The pancreas, a gland that secretes digestive juices into the stomach and insulin into the blood, develops from two endodermal buds. In mice embryos,fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) secreted by the pancreatic mesenchyme control the development of these buds, but how does the pancreatic mesenchyme form?Manfroid and colleagues now show that, in zebrafish embryos, reciprocal endoderm-mesoderm interactions mediated by FGFs control pancreas development(see p. 4011). The researchers identify an area next to the ventral pancreatic bud - the pancreatic lateral plate mesoderm (LPM) - that corresponds to the pancreatic mesenchyme in mice and that is essential for ventral bud development. They show for the first time that transient expression of fgf24 in the endodermal precursor of the ventral bud patterns the pancreatic LPM and report that subsequent expression of fgf10 and fgf24 by the pancreatic LPM controls the specification and growth of the ventral pancreas. Thus, they conclude, sequential signalling between the endoderm and mesoderm drives pancreas development in zebrafish.
Two-way signals for pancreatic development
Two-way signals for pancreatic development. Development 15 November 2007; 134 (22): e2202. doi:
Download citation file:
Advertisement
Cited by
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.