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Where do babies come from? Most adults should be able to answer that question, at least in broad terms. But on the cellular level, the story remains astonishingly elusive – even to scientists. How does a single fertilized egg become a living organism composed of billions of highly specialized cells?

It was this mystery that drew around 400 guests to the baroque festive hall of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for the 19th CeMM Landsteiner Lecture on May 11. With wit, clarity, and a sense of wonder, Jay Shendure took the captivated audience on a journey through what he called “the invisible storylines of development, from zygote to newborn.” Shendure,Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington and a pioneer of single-cell genomics, explored during the lecture how new technologies are transforming our understanding of embryonic development. 

For decades, developmental biology relied on comparatively simple organisms such as the roundworm C. elegans, whose fixed cell lineage can be mapped almost perfectly. Mammalian development, by contrast, remained far more difficult to reconstruct: a fluid and dynamic process in which cell states continuously change over time.

A movie of developing cells

Using large-scale single-cell sequencing technologies, Shendure’s team has now generated developmental atlases of whole mouse embryos containing millions of cells across embryonic time. Rather than revealing static cell types, these data show development as a continuous landscape of transitions and branching trajectories – more like a film unfolding than a fixed blueprint.

Among the lecture’s most memorable moments were Shendure’s insights into the biology of birth itself. By comparing cells immediately before and after birth, his team observed dramatic molecular changes sweeping through the body within minutes, as the organism transitions from life in the womb to a breathing, independent organism that has to perform its own metabolism and keep itself warm. A familiar human experience suddenly appeared in an entirely new biological light.

Equally striking were Shendure’s newest CRISPR-based technologies, capable of recording biological events directly into DNA and making them accessible to research. Combined with deep learning and comparative genomics across hundreds of mammalian species, these approaches aim to decode the regulatory sequences that determine when and where genes become active.

Shendure succeeded in conveying the sheer scale of this scientific ambition: not merely describing life, but ultimately predicting it across cells, developmental stages, and species. Long after the lecture ended, discussions continued throughout the reception, where guests eagerly pressed on with questions inspired by the evening’s glimpse into the future of biology.

This year’s Landsteiner Lecture was musically accompanied by Marie Spaemann and Christian Bakanic, whose wonderful duet of cello and accordion carried the audience into captivating musical landscapes where chamber music merged with influences from jazz and world music.

About the CeMM Landsteiner Lecture Series

The CeMM Landsteiner Lecture series is named in honor of Karl Landsteiner, the Viennese scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of blood groups. Each year, a distinguished speaker is invited—carefully selected by the CeMM Faculty—for their outstanding molecular research and its significant impact on medicine.

From 2007 to 2018, the lecture was held in the magnificent 18th-century frescoed festive hall of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a venue where Haydn and Beethoven once premiered their works. In 2019, it moved to the impressive House of Industry in Vienna, and during the pandemic, it was held in an online format. Since 2022, the lecture has returned to its historic setting at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.