Issues

Summary: Frank Jülicher looks back on the life of Suzanne Eaton and reflects on how her work on Drosophila tissue morphogenesis contributed to the fields of cell and developmental biology.

Summary: This Primer discusses Hydra as a model system for investigating regeneration, highlighting how the reactivation of developmental processes leads to whole-body regeneration after amputation and also after tissue dissociation and reaggregation of organoid-like structures.

Summary: This Review focuses on the specific interdependence of axons and Schwann cells that enables peripheral nerve development and maintenance.

Summary: As pluripotent cells undergo neural differentiation they swap E-cadherin for N-cadherin. This switch in adhesion molecules modulates signalling in order to facilitate the differentiation process.

Summary: Although the cyclin-dependent kinase CDK2 is not necessary for spermatogonial function in mice, CDK2 hyperactivity delays establishment of the spermatogonial stem cells and prevents their differentiation.

Highlighted Article: PLXNA1 and PLXNA3 convey the pathfinding of olfactory and vomeronasal axons as a prerequisite for neuroendocrine neurons to migrate into the hypothalamus and release gonadotropins into the circulation.

Summary: Expressing anti-angiogenic signals in the zebrafish pancreatic islet reveals distinct roles for the vasculature in tissue architecture and function.

Summary: Live imaging of the early Drosophila embryo reveals the dynamics of an extracellular morphogen gradient that undergoes continuous refinement by ligand shuttling, generating a sharp morphogen peak that is essential for patterning gastrulation.

Summary: Temporospatial sonic hedgehog signalling in neural crest-derived lingual mesenchyme is involved in arrangement of the lingual muscles through tenocyte differentiation.

Highlighted Article: The motor activity of non-muscle myosin II is essential for cytokinesis and contributes to all stages of the process in C. elegans embryos.

Summary: Inhibition of nuclear accumulation and microRNA-mediated repression of protein synthesis cooperate to confer the necessary precision and robustness to temporal downregulation of a transcription factor.

Summary: GATA2 and its target gene miR-126 are novel regulators of lymphatic endothelial cell junctions, which are important regulators of vascular morphogenesis.

Summary: Retinoic acid is important for, and integrated into, the endocrine regulation of zebrafish spermatogenesis; however, in contrast to mammals, is not crucial for spermatogonia differentiation.

Summary: Time-lapse three-dimensional imaging is a powerful method to analyze spatiotemporal gene expression changes of individual cells in inner and outer hair cell fate control of embryonic cochlear epithelium.

Highlighted Article: We have developed a new transgenic technique for simultaneous labelling of all three germ layers in mice that overcomes the difficulties of conventional single-gene tracing systems in precision lineage tracing.