Issues

Summary: This Meeting Review summarises the key advances presented at the recent Company of Biologists workshop on Transdifferentiation and Tissue Plasticity in Cardiovascular Rejuvenation.

Summary: This Review article summarises how plants control various types of regeneration and discusses how developmental and environmental constraints influence these regulatory mechanisms.

Summary: Trop2, a marker of gastric fetal glandular epithelium grown ex vivo, is re-expressed upon injury in adult regenerative cells together with a partial fetal-like genetic program.

Summary: Regeneration of spinal motor neurons following mechanical lesion or genetic ablation occurs at the expense of oligodendrogenesis and is promoted by the innate immune system.

Highlighted article: Expression of cell surface protein ASGR1 can be used to isolate a subpopulation of more mature, homogenous hepatocyte-like cells derived during differentiation from pluripotent stem cells.

Highlighted article: A quantitative analysis of growth dynamics of the Drosophila eye primordium reveals that the area growth rate declines in inverse proportion to the increasing total area.

Highlighted article: CP110 promotes the assembly of subdistal appendages and ciliary vesicle docking during cilia formation in vivo, thereby facilitating mammalian organogenesis.

Highlighted article: Upregulation of replication-dependent core histone genes by retinoic acid signaling contributes to spermatogonial differentiation in mice.

Summary: Loss of LHX2 replicates a subset of the phenotypes seen in embryos with reduced NF-κB signaling, while exogenous TGFβ2 can rescue this effect in Lhx2 knockout skin explants.

Summary: FoxQ2 activates an anterior signaling center that expresses the secreted Wnt modulators sFRP1/5 and Dkk3 – essential components of the Wnt network governing anterior-posterior neuroectoderm patterning.

Summary: Ablation of RGMB expression, or of its receptor neogenin, leads to increased progenitor cell numbers and affects cell fate choice in the developing mouse olfactory epithelium.

Summary: Developmental splicing of Ca_V1.1 restricts calcium currents in skeletal muscle, which are critical for activity-dependent regulation of fiber type specification and the prevention of mitochondrial damage.

Summary: A Sema3A-initiated apoptotic signaling complex regulates the apoptosis of sympathetic neurons during their period of naturally occurring cell death.

Summary: Bmi1 is required to prevent postnatal degeneration of cone photoreceptors and bipolar neurons, while BMI1 inactivation in human embryonic stem cells impairs cone terminal differentiation.

Summary: The zebrafish maternal-effect gene aura encodes Mid1ip1l, which is involved in cytoskeletal rearrangements during the egg-to-embryo transition.

Summary: RNA polymerase II subunit NRPB3 interacts with stomatal bHLH transcription factors FAMA and ICE1, connecting the stomatal development pathway to the general transcription machinery.

Summary: Three pathways converge to regulate the balance between meristem size, morphology and organization in the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem.

Summary: DRACULA2, an Arabidopsis nucleoporin with an SAS regulatory role, participates in nucleocytoplasmic transport and also appears to have a transport-independent role in controlling shade-induced gene expression.