Issues

Summary: Christiana Ruhrberg, the winner of the British Society for Developmental Biology's Cheryll Tickle Medal, discusses her research trajectory from cancer to neurovascular development and her thoughts on the position of women in the field.

Summary: This Primer provides an overview of the roles of p53 in development and stem cells, and highlights how these relate to its well-known functions in tumor suppression.

Summary: This Review looks beyond the role of mitochondria in cellular energy metabolism and highlights recent studies that implicate mitochondrial function in stem cell activation, fate decisions and defense against senescence.

Summary: The conserved transcription factor Lmx1a is required for the formation of terminal filaments in the Drosophila ovary during the larval-pupal transition and is essential for establishment of the stem cell niche.

Summary: The fate of regenerative epidermis cells during zebrafish fin regeneration has been elucidated: they transiently contribute to the regenerated epidermis, but many are expelled by dynamic epidermal rearrangement.

Summary: A unique quantitative approach based on complete reconstruction of the cell lineage that unveils an unknown mechanism of size control in cell populations of rabbit blastocysts, wild types or clones.

Summary: Hypoxia-inducible factor 2a expressed in neuroprogenitors promotes angiogenesis in mouse retina by upregulating expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and erythropoietin, and downregulating endostatin.

Highlighted Article: In the Drosophila embryo, Wingless signalling is required to maintain robust actomyosin enrichment at parasegmental boundaries, and suppresses epithelial folding along these boundaries, where Hedgehog signalling has opposing effects.

Summary: Cis-regulatory diversification among RCO paralogs has resulted in the evolution of a three-gene cluster, in which each member regulates distinct aspects of leaf margin patterning.

Summary: Ddx39ab is required for pre-mRNA splicing of KMT2 histone methyltransferases, with ddx39ab mutants failing to establish the epigenetic status required for terminal differentiation of cardiomyocyte, myoblast and lens fiber cell lineages.

Highlighted Article: Pax6 promotes neuronal differentiation in the developing chick and mouse telencephalon via Notch inhibition, whereas its stage-specific function in RGC maintenance in the VZ is unique to mammalian neocortical progenitors.

Summary: During mouse limb morphogenesis, Wnt5a plays both instructive and permissive roles in regulating planar cell polarity by orienting PCP itself, and by allowing apical ectoderm ridge-derived Fgfs to orient PCP.