The Department has now yet another organism to add to its repertoire of experimental model species: The gallant Gallus gallus.
One of the oldest species to shed light on the inner workings of embryonic development (stretching all the way back to work by Aristotle), our ability to culture embryos both inside and outside of the shell enables a unique opportunity to explore the cellular processes of development.
In the image, we see Ben Steventon and Peter Baillie-Johnson (Martinez-Arias lab), setting up New cultures (named after Professor Denis New, the technique actually goes back to 1955), to explore the potential of mouse embryonic stem cells by transplantation into the chicken embryo and time-lapse imaging.