Issues

Summary: This Spotlight article looks at three of the most common paediatric brain tumours as examples of how understanding of developmental lineages and mechanisms has advanced understanding of these cancers.

Summary: This Review, which marks the 50th birthday of Lewis Wolpert's seminal article on positional information, provides a historical perspective on how this concept emerged and proposes a modern interpretation.

Summary: This Review discusses the action of Bicoid and Dorsal at enhancers, which provide a rich platform for understanding direct input by morphogens and their changing roles over time.

Summary: The present Review focuses on advances in our understanding of mammalian alveolar epithelial stem cell subpopulations and discusses insights about the regeneration-specific cell status of alveolar epithelial stem cells.

Summary: Study of neurite and neural crest-derived cell behavior during regeneration of the zebrafish enteric nervous system provides a basis for its research in vivo at single-cell resolution in vertebrates.

Highlighted Article: Adult stem cells require tightly regulated protein synthesis; under conditions of low protein synthesis, muscle stem cell expansion requires selective translation of Tacc3 mRNA.

Summary: Pharyngeal pouch-derived BMP2a and BMP5 are the key niche cues that induce arch artery progenitor specification during zebrafish embryonic development.

Highlighted Article: Loss- and gain-of-function approaches and pharmacological studies reveal that Ccn2a promotes heart regeneration by enhancing pro-regenerative extracellular matrix gene expression and by inhibiting the chemokine receptor gene cxcr3.1.

Summary: Muscle differentiation and regeneration are regulated by an evolutionarily conserved long noncoding RNA that restricts gene expression to coordinate cell state transitions.

Highlighted Article: Analysis of neurulation in mouse and Xenopus reveals novel roles for Lrp2-mediated endocytosis in orchestrating apical constriction and planar cell polarity essential for neural tube closure.

Summary: Characterization of a zebrafish model of SMMD reveals that the transcription factor Nkx3.2 fine-tunes chondrocyte proliferation at skeletal joints versus endochondral growth plates by modulating stress-response and mTORC1 pathways.

Highlighted Article: A lipid-transcription factor interaction is essential for correct differentiation and location of Arabidopsis epidermis.

Summary: The function of Ror2-mediated non-canonical Wnt signaling and its effect on Cdc42 activation is crucial in regulating progenitor cell proliferation, odontoblast differentiation and Hertwig's epithelial root sheath formation during tooth root morphogenesis.

Highlighted Article: In contrast to common thinking, zebrafish primordial germ cells do not rest after arrival at the genital ridge, but display many morphological changes accompanied by pervasive intergenic transcription and piRNA activation.

Summary: A predictive computational model of the regulatory network controlling the dorsal-ventral axis specification in sea urchin embryos, highlighting key features of Nodal and BMP antagonism.

Summary: To model human birth defects caused by DDX3X mutations, we show that Xenopus DDX3 induces neural crest via the AKT-GSK3β axis, which promotes Wnt signaling and Snai1 stability.

Highlighted Article: ESRP1 is important for alternative splicing of maternal RNAs in regulating female germline development and fertility.

Summary:In utero CRISPR AAV9-PHP.eB provides a powerful platform to efficiently manipulate gene expression in the developing CNS to investigate mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders.