Issues

Summary: This poster article summarises how strigolactones – a recently discovered group of plant hormones – signal during plant development and regulate various aspects of plant morphogenesis.

Summary: This Review article discusses how taste buds are established during development, highlighting the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing taste cell formation and turnover.

Summary: During cardiogenesis in humans, development of the epicardium shows a number of distinct characteristics compared with other vertebrate models.

Highlighted article: Mnx1 acts as a lineage specification factor in the mouse pancreas – promoting beta-cell fate and maintenance. It also has a role in compensatory beta-cell proliferation.

Summary: Ectopic Notch activation in the mouse epiblast promotes neural fate and disrupts mesoderm differentiation. Nodal signalling is also misregulated, indicating coordination between these pathways.

Summary: In the adult mouse brain, Mcidas and GemC1 act upstream of the transcriptional regulators Foxj1 and c-Myb to promote differentiation of ependymal cells from radial glia.

Summary: Upon irradiation of the early mouse embryo, there is epiblast-specific apoptosis; other cell types survive. This is likely to be due to recruitment of 53BP1 to DNA breaks and induction of p53 in the epiblast only.

Summary: Complete deletion of the axon guidance cue netrin 1 leads to severe defects in midline crossing of spinal cord axons. However, the mutants did not fully phenocopy loss of the netrin 1 receptor Unc5.

Highlighted article: Migrating border cells lacking the Pak3 kinase show defects in both forward-rear and apicobasal polarity. Pak3 acts in a pathway with Rac and JNK to regulate polarity protein localisation.

Highlighted article: In the somatosensory system of the mouse, peripheral input from whiskers can control neuronal identity, but neuron-intrinsic mechanisms are required for topographic mapping in the brain.

Summary: The Drosophila miRNA bantam regulates the expression of Brat and Prospero – known inhibitors of brain neuroblast proliferation – to modulate growth of the central brain.

Summary: Wnt3 exists in zebrafish as membrane-bound and secreted fractions. Inhibition of Wnt3 palmitoylation abolishes Wnt3 secretion and leads to cerebellar malformations.

Summary: Abrogating Erk2 function in the developing mouse neural crest reveals a role for this key kinase in craniofacial development, notably in regulating osteogenic differentiation.

Summary: EMX1, known to be involved in early cortical patterning, also has a role in interhemisphere axon guidance by promoting expression of the guidance receptor NRP1.

Summary: Quantifying the full complement of endogenous ecdysteroids in Drosophila provides insights into the metabolic pathways of ecdysteroid production, and how these vary with diet and development.

Summary: In sea urchin, miRNA-31 acts in primary mesenchyme cells to inhibit components of the gene regulatory network that promotes skeletogenesis.

Summary: Two waves of zygotic transcription occur during the mid-blastula transition in Drosophila. Shutdown of the first wave involves post-translational modulation of the maternal factor Bicoid.

Summary: During mouse spermatogenesis, some miRNA genes escape pan-chromosomal silencing of the X, in a process involving their physical relocation away from the XY body heterochromatin domain.