The structural and functional complexity of multicellular biological systems, such as the
brain, are beyond the reach of human design or assembly capabilities. Cells in living …

The ability of stem cells to differentiate into specified lineages in the appropriate locations is
vital to morphogenesis and adult tissue regeneration. Although soluble signals are important …

In developing tissues, cells estimate their spatial position by sensing graded concentrations
of diffusible signaling proteins called morphogens. Morphogen-sensing pathways exhibit …

Monitoring of cell-cell communication in multicellular organisms is fundamental to
understanding diverse biological processes such as embryogenesis and tumorigenesis. To …

Building tissue from cells as the basic building block based on principles of self-assembly is
a challenging and promising approach. Understanding how far principles of self-assembly …

Organoids recapitulate many aspects of the complex three-dimensional (3D) organization
found within native tissues and even display tissue and organ-level functionality. Traditional …

Since the proposal of the differential adhesion hypothesis, scientists have been fascinated
by how cell adhesion mediates cellular self-organization to form spatial patterns during …

The behavior of stem cells, when they work collectively, can be much more sophisticated
than one might expect from their individual programming. This Perspective covers recent …

We explore the utility of bioengineered human tissues—individually or connected into
physiological units—for biological research. While much smaller and simpler than their …

Although researchers currently have limited ability to mimic the natural stem cell
microenvironment, recent work at the interface of stem biology and biomaterials science has …