Inter-cellular Interactions and Patterns: Vertebrate Development and Embryonic Stem Cells

Development from egg to embryo to adult is a fascinating instance of biological self-organization for which genetics has supplied us with a parts list. It remains to find the principles organizing the assembly of those parts. In the last decade embryonic stem cells (ESC) have provided the material from which to build the mammalian embryo. This review, for a quantitative audience, explains why colonies of ESC are an ideal system with which to peal back the multiple layers of regulation that make embryonic development such a robust process. It formed the basis of a presentation at the 27th Solvay Conference on the Physics of Living Matter 2017 edited by Boris Shraiman.