Issues

Summary: James Sharpe discusses how he became interested in embryology and developmental biology, his vision as head of the new EMBL Barcelona site, and why he thinks computational modelling and programming skills are so important.

Summary: This Review discusses the molecular factors involved in cilium formation and removal, the relevance of these processes to development and how recent findings are highlighting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention in disease.

Summary: A specific class of microRNAs determines the generation of two functionally different classes of touch-sensitive primary sensory types by regulating timing of expression of a fate-specifying transcription factor.

Highlighted Article: Pitx2 is important in the maintenance of the proper cellular composition of the regenerating myocardium by reducing mitochondrial dysfunction and preventing fat accumulation.

Highlighted Article: Two types of neural stem cell, with distinct proliferation modes, act side by side to generate the Drosophila optic lobe, challenging current dogma that they act sequentially.

Highlighted Article: Asymmetric geometrical confinement guides polarised patterning and ensures positional precision of a primitive streak-like population of cells in mouse pluripotent cultures.

Summary: This work traces the bifurcation of the head and trunk skeletal muscle developmental regulatory network to one of the earliest events in mesoderm fate commitment.

Summary: The cell regulator GILZ operates in a complex with TSC22D family proteins in undifferentiated spermatogonia, maintaining self-renewal capacity through mTORC1 suppression and promoting expression of essential spermatogenic factors.

Summary: SmcHD1 contributes to proper establishment of the epigenetic states on the X chromosome during embryonic development, which is required for the maintenance of X inactivation at later stages.

Summary: ROCK-nmMyoII activities, Neurog3 gene dose and Notch signaling integrate endocrine fate allocation with epithelial growth and morphogenesis in pancreatogenesis, representing a feedback circuit coordinating morphogenesis with lineage diversification in the endocrine-birth niche.

Summary: Genetic analysis of AVG pioneer axon guidance in C. elegans reveals that the E3 ubiquitin ligase RPM-1 prevents axon overgrowth by regulating Wnt signaling crosstalk.

Summary: Hedgehog shedding, the proteolytic cleavage of Hedgehog morphogens, is required for tissue patterning and anterior/posterior compartment boundary maintenance in vivo in Drosophila melanogaster.

Summary: Activation of hedgehog signaling contributes to the joint calcification that is induced by loss of Enpp1 function, offering a new therapeutic target for osteoarthritis.

Summary: ANGUSTIFOLIA of Marchantia polymorpha acts as a coordinator of cortical microtubule orientations to regulate cell expansion in three-dimensional gametophyte morphogenesis.

Summary: RARγ is indispensable for the expression of early mesoderm markers and is, therefore, an obligatory factor in mesodermal competence and/or maintenance.

Summary: Drosophila prickle can affect, separately, both the Ds/Ft and the Stan/Fz PCP systems; however, Pk and Sple are not essential for either and do not act as a functional link between the two systems.

Summary: A proof-of-principle application of the Nigri-nox system for in vivo mouse genomic engineering.