Synthetic Embryology Systems

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Cody Kime

RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research

Dr. Cody Kime is a cell program hacker trained in molecular, stem cell, and developmental biology, and is primarily known for pioneering systems in the emerging field of Synthetic Embryology. He has worked in the lab of Shinya Yamanaka as a California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Bridges Scholar and became a Doctor of Medical Sciences with Masayo Takahashi at RIKEN, where he leads a cell reprogramming team. Dr. Kime is laser focused on the fundamental basis of epigenetic reprogramming and developmental cell identity at the molecular, genetic, cellular, and tissue levels of control. In that multidisciplinary realm he creates new stem cell and reprogramming systems to expand unprecedented research in embryogenesis, epigenetic plasticity, and future technology-oriented medicine.

Collection Overview

Synthetic embryology is a rapidly growing emergent field for modeling embryogenesis with embryoids synthesized from cultured cells. There are now many synthetic embryo systems (SESs) with unique technical approaches, cell origins, and embryonic developmental modeling outputs that hold tremendous potential for biology. All current SESs require careful cell culture techniques employed with various levels of sophistication and engineering tools that complicate the work for new users. As such, synthetic embryology projects frequently require collaboration between cell biologists, embryologists, and materials engineers. In this collection, we seek to enable new user access to SESs by presenting robust simplified methods and video protocols from leaders in the field.