When times get bad – if food is limited, for example – Caenorhabditis elegans larvae enter the dauer larval stage 3 for several months, rather than racing through the normal larval stage 3 in a few hours. Attenuation of daf-2 insulin/IGF or daf-7TGFβ-like signaling pathways causes developmental arrest at the dauer stage – as does loss of function of DAF-9, a cytochrome P450 related to steroidogenic hydroxylases. Two papers in this issue implicate DAF-9 in the production of important hormonal signals that regulate dauer diapause. On p. 1765, Gerisch and Antebi show that daf-9 overexpressed constitutively in the hypodermis– the tissue in which endogenous daf-9 expression is most visibly regulated by environmental cues – acts systemically to rescue the dauer phenotypes of daf-9, daf-2 and daf-7 mutants. This indicates that DAF-9 acts downstream of insulin/IGF and TGFβ signaling during dauer regulation. Mak and Ruvkun present similar results on...
History of our journals
As our publisher, The Company of Biologists, turns 100 years old, read about Development’s journey and highlights from some its first issues, and explore the history of each of our sister journals: Journal of Cell Science, Journal of Experimental Biology, Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open.
Call for papers – Lifelong Development: the Maintenance, Regeneration and Plasticity of Tissues
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – Lifelong Development: the Maintenance, Regeneration and Plasticity of Tissues. This issue will be coordinated by Guest Editors Meritxell Huch (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany) and Mansi Srivastava (Harvard University and Museum of Comparative Zoology, USA), working alongside our team of academic Editors. Submit your articles by 15 May 2025.
A case for broadening our view of mechanism in developmental biology
In this Perspective, B. Duygu Özpolat and colleagues survey researchers on their views on what it takes to infer mechanism in developmental biology. They examine what factors shape our idea of what we mean by ‘mechanism’ and suggest a path forward that embraces a broad outlook on the diversity of studies that advance knowledge in our field.
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