Issues

Summary: The COVID-19 outbreak has created a global health crisis that is profoundly affecting early-career scientists. This Editorial describes an early-career researcher's experience and the professional and personal challenges during the pandemic.

Summary: Much of our understanding of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) pathogenesis has been achieved through animal models. Here, we discuss the development of advanced precision-based models to improve outcomes for patients with NEC.

Summary: This Review discusses the multifaceted aspects of fibroblast heterogeneity and the different roles of fibroblast subpopulations to help overcome skin scarring and fibrosis.

Summary: A Drosophila melanogaster disease model of retinitis pigmentosa type 13 to study the mechanisms underlying the loss of tissue homeostasis and degeneration caused by mutations in the core component of the spliceosome Prp8.

Summary: Characterization of three new zebrafish mutants highlights the role of cholesterol biosynthesis genes in skeletogenesis and establishes zebrafish models for disorders of the post-squalene cholesterol biosynthesis pathway, including chondrodysplasia punctata.

Summary: Drosophila kidney function in impaired by the steroid hormone ecdysone and by human aldosterone, and when ecdysone increases with age. Steroids induce fibrosis in the fly kidney by signaling through the Dopamine-Ecdysone receptor.

Editor's choice: A new therapeutic strategy targeting peritoneal metastasis based on biomimetic devices that capture disseminating tumour cells is used as a proof of concept in clinically relevant models of advanced ovarian cancer.

Summary: In rats, a high-fat diet induces the selective distribution of fatty acids within phosphatidylcholine in the liver and muscles, in a manner that correlates with organ dysfunction. The cardiovascular system appears to be protected under these conditions.

Summary: The role of host erythrocyte microRNA in the downregulation of malaria parasite gene expression is investigated. Two microRNAs are identified, miR-197-5p and miR-150-3p, which affect parasite growth and invasion when enriched in erythrocytes.

Summary: A Drosophila model of a human YPEL3 variant was generated and used to discover that the human variant alters neuronal communication through a loss-of-function mechanism.

Summary: Here, we report a novel transgenic zebrafish system that permits tissue-specific, inducible and tunable expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines for modeling inflammatory diseases.

Summary: Human stem cell culture methods enable the generation of extracellular matrix-containing tissue to study patient-specific pathology and experimental treatment of the α-dystroglycanopathies.

Summary: An intuitive method to construct quantitative ligand-receptor interactomes using single-cell RNA-sequencing data and its application to normal and Sendai virus-infected mouse lungs.