Issues

SUMMARY: We recently interviewed Juergen Knoblich, a Senior Scientist and Deputy Scientific Director of the IMB in Vienna, to ask him about his research and his thoughts on funding.

SUMMARY: A recent Keystone Symposium highlighted both the new discoveries and the substantial progress that has been made in the hematopoiesis field.

SUMMARY: This Review summarises evidence from ichthyologists, paleontologists and developmental biologists and discusses the mechanisms that regulate and diversify vertebral patterning.

SUMMARY: Germ granules in C. elegans are required for fertility and the maintenance of germ cell identity, but also function to repress sperm-specific expression in during oogenesis.

SUMMARY: The Drosophila testis responds to protein starvation by eliminating transit-amplifying spermatogonia while maintaining actively proliferating germline stem cells, revealing a tissue-wide response that maintains homeostasis.

SUMMARY: The study of zebrafish embryos deficient for Gpc4 reveals that it is essential for efficient cardiomyocyte differentiation, providing insights into how mutations in glypicans can cause congenital heart defects.

SUMMARY: The cytoskeletal adaptor protein Girdin physically and functionally interacts with cadherin-catenin complex components to regulate adherens junctions and hence cell adhesion during Drosophila embryogenesis.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE: Real-time imaging of clock gene oscillations in zebrafish embryos reveals that the segmentation clock shifts from one- to two-segment periodicity, suggesting an updated model for somite formation.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE: Long tubular cells in the trachea of Drosophila larvae divide through a combination of junctional rearrangement and asymmetrical cytokinesis.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE: The chromatin remodelling protein ATRX is transmitted to the early zygote through the maternal germ line and is required to silence major satellite transcripts and control chromosome stability.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE: Overlapping but distinct sets of FGF receptors mediate FGF22- and FGF7-dependent excitatory and inhibitory presynaptic differentiation in the mammalian hippocampus, in part through FRS2/PI3K signaling.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE: The patella originates from a pool of Sox9- and Scx-positive progenitors that is separated from the femur during the process of joint formation, which in turn is regulated by mechanical load.

SUMMARY: The paracrine activity of Engrailed, together with its PBX-interacting hexapeptide motif, is involved in boundary formation during brain development in zebrafish.

SUMMARY: BMP signals from the lens are crucial to maintain eye-field character, inhibit dorsal telencephalic cell identity, and specificy neural retina cells in chick embryos.

SUMMARY: Mathematical modeling and simulations suggest that the local diffusion of homeoproteins during neuronal differentiation is enough to create smooth and reliable boundaries between cortical areas.

SUMMARY: The trafficking and localization of Crumbs, a key regulator of epithelial polarity, is dynamically regulated by the ERM protein Moesin in competition with aPKC during Drosophila egg chamber morphogenesis.

SUMMARY: Chromobodies - small, intracellular fluorescent antibodies - are used to trace endogenous antigens, without the need for direct protein tagging, in zebrafish embryos.

SUMMARY: The adeno-associated virus variant r3.45 is used to efficiently and selectively transduce adult mouse, rat, and human neural stem cells both in vitro and in vivo.

SUMMARY: The developmental anatomy of the lower urinary and reproductive systems of developing and postnatal mice is described, providing a revised ontology to aid the understanding of human urogenital tract abnormalities.