Gastruloid Development Competence Discriminates Different States of Pluripotency
In this article Minchiotti, Patriarca, and colleagues show that gastruloid formation provides an additional test of the developmental fidelity of stem cells. This study reveals that LIF exerts a dominant effect over exogenous FGF/ACTIVIN to provide gastruloid development competence, and suggests that a certain degree of phenotypic heterogeneity in the stem cell population is essential to generate functional cell aggregates.