Pluripotent stem cell-derived organoids can recapitulate significant features of organ development in vitro. We hypothesized that creating human heart organoids by mimicking aspects of in utero gestation (e.g., addition of metabolic and hormonal factors) would lead to higher physiological and anatomical relevance. We find that heart organoids produced using this self-organization-driven developmental induction strategy are remarkably similar transcriptionally and morphologically to age-matched human embryonic hearts. We also show that they recapitulate several aspects of cardiac development, including large atrial and ventricular chambers, proepicardial organ formation, and retinoic acid-mediated anterior-posterior patterning, mimicking the developmental processes found in the post-heart tube stage primitive heart
HALO: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model for Embodied Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
quantum-classical supercomputing: quantum chemistry of protein-ligand complexes
Researchers developed a novel stem cell-based protocol to generate 'cardiobots'—self-organizing aggregates capable of muscle-powered motility. By optimizing mesoderm and cardiogenic induction through precise growth factor signaling and synthetic organizers, the team successfully engineered bio-aggregates with enhanced contractile areas and increased motility compared to existing gastruloid models. This approach provides a new framework for creating autonomous, muscle-propelled biological machines and exploring the evolutionary origins of movement in early multicellular organisms.
This paper presents a scalable and reproducible protocol for generating human heart organoids (hHOs) from pluripotent stem cells using a three-step Wnt signaling modulation strategy. These organoids self-organize into complex structures that replicate key aspects of the developing human heart, including chamber formation, vascular networks, and multiple cardiac cell lineages, providing a high-throughput platform for disease modeling and drug testing.