Issues

Summary: Developmental biology has achieved many amazing accomplishments over the years, but the field needs to consider new strategies for increasing its visibility within the wider scientific community.

Summary: This Primer reviews the role of JAK/STAT signaling in stem cells and regeneration in Drosophila testis, intestine and appendages, and discusses the similarities between Drosophila and vertebrates.

Highlighted Article: An integrated transcriptional and immunohistochemical analysis of human retinogenesis in vivo that is essential for the identification of master genes that cause retinal disease and for the development of innovative retinal therapies.

Summary: A collagen I 3D culture system that does not rely on reporter lines and is permissive for the specification of all lung and airway lineages is described, allowing investigation of conditions that favor specific lineages.

Highlighted Article: A comparison of the functions and expression patterns of PRDM14 orthologues within deuterostomes reveals a framework for addressing how pluripotency transcriptional networks have evolved.

Summary: RNA interference identifies SoxN and Sox102F as key regulators of the morphological properties of a neuronal type of the fruit fly visual system that computes the direction of motion.

Summary: Live imaging of mural cell development in zebrafish uncovers the fact that specification into mural cells is positively regulated by Notch signaling.

Summary: Mouse knockouts reveal that CDK5RAP3 is crucial in liver development and hepatic functions by acting as a substrate adaptor for the UFM1 system, the loss of which triggers endoplasmic reticulum stress.

Summary: The intestinal intermediate filament-rich endotube of C. elegans acts as an intracellular barrier against microbial insults and other stresses.

Summary: Tissue-specific mouse knockouts reveal specific roles for endodermal SHH and BMP4 signals in development of the malleus-incus in pharyngeal arch 1 and the stapes in pharyngeal arch 2, respectively.

Summary: IMP regulates Notch signalling in follicle cells by controlling Kuzbanian localisation to the apical domain, where Notch cleavage occurs, revealing a novel regulatory step in the Notch pathway.

Summary: A fundamentally different mechanism is demonstrated for how Ras signaling governs cell fate specification in the Drosophila somatic versus visceral mesoderms, providing insight into how signaling specificity is achieved.

Summary: Roof-plate cells stretch along the dorsoventral axis of the developing spinal cord and provide a source of Wnt ligands for the proliferation of dorsal ependymal cells.

Highlighted Article: Inactivation of the Hippo pathway (nuclear Yap) or ablation of Yap result in increased β-catenin and Fgf10 signaling, suggesting a cytoplasmic role for Yap in epithelial lineage commitment.

Summary: Characterization of Drosophila Nidogen/Entactin (Ndg) mutants reveals that Ndg is not essential for basement membrane (BM) assembly but its loss impaired BM stability and permeability, and caused peripheral nervous system defects.

Summary: The generation of an analogue-sensitive allele of aPKC in Drosophila allows dissection of the function of aPKC kinase activity with high specificity and temporal control.