Issues

Summary: This Meeting Review summarises the recent ‘Engineering the embryo’ meeting, at which participants explored how synthetic systems can be used to understand principles of embryonic development.

Summary: This Primer article provides an overview of Krüppel-like factors (KLFs), a family of zinc-finger transcription factors that play fundamental roles in development.

Summary: This Review discusses the different lung stem and progenitor cells that exist during normal homeostasis and that display remarkable lineage plasticity following injury.

Highlighted article: Cytotrophoblasts (CTBs) within the smooth chorion of the human placenta are implicated in severe pre-eclampsia, undergoing significant expansion and changes in gene expression.

Summary: Transactivation response element RNA-binding protein (TRBP) acts as a transcriptional coactivator of the Notch pathway and regulates neural stem cells during brain development in mice.

Highlighted article: Integrins are required for neoblast migration and the formation of organized tissues, and for restricting neurogenesis during planarian regeneration.

Highlighted article: Integrin signaling acts to recruit and localize progenitor cells following injury, thereby promoting the correct organization of regenerating planarian tissue.

Highlighted article: Ingestion of low amounts of bacteria induces a mild early stress response that triggers the proliferation of Drosophila midgut stem cells, with excess cells then eliminated by apoptosis.

Summary: PI3-kinase-dependent regulation of DE-cadherin controls cell adhesion between Drosophila neuroblasts and neighboring cortex glia, and between neuroblasts and their daughter cells.

Highlighted article: A network of interactions between cadherins, gap junctions and spontaneous activity governs the assembly of cranial motor neurons into functional groups in the chick brainstem.

Summary: Quantitative measurements and computational modelling suggest that dilution of the cytokine Unpaired is a plausible mechanism to explain growth control in the Drosophila eye disc.

Summary: The activities of two cis-regulatory enhancers, which integrate combinatorial transcription factor input, feedback and redundancy, are coordinated to drive dve expression in the Drosophila eye.

Summary: The C. elegans histone demethylase JMJD-1.2 is required non-cell-autonomously for axon guidance and modulates the transcription of Hh-related genes, revealing a role for Hh signaling in C. elegans neural development.

Summary: The cardiac-enriched microRNA miR-1 negatively regulates the E3 ubiquitin ligase Nedd4L, which ubiquitylates many proteins and controls heart development in Drosophila.

Summary: During trophoblast development in mice, GATA2 and GATA3 act synergistically by directly regulating a large number of common genes, and together are important to ensure trophoblast lineage progression.

Summary: During mammalian blood vessel formation in vivo and in vitro, Flt1 regulates both the frequency of transient contacts that occur before vessels form stable connections and target site selectivity.

Summary: Centrifugal force-mediated translocation of the germinal vesicle of a Halocynthia roretzi oocyte to the opposite side of the egg is sufficient to completely reverse animal-vegetal polarity.

Summary: Drosophila A2BP1 regulates sensory organ specification by potentiating Notch signaling, forming part of the Suppressor of Hairless complex and acting in a context-dependent manner.

Summary: A novel boundary that subdivides the mouse mesodiencephalic floor plate into two microdomains, each giving rise to distinct types of neurons, is identified.

Summary: TALE nucleases are used to target the DDX4 (vasa) locus in chicken primordial germ cells and generate DDX4 knockouts, which provide insights into DDX4 function in early chick development.