Nicotine may harm human embryos at the single-cell level

Nicotine induces widespread adverse effects on human embryonic development at the level of individual cells, researchers report. Single-cell RNA sequencing of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived embryoid bodies revealed that three weeks of nicotine exposure disrupts cell-to-cell communication, decreases cell survival, and alters the expression of genes that regulate critical functions such as heart muscle-cell contractions.