Issues

Summary: This Special Article summarises the history of Drosophila as a model to understand the cancer problem, from the initial work carried out by Mary Stark 100 years ago to today.

Summary: Understanding how congenital kidney diseases arise is imperative to their treatment. Using Xenopus as a model will aid in elucidating kidney development and congenital kidney diseases.

Summary: The Edaradd^swh/swh rat has comparable ear, nose and throat (ENT) pathology to humans with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, and prenatal correction of EDAR signalling in Eda^Ta mice prevents ENT disease.

Summary: Our work identified the driver mutations indispensable for PDAC induction from acinar cells in mature adults and established a novel PDAC animal model with increased similarity to human disease.

Summary: Mortality associated with AKI is in part due to limited treatments available to ameliorate injury. The authors identify a compound that accelerates AKI recovery and promotes cellular dedifferentiation.

Summary: High-risk adenomas display magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features clearly distinguishable from those exhibited by low-risk adenomas, suggesting the possibility of applying MRI to humans for non-invasive diagnostic purposes.

Summary: The bromodomain-containing protein FS(1)H is required in the Drosophila fat body for normal lifespan and metabolic and immune function, largely via the insulin pathway.

Summary: The authors describe the creation of a mouse strain that reproduces a newly identified deletion mutation in a DMD patient in Russia, and present the characteristics of this new model.

Editor's choice: This study describes a novel 3D cell culture model that recapitulates key features of neuropathology in synucleinopathies, including large, nuclear-associated α-synuclein and ubiquitin-positive inclusions.