Issues

Summary: This Development at a Glance article describes how a cells’ limited repertoire of behaviours provide the basis for quantifying morphogenetic phenotypes.

Summary: This Review discusses current knowledge on the regulation of the movement and positioning of nuclei in multinucleated cells, applying the principles learned from well-studied models to other systems.

Highlighted Article: The RNA decay factor, UPF2, drives developmental progression of the mouse inner cell mass, with its loss leading to a deficit of epiblast cells and peri-implantation embryo lethality.

Summary: Loss of β-catenin in the embryonic mouse hem causes profoundly defective dentate gyrus morphogenesis and Cajal-Retzius migration due to disorganization of the fimbrial glial scaffold.

Highlighted Article: Experiments and mathematical modeling suggest that to maintain the functional root apical meristem, its stem cell niche depends on threonine metabolism and modeling correctly predicts root growth pattern.

Highlighted Article: This paper describes a new condensate in the C. elegans germ plasm, ‘germline P-bodies’, which contain regulators of RNA translation and decay and are essential to specify germ cell fate.

Summary: High-resolution ribosome profiling of bovine oocytes and early embryos characterizes the translational landscapes of preimplantation embryo development and reveals four modes of translational selectivity for transcripts in oocytes and embryos.

Highlighted Article: Non-intuitive shadow enhancer synergies are revealed by measuring transcriptional kinetics at the endogenous short gastrulation locus, giving rise to distinct patterning consequences in the dorsal ectoderm of Drosophila embryos.

Highlighted Article: Perinatal SERT expression in hippocampal and medial prefrontal cortex modulates sexually dimorphic gene expression during hippocampal circuit assembly and is a source of sex-biased susceptibilities to cognitive and behavioral impairments.

Summary: EGFR-Ras-ERK activity is downregulated during dauer diapause, a reversible long-lived stage of developmental quiescence, by a mechanism that desensitizes multipotential cells to an EGF patterning signal.

Summary: Early development of the enteric nervous system is orchestrated by neural progenitor cells that migrate into the nascent gut and proliferate extensively in a Ret-dependent manner, driving their colonization from the foregut to the hindgut.

Summary: An unbiased screen to identify cell surface receptors at a Drosophila model boundary reveals that actomyosin enrichment at parasegmental boundaries requires Tartan during early germband extension but Wingless signalling at later stages.

Highlighted Article: The condensation of nephron progenitor cells (NPCs) to the ureteric bud depends strongly on the strong chemokinetic effects of FGF8, providing a mechanism through which NPCs can adapt to the microenvironment.

Summary: Analysis of a Cxcl12 transgenic reporter mouse reveals distinct gene enrichment that defines functional and spatially unique endothelial subtypes in the developing pulmonary arterial tree.

Summary: The Foxf1/Foxf2 transcription factors activate the HGF and TGFβ signaling pathways downstream of hedgehog signaling to drive sequential steps in tongue organogenesis and tongue muscle organization.

Highlighted Article: A subset of gustatory receptor-expressing internal sensory neurons in Drosophila innervates insulin-producing cells and regulates larval development in a stage-specific manner.

Summary: Loss of PAR3 in mouse telencephalon reveals that PAR3 regulates the transition to neurogenic divisions at early neurogenesis by restricting hedgehog signaling and establishing ciliary integrity.

Summary: The transcription factor Isl1 regulates Cxcl12⁺ mesenchymal cell migration through the SHH/WNT5A cascade, and CXCL12 serves as a bidirectional cue for myoblasts expressing its receptor CXCR4 in a concentration-dependent manner.

Summary: Examination of root development in Arabidopsis thaliana mutants reveals a gene regulatory network involving mutual repression of miR156 and PLT2 that influences a phase-change transition in roots.

Highlighted Article: Specification of the gut progenitor E in a distant relative of Caenorhabditis elegans uses the GATA factor ELT-3, suggesting that the ancestral network was simpler.

Summary: Zar1l acts as translational repressor by acting on the 3′UTR of cMos mRNA in Xenopus oocytes, ensuring temporally regulated translation of this key cell cycle regulator during oocyte maturation.

Summary: Plexin D1 acts cell-autonomously in LECs to guide the pathfinding of the zebrafish facial and trunk lymphatic networks.

Summary: Seedling vigor is a key trait that determines juvenile plant performance and can be enhanced by heterologous expression of structural variants of BRX family proteins from the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii.

Summary: Admp is an upstream regulator of tail bending in the chordate Ciona tailbud embryo, determining tissue polarity of the ventral midline epidermis by localizing phosphorylated myosin.

Summary: Single-nuclei analysis identified regulatory genes of cell differentiation in poplar apex, establishing a comparison between a model annual herbaceous and a woody perennial plant species.

Summary: DeepProjection is a deep learning based tool for robust and rapid 2D projection enabling quantification of complex epithelial tissue morphologies with low signal-to-noise ratio and strongly fluorescent artifacts.