Development (The Company of Biologists) published a research highlight featuring our discovery of the mechanism that supports self-renewal in bovine trophoblast stem cells, and that blastocyst size can be directly controlled by the rate of trophoblast stem cell (TSC) proliferation in an article entitled “Rock inhibition promotes trophoblast proliferation until the cows come home” Development (2022) 149 (7): e149_e0702.

This image shows the dramatic increase in blastocyst embryo size at the same stage of development when promoting short-term (48-hour) TSC proliferation (embryo on the right) versus control (embryo on the left).