An advanced head-to-tail mouse embryo model with hypoxia-mediated neural patterning

Abstract

The developing mammalian embryo is guided by the continuously changing signals that it receives from maternal tissues and its microenvironment. The dynamic cell-cell and cell-environment interactions that together shape the embryo largely remained unexplorable until the advance of stem cell-based embryo models. These revealed the self-organizing properties of cells in response to endogenous and exogenous cues. Among the latter, restricted oxygen (hypoxia) emerged as a critical microenvironmental regulator that influences cell type diversification in multicellular systems. Here we built a modular ESC-based head-to-tail model of mouse embryogenesis by developing an antero-posterior (AP) assembly strategy under hypoxia. These structures called HAP-gastruloids feature stage-appropriate anterior neural tissues that recapitulate the morphological organization and transcriptional identity of fore- and midbrain including spatial organizer regions such as the midbrain-hindbrain boundary. These anterior tissues develop in synchrony with posterior tissues such as the spinal cord, somites, and gut endoderm derivatives, ultimately yielding a unified structure. We show via genetic, environmental, and pharmacological perturbations that timed hypoxia is essential to boost anterior neural cell identities and their patterning through HIF1a and in part by modulating TGF{beta} activity. These results underline the key beneficial role of hypoxia in early development and offer a uniquely modular system to investigate antero-posterior phenotypes for basic discovery and translation.