Issues

Summary: This Editorial encourages us to embrace the power of the fly in studying human disease and highlights how Drosophila studies can be integrated with research in other species to further our understanding of human biology.

Summary: Comorbidities and tumour genetic diversity more accurately reflect the cancer patient landscape but are largely neglected in animal models. Drosophila holds the potential to address these complexities to better understand their impacts on cancer development.

Summary: We outline work in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster that has contributed knowledge on local and whole-body signalling coordinated by the adult intestine, and discuss its implications in intestinal pathophysiology and associated systemic dysfunction.

Summary: Drosophila tumor models have contributed to our knowledge of cancer cachexia. Here, we review current knowledge on Drosophila cachectic factors, their effects on host organs and metabolism, and discuss open questions for future studies.

Summary: Using Caenorhabditis elegans to explore neuronal and metabolic factors influencing cisplatin toxicity revealed that dopamine treatment protects against the dose-dependent neurotoxicity caused by cisplatin.

Summary: Ectodysplasin-deficient mice have growth retardation of the auditory sebaceous Zymbal's gland and are predisposed to spontaneous bacterial infection of the outer ear canal by opportunistic pathogens.

Summary: We show that RET activation stimulates Stat3 signaling in mammary epithelial cell culture and in vivo during post-lactation transition, demonstrating that the RET receptor participates in the post-lactation transition priming tumorigenesis.

Summary: We used a zebrafish larval model to perform drug screening to identify novel and translational compounds for ameliorating brain damage after a haemorrhage, which may support neuroprotective therapeutic development.

Summary: Exposure of primary human bronchial epithelial cells to smoke affected mitochondria differently in various exposure and culture models, highlighting the importance of tailoring the model to the research question.

Summary: This study describes one of the first zebrafish models of thoracic aortic aneurysm, arising from mutations in ltbp1 and ltbp3, genes that regulate TGFβ signaling.

Summary: Interval exercise training delays the progression of mouse systemic amyloidosis, with potential exercise-induced mechanisms that activate the anti-amyloid chaperone HSPB1 enhanced by the p38 MAPK signaling pathway.

Editor's choice: Compromising Nucleoporins 98 and 96 leads to defects in protein synthesis and stress signaling via JNK that triggers compensatory and apoptosis-induced proliferation.

Summary: A protein-trap line for Drosophila ATF4, encoded by cryptocephal, reveals how this integrated stress response transcription factor responds to physiological stress, and demonstrates its role in Drosophila development and retinal degeneration.

Summary: Histological analysis of rat and human kidneys reveals a novel role for parietal epithelial cells (PECs) in glomerulosclerosis. PECs seem to restore the glomerular epithelial continuum, which may avert further loss of glomerular function.

Summary: This work identifies in mice a single, specific gene variation linked to schizophrenia risk (hemizygosity for genetic deletion of MKK7) that produces a specific cognitive impairment exhibited by patients with schizophrenia.

Summary: This study provides a convenient 3D model of Parkinson's disease (PD), which recapitulates α-synuclein pathologies in human cells and could be used to investigate PD mechanisms and screen drugs.

Summary: Characterisation of a novel loss-of-function zebrafish model for CDKL5 deficiency disorder, containing a nonsense mutation, demonstrates its utility for investigating disease aetiology and allowing high-throughput screening for potentially effective therapies.

Summary: Disruption of mouse Tanc2 causes brain and liver abnormality, increasing psychiatric and somatic disease risk long term, highlighting the benefit of holistic diagnosis and treatment approaches for human neurodevelopmental disorder.

Summary: The DE50-MD canine model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) shows cognitive and brain biochemical changes secondary to dystrophin deficiency in the brain, and is a relevant pre-clinical model to develop therapies for DMD.

Summary: A novel and more effective Cyp4v3 knockout preclinical mouse model for Bietti crystalline dystrophy, which will serve as a useful tool for investigating the pathogensis of the disease in vivo.

Summary: Comparison of three different cell models from Pearson syndrome patients harbouring mitochondrial DNA deletions, which showed a severe failure in OXPHOS function, thus confirming their usefulness for therapeutic research.

Summary: We assessed developmental, neurochemical and behavioral alterations displayed by mao^+/− and mao^−/− zebrafish, establishing that these model organisms are promising tools to study the consequences of MAOA/B deficiency.

Summary: Age-related decline in vision in mice is substantially prevented or restored in response to treatment with a peptide that comprises mitochondrial affinity and improves mitochondrial function.

Summary: We developed an open source and user-friendly data analysis tool, Molecular Subtyping Resource (MouSR), which enables users to perform rapid transcriptomic analyses and comprehensive interrogation of the signalling underpinning transcriptional datasets, potentially facilitating biological discovery.

Summary: A novel reproducible longitudinal multimodal imaging-compatible neutropenic mouse model of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis provides increased early fungal detection through novel red-shifted luciferase-expressing triazole-susceptible and -resistant Aspergillus fumigatus strains, and boosted bioluminescence.