Issues

Summary: Development has recently announced a new format-free submission policy – making the process of submitting your paper easier. We have also relaxed our length limits to allow you to describe methods in greater detail.

Summary: Hiroshi Hamada, director of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, talks about his career in Japan and North America, his fascination with left-right axis determination and his love of Irish music.

Summary: This Spotlight article looks at the origins of the 14-day rule and its application to human stem cell and developmental biology research.

Summary: This Review discusses the diverse epithelial cell behaviours involved in small neurosensory organ development, using dental placodes, hair follicles, taste buds, lung neuroendocrine cells and lateral line neuromasts as examples.

Summary: In the Drosophila ovary, germline stem cell differentiation requires dynamic interactions with somatic escort cells. This involves a complex meshwork of escort cell protrusions and is regulated by multiple signalling pathways.

Summary: Surveying the binding profiles of the key transcription factors ZIC2, OTX2, SOX2, POU5F1 and POU3F1 in mouse epiblast stem cells reveals distinct ZIC2-OTX2-centered gene regulation from that in embryonic stem cells.

Highlighted Article: New alleles of a wheat AP2 gene, Q, define new roles for Q in inflorescence architecture, including the formation and structure of grain-producing spikelets. See also Debernardi et al. in this issue.

Highlighted Article: A nucleotide change in the microRNA172 binding site of the AP2 gene Q played a critical role in wheat domestication and the origin of free-threshing modern wheats. See also Greenwood et al. in this issue.

Highlighted Article: In the mouse placenta, G9a activates Notch signaling and coordinates a global transcriptional switch to promote placental vascular maturation. Its deficiency may underlie human placental disease.

Highlighted Article: In a transgenic mouse model prone to non-exchange X-Y chromosomes, reduced levels of the spindle assembly checkpoint component MAD2 result in a less stringent apoptotic response and elevated sperm aneuploidy.

Summary: Retinoic acid signaling via RARβ2 plays mulitple roles in Xenopus somitogenesis – regulating somite number, size and morphology, and restricting the presomitic mesoderm anterior border.

Summary: Correlating Lmx1b-binding sites with Lmx1b-regulated genes during mouse limb development uncovers cis-regulatory modules and their gene targets involved in limb dorsal-ventral identity.

Summary: In mouse, SIX1 represses endothelin 1 and induces Jag1 expression in the dorsal mandibular arch. Loss of this signaling leads to partial duplication of the mandible in place of the posterior maxilla.

Summary: An RNAi screen in Drosophila identifies the BAR-domain protein ICA69 as a regulator of neuromuscular junction organization and glutamate receptor clustering. ICA69 levels are in turn controlled by Rab2.

Summary: Mice mutant for the COUP-TFI transcription factor show severe growth defects in the hippocampal dentate gyrus, due to impaired proliferation, precocious differentiation and abnormal migration of granule cells.

Summary: Dominant mutations in the water channel Aquaporin 3a cause defective pigment patterning in zebrafish, due at least in part to an effect of the mutant tissue environment on the pigment cells.

Summary: Generation of a zebrafish transgenic line expressing GFP in lymphatic vessels allows visualization of the developing lymphatic network, demonstrating a stereotyped, stepwise assembly.

Summary: The sonic hedgehog pathway controls expression of Foxf2 in mouse cranial neural crest mesenchyme, promoting proliferation and upper lip closure. Human FOXF2 polymorphisms are associated with cleft lip.

Summary: The CUBIC tissue-clearing protocol has been optimized to produce translucent immunostained whole chicken embryos and embryo brains, improving imaging quality for confocal and light-sheet microscopy.