Issues

Summary: This Review discusses the advances in human organoid technologies to improve organoid complexity, through co-culture, transplantation and bioengineering approaches.

Summary: In this Review, we discuss recent advances in the production of brain organoids, highlighting their potential applications as model systems for understanding disease states as well as normal brain development across species.

Summary: Adult zebrafish kidneys induce Wnt signaling to generate new nephrons from resident kidney progenitor cells, highlighting how embryonic morphogens are reactivated in adult organs to drive regeneration.

Highlighted Article: Age-related reproductive decline in C. elegans results from sporadic defects in some animals, but primarily from population-wide processes affecting stem cell number, Notch signaling, cell cycle timing, and meiotic entry and progression.

Summary: Male mice that lack GEMC1, MCIDAS or CCNO are infertile because of defects in differentiation of the multiciliated cells of the efferent ducts of the epididymis.

Summary: The altered timing of maturation caused by CyclinB2 loss results in aneuploidy, ovulation of immature oocytes and decreased fecundity, indicating that CyclinB2 is essential for oocyte re-entry and progression through meiosis.

Summary: Drosophila ocellar cells perform the biological equivalent of a mathematical logarithmic transformation by decoding a morphogen gradient to produce a wave of differentiating photoreceptors that travels at constant speed throughout the retinal epithelium.

Summary: Sinoatrial node cells in mice and humans are characterized by conserved gene programs and signaling pathways.

Highlighted Article: Examination of medaka Crh receptor mutants reveals that the CNS is involved in induction of the female-to-male sex reversal triggered by thermal stress in fish.

Summary: Two inhibitory mechanisms, translational repression and ubiquitin-independent proteasomal turnover, regulate Dnd1 protein levels in Xenopus oocytes, revealing novel functions and spatial regulation of the ubiquitin-independent proteasome during vertebrate germline development.

Summary: Studies using Drosophila class IV dendritic arborization (c4da) neurons, reveal that JNK coordinates with EcRB1 signaling to promote dendrite pruning and identify Fos as a novel downstream target of EcRB1.

Summary: A combination of genetic studies with rescue constructs and in vitro experiments reveal that Drosophila Ensconsin recruits but also stimulates Kinesin-1 affinity for microtubules.

Highlighted Article: Targeted disruption of astrocytic PHD2 led to HIF-2α accumulation and prolonged expansion of the retinal astrocyte population and the resulting supra-physiological astrocyte abundance prevented retinal vascular pruning in neonatal mice.

Summary: Analyses of genetic null mutations in glycogen metabolism enzymes reveal that glycogen is not essential for adult emergence and fertility but has stage-specific requirements in Drosophila.

Summary: The Par polarity complex suppresses JNK pathway activity in Drosophila somatic support cells to allow stage-specific germ cell survival.

Highlighted Article: Variants of VAB-3, the C. elegans homolog of Pax6 and Eyeless, have opposing functions in controlling expression of a specific neuronal fate that might also be recapitulated in the vertebrate nervous system.