Glycolysis is an ancient metabolic activity. Although scientists have extensively studied the role of metabolism in individual cells to understand how it influences their energetic state, little has been studied about the effect of glycolysis on the decisions that cells or groups of cells make.
Vikas Trivedi, Group Leader at EMBL and member of InDDB, recently published a new study in Cell Stem Cell on the role of metabolism in early development. The study shows that glycolysis has an instructive role during the early stages of development, defining cell fate.
The team shows that glycolysis helps activate key signalling pathways that guide cells towards mesoderm and endoderm fates, and thus actively controls cell fate decisions at distinct stages of early embryonic development.
Their work brings metabolism to the spotlight for studying the early stages of development, giving the
research community a new tool to study early cell decisions and embryo development.
Find the full press release here. You can also read the full paper here.
