Issues

Summary: This Meeting Review highlights the advances presented at the third ‘Stem Cell Niche’ meeting, which was held in Denmark in May 2016 and covered diverse aspects of embryonic and adult stem cell biology.

Summary: This Review summarizes the mechanisms by which chromatin remodelers function and highlights their specificities during mammalian cell differentiation and organogenesis.

Highlighted Article: Satellite cell depletion prevents fiber hypertrophy in the plantaris and extensor digitorum longus muscles in mice, suggesting that satellite cells are obligatory for hypertrophic growth.

Summary: Upon tissue damage, JAK/STAT signalling and its effector Zfh2 promote the survival of JNK-signalling cells in Drosophila imaginal discs, thereby limiting tissue damage and facilitating systemic responses.

Summary: During fin regeneration in zebrafish, Fgf20a signals from the wound epidermis to induce blastema formation while blastema Fgfs, including Fgf3, subsequently support cell proliferation.

Summary: A large-scale RNAi screen in Drosophila testes reveals that many genes involved in protein synthesis and degradation are required for the homeostasis of germline stem cells and their niches.

Summary: Proximal and distal regenerated lizard tail skeletal regions form independently from different cell sources and in response to different signals.

Highlighted Article: Reporter mice harbouring gene cassettes encoding two different fluorescent proteins inserted into specific loci in the X chromosomes are used to study X chromosome status in vivo.

Summary: The transmembrane protein Tmem2 facilitates muscle fiber attachment by influencing both the organization of the extracellular matrix and the glycosylation of α-dystroglycan.

Highlighted Article: Apoptosis is a consequence of vessel regression, not a cause, and serves to modulate endothelial cell numbers, remove non-perfused vessels and regulate capillary calibre during retinal development in mice.

Summary: Two mechanisms - negative feedback and temporal control - operate to repress the expression of DLK, a potent promoter of growth cone motility and regeneration, during Drosophila photoreceptor development.

Summary: Super-resolution microscopy reveals that, during mouse limb development, enhancer-driven gene expression results in the juxtaposition of Shh and its limb bud-specific enhancer only within cells of the distal posterior limb bud.

Summary: The transcription factor Dorsocross has an ancestral, previously unknown, role in insect morphogenesis, acting upstream of BMP signaling in extraembryonic epithelia.

Summary: Genome-wide interaction analyses and mechanistic studies demonstrate that Sox9 and AP-1 family members collaborate to regulate the hypertrophic chondrocyte transition during skeletal development in mice.

Summary: Two Snail family transcriptional regulators - Escargot and Scratch - redundantly repress Notch target gene transcription and, as such, maintain a silenced Notch pathway in neural precursor cells.