are located on the left and rig ...

research.

How Fate Mapping Differs from Cell Lineage

In 1905, the first experiment using cell lineage was conducted, involving tracking cells of the tunicate ''Styela partita''. Cell lineage entails tracing a particular cell's path from one of the three germ layers. Fate mapping and cell lineage are related concepts that often overlap. For example, the development of the complete cell lineage of ''C. elegans'' can be described as the fate maps of each cell division stacked hierarchically. The distinction between the topics lies within the type of information being analyzed. Fate mapping shows which tissues come from which part of the embryo at a certain stage in development, whereas cell lineage shows the relationships between cells at each division. A cell lineage can be used to generate a fate map, and in cases like ''C. elegans'', successive fate mapping can be used to develop a cell lineage.

References

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External links

*http://worms.zoology.wisc.edu/frogs/gast/gast_fatemap.html
Fate-Mapping Technique: Using Carbocyanine Dyes for Vital Labeling of Cells in Gastrula-Stage Mouse Embryos Cultured in Vitro
Developmental biology Molecular biology techniques

History

How Fate Mapping Differs from Cell Lineage

See also

References

External links