The people behind the papers – Robert Morabito and Benjamin Martin

Nervous system and mesodermal tissue development in vertebrate embryos rely on the formation of transient midline tissues - such as the floorplate, notochord and hypochord - by midline progenitor cells. In a comprehensive new study, Benjamin Martin and colleagues provide the previously unidentified anatomical positions of midline progenitor cell populations, and map how midline fate decisions are made by integrating Wnt signals, Sox2 expression, cell movements and cell cycle transitions. To learn more about this story unfolded and the researchers behind it, we spoke to first author Robert Morabito and corresponding author Benjamin Martin, Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Stony Brook University, USA.