Issues

Summary: This Development at a Glance article provides an overview of the VEGF signaling pathway and highlights the functions of VEGF/VEGFR signaling in blood and lymphatic vessel development and pathology.

Summary: This Review presents several unresolved issues relating to developmental ERK signaling via examples from three canonical experimental systems.

Summary: In regenerating tissues, polyploidization is a commonly used strategy to compensate for cell loss. Such tissues are less dependent on resident stem cells, an advantage that may be exploited in regenerative therapy.

Summary: Neutral, low-density lineage tracing of proliferative mammary stem and progenitor cells during embryonic, pubertal and reproductive mammary gland development reveal the disparate and stage-specific contribution of distinct stem/progenitor cells.

Summary: Auxin-induced organ formation during plant postembryonic development is associated with upregulation of endogenous cytokinins that contribute to the exogenous cytokinin-regulated identity and development of newly formed organs via AHK4-mediated signalling.

Summary: A combination of genetic and pharmacological manipulation shows that SOX2 is required downstream of Hedgehog signaling for differentiation of taste bud cells, as well as for tongue epithelium renewal.

Highlighted Article: The Insulin receptor likely functions through PAR-1 to alter the activity of Drosophila Myosin II, which is crucial for the efficient detachment and forward movement of the border cell cluster.

Summary: Acute ablation of differentiating cells immediately outside the neuroepithelium causes basal overshooting of progenitor cell nuclei/somata, disturbing their cell cycle and apical nucleokinesis, suggesting the importance of neuron-progenitor physical interactions.

Summary: Live imaging in zebrafish shows that cardiomyocyte division is preceded by sarcomere disassembly and changes in cell shape and volume, with distinct signaling pathways controlling proliferation of compact and trabecular cardiomyocytes.

Summary: Chemokine-induced Snail1b plays an unexpected role in the sequential formation of neuromasts by initiating collective migration of the zebrafish posterior lateral line primordium.

Highlighted Article: The Insulin pathway and FoxO are key regulators of Profilin expression, which is essential for the actin dynamics that support collective cell migration in Drosophila.

Highlighted Article: Myc operates in a positive feedback loop with WNT/FGF signals to maintain the progenitors which facilitate body axis elongation, and its activity is crucial for timing of the segmentation clock.

Summary: The Erk5 pathway plays an important role in skeletogenesis in mesenchymal cells, by decreasing the stability of Smad proteins, thus reducing Sox9 expression.

Summary: Using the sea lamprey, we show that Neuropilin-Semaphorin3F signaling has an evolutionarily ancient role in patterning cranial neural crest cells, providing insights into the ancestral mechanisms involved in neural crest patterning.

Summary: In developing mammary glands, ID2 acts as a key mediator of progesterone, inducing the differentiation of primitive progenitor cells into specific lineage cells in putative side-branching points.

Summary: Conditional deletion of Sp8, Sp9 and Six3 reveals a regionally specific transcription pathway that selectively drives the generation of striatal DRD2-expressing medium spiny neurons in mouse striatum.

Highlighted Article: This work provides the first molecular description of dynamic cellular reprogramming during haustorium development in parasitic plants by live imaging-based marker expression and cell lineage analyses.

Summary: SOX9 directly upregulates genes specifically expressed in precartilaginous condensations and well-known early-cartilage markers, but only partially contributes to the initiation of chromatin remodeling at precartilage and early-cartilage loci.

Summary: Conditional inactivation of the polycomb gene Eed in nephron progenitor cells results in their premature loss and prevents normal nephron differentiation beyond the S-shaped tubule stage.

Summary: During early embryogenesis, ventrally enriched Notch1 participates in the control of initial DV polarity by promoting the development of the ventral center and by destabilizing transcriptionally active β-catenin.

Highlighted Article: Analysis of Brachypodium leaf epidermis development reveals that the MAPKKK BdYODA1 regulates asymmetric divisions by enforcing resultant cell fates rather than driving initial physical asymmetries.