Issues

Summary: Judith Kimble discusses her early experiences in the fledgling worm development community, her research career unpacking the mysteries of germ cell regulation and the importance of scientific societies as professional niches.

Summary: Distinguishing developmental biology from other kinds of embryology, this historical commentary reflects on what the field has kept in and left out and ponders the implications for renewal today.

Summary: This review discusses the surprisingly complex lineage hierarchy for adipocytes as well micro-environmental and cell-intrinsic factors that influence adipocyte formation in vivo.

Highlighted Article: The depletion of raptor or rictor in embryonic muscle progenitors and adult muscle stem cells shows that loss of mTORC1, but not mTORC2, signaling strongly affects, but does not abolish, embryonic and adult myogenesis.

Highlighted Article: The Drosophila Arp2/3 complex is the major actin nucleator involved in the initiation of dendrite branchlet formation, under the control of the suppressor of cAMP receptor/WASP family verprolin homology protein.

Highlighted Article: In vivo imaging analysis shows reduced levels of the florigen complex in the shoot apical meristem soon after the floral transition owing to the decreased level of FD expression.

Summary: Maintenance and inhibition of the tumor-suppressor microRNA miR203 reveals an epigenetic miRNA-gene regulatory circuit, conserved in cancer, that controls the timing of neural crest epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition.

Summary: Hunchback misexpression in the Drosophila NB7-1 lineage reveals that intrinsic temporal identity is important for neuronal connectivity.

Summary: Drosophila Serum response factor has a fiber-specific role in controlling actin expression in the adult flight muscles, and functions downstream of the putative pioneer factors Extradenticle and Homothorax.

Summary: Septate junction components function as upstream regulators of the Hippo signaling pathway in the lymph gland, a non-polarized organ, to control Drosophila hematopoiesis and the cellular immune response.

Summary: The Drosophila Pgc protein ensures proper primordial germ cell development by repressing transcription of miRNA genes and contributing to the maintenance of germ plasm integrity during the establishment of the germ cell fate.

Summary: Cdx2 co-occupies a number of cardiac transcription factor loci with Brg1 during embryogenesis, influencing chromatin organization, and thereby regulating gene expression during heart morphogenesis.

Summary: A high-content imaging-based method for phenotypically profiling genes that are required for cell fate specification and tissue morphogenesis in the C. elegans embryo uncovers previously unreported in vivo functions for MBK-2 and LET-381.

Summary: Wnt signalling inhibition directs primed pluripotent cells towards ectoderm differentiation prior to gastrulation, a key step in embryonic patterning and the formation of the embryonic head.

Highlighted Article: Human naïve pluripotent stem cells acquire competence for multilineage differentiation following a developmental trajectory that is comparable with the primate embryonic epiblast, and is facilitated by inhibition of the Wnt pathway.