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Your first hug

Most people remember their first kiss but Victorian scientists have discovered that your first hug is much further back than you think.

The arm-like filopodia ‘hug’ the embryo’s cells, squeezing them into shape. Credit: EMBL Australia

Nicolas Plachta and his team at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute have discovered that embryos, when only eight cells in size, develop arm-like structures that ‘hug’ the cells into shape, helping to determine an embryo’s ultimate success.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, used live imaging and fluorescent markers to capture the action in mouse embryos.

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