As an embryo develops, its cells migrate to the appropriate location as they turn into new cell types. During her postdoctoral work, Andrea Pauli had identified the protein ‘Toddler’ as a crucial factor for the early movements of mesodermal cells, yet the underlying mechanism remained unknown. In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, Pauli and her lab at the IMP report a new and intriguingly simple mechanism that explains how a single receptor can both generate and sense the concentration gradient of a molecular signal to steer cell migration.
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