Super excited to share my postdoc work from the Nerurkar Lab! How does a relatively simple tube become a complex brain? We built a 3D morphometric framework — “spatchcocking” 🐔 — to map exactly what changes during this dramatic 24-hour, ~10× volume expansion in the chick embryo. We found:
- The brain compartmentalizes as it inflates.
- It thickens as it expands. Inflation usually thins a shell. Not here!
- The dorso-ventral patterns of thickness and cell division are conserved throughout.
Check out the Preprint and Code
Special thanks to Nandan Nerurkar for the mentorship and the wonderful Nerurkar Lab. Lastly, Thank you chicken embryos. Best model system!