Issues

Summary: Ida Chow, Executive Director of the Society for Developmental Biology, reveals her background and discusses the projects that she currently oversees within her role.

Summary: This Primer provides an overview of the GATA family of transcription factors during mammalian development and emphasizes their pleiotropic role in cell lineage decisions and early organogenesis.

Highlighted Article: A systematic spatiotemporal analysis of cytoarchitectural changes within the developing human forebrain lateral ventricle stem cell niche connects stem cell loss and associated ependymogenesis with ventricle structural changes.

Summary: Examination of gene expression and morphological changes in mouse skeletal muscle during prepuberty demonstrates that satellite cell-derived myonuclear accretion contributes to prepubertal hypertrophic skeletal muscle growth.

Highlighted Article: In contrast to the established models of metabolic development, during early neural differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells mitochondrial metabolism decreases while the glycolytic contribution to metabolism increases.

Summary: Mammalian targeted DamID (MaTaDa) provides a method for assessing cell type-specific transcription factor binding in small numbers of cells, potentially enabling the in vivo analysis during development and disease.

Summary: Mutations in RPSA cause isolated congenital asplenia in humans; this paper presents the first animal model of RPSA-mediated asplenia and explores the role of RPSA in vertebrate spleen formation.

Summary: The newly identified placode gene Fam46a is required for the differentiation of the pre-placodal ectoderm (PPE) in early Xenopus development through its interaction with Smad1/Smad4 and its regulation of BMP signaling.

Summary: Midkine secreted from the ectoderm acts as a survival factor by binding to the extracellular region of LTK, triggering a signaling pathway that is crucial for neural crest development in chicken.

Highlighted Article: A detailed examination of the expression-and-silencing cycle of nuclear RNAi-targeted retrotransposon transcripts in C. elegans reveals tight coupling with germline development and a striking nuclear enrichment of these transcripts.

Highlighted Article: Developing mouse medial neocortex is a relict of an ancestral gyrencephalic developing cerebral cortex in terms of the abundance of basal radial glial cells.

Summary: Temporal and spatial patterns of Hippo signaling seen during Drosophila wing development are related to changes in mechanical stress, resulting from alterations in cell density and cytoskeletal tension.

Summary: A novel role of microRNAs in the control of Hox gene expression with impact on the development of morphology in Drosophila, suggesting that microRNAs might play similar roles in other bilaterians.

Summary: The endocytic regulator VPS45 suppresses FGF-independent lens fiber differentiation and ensures the spatial pattern of lens development.

Highlighted Article: Compound homozygous mutants are typically achieved through laborious breeding but the novel CRISPR-stop approach can rapidly generate F0 mice with homozygous zygotic mutations in multiple genes.

Highlighted Article: Quantitative in vivo measurements and computational simulations have enabled the development of analytical tools necessary to identify distinct relationships between hemodynamic parameters and the rapidly morphing pharyngeal arch manifold.