Developmental biology articles within Nature

Featured

  • News & Views |

    A screen of mouse stem cells that exploits their propensity to gain or lose chromosomes in cell culture has been used to convert male XY to female XX cells. Subsequent differentiation generates functional eggs and live offspring.

    • Jonathan Bayerl
    •  & Diana J. Laird

  • Article |

    Mouse induced pluripotent stem cells derived from differentiated fibroblasts could be converted from male (XY) to female (XX), resulting in cells that could form oocytes and give rise to offspring after fertilization.

    • Kenta Murakami
    • , Nobuhiko Hamazaki
    •  & Katsuhiko Hayashi

  • Article |

    A technique to detect the release of N-terminal fragments of Drosophila adhesion G-protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs) provides insight into the dissociation of aGPCRs, and shows that receptor autoproteolysis enables non-cell-autonomous activity of aGPCRs in the brain.

    • Nicole Scholz
    • , Anne-Kristin Dahse
    •  & Tobias Langenhan

  • News & Views |

    A computational tool called CellOracle can predict how networks of genes interact to program cell identity during embryonic development. The tool should help to hone efforts to understand how development is regulated.

    • Jeffrey A. Farrell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A machine-learning-based strategy called CellOracle combines computational perturbation with modelling of gene-regulatory networks to analyse how cell identity is regulated by transcription factors, and correctly predicts phenotypic changes after transcription factor perturbation in the developing zebrafish.

    • Kenji Kamimoto
    • , Blerta Stringa
    •  & Samantha A. Morris

  • Technology Feature |

    Automated microscopes that adapt to each sample’s quirks can capture elusive biological phenomena at high resolution.

    • Jyoti Madhusoodanan

  • Research Briefing |

    Immune cells called T cells were activated in mice and transferred to new mice; the process was repeated several times. The T-cell population derived from the original mice continued to respond to the same immune trigger after ten years — which is about four times the lifespan of a mouse.

  • Research Briefing |

    In egg cells, the ribosomes — the machinery responsible for protein synthesis — are stored in a dormant state that is released later in the developing embryo. An evolutionarily conserved set of proteins has been shown to bind to ribosomes in the egg cells of vertebrates, stabilizing the ribosomes and suppressing their activity.

  • Article |

    Mass spectrometry and structural studies demonstrate the specific changes in protein composition that accompany the transition of ribosomes in zebrafish and Xenopus eggs from a dormant to an active state during early embryogenesis.

    • Friederike Leesch
    • , Laura Lorenzo-Orts
    •  & Andrea Pauli

  • News & Views |

    Regions of the human genome that evolved rapidly after the separation between hominins and chimpanzees have now been charted. They contain genomic elements that are unique to humans and are linked to neurodevelopment and disease.

    • Eucharist Kun
    •  & Vagheesh M. Narasimhan

  • Article |

    An in vitro system that recapitulates temporal characteristics of embryonic development demonstrates that the different rates of mouse and human embryonic development stem from differences in metabolic rates and—further downstream—the global rate of protein synthesis.

    • Margarete Diaz-Cuadros
    • , Teemu P. Miettinen
    •  & Olivier Pourquié

  • News & Views |

    Mouse and human embryos undergo similar developmental steps, but the exact timings differ. An analysis reveals that differences in metabolic activity set the timing of one such step on the road to formation of the vertebrae.

    • Katharina Sonnen

  • Article |

    A 3D model of human segmentation and somitogenesis derived from induced pluripotent stem cells captures the oscillatory dynamics of the segmentation clock as well as morphological and molecular features of the developing embryonic axis and tail.

    • Yoshihiro Yamanaka
    • , Sofiane Hamidi
    •  & Cantas Alev

  • News & Views |

    Radiation-damaged paternal DNA has been found to cause embryos of the second generation of nematode worms, but not the first, to die. The proposed mechanisms help to explain the observed lack of such an effect in humans.

    • Ronald Cutler
    •  & Jan Vijg

  • News & Views |

    Cells in a state of arrested growth, called senescence, have been characterized in skeletal muscle in mice. Senescent cells promote inflammation and block regeneration, and thus might induce harmful changes in aged muscle.

    • David J. Glass

  • Article |

    Somitoids and segmentoids—culture systems that recapitulate the formation of somite-like structures—reveal that an initial salt-and-pepper expression pattern of MESP2 in a newly formed segment is transformed into compartments of anterior and posterior identity through an active cell-sorting mechanism.

    • Yuchuan Miao
    • , Yannis Djeffal
    •  & Olivier Pourquié

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In-depth transcriptomic analyses of 56,636 single cells from monkey embryos revealed transcriptional features of major perigastrulation cell types, and comparative analyses with mouse embryos and human embryoids uncovered conserved and divergent features of perigastrulation development across species.

    • Jinglei Zhai
    • , Jing Guo
    •  & Hongmei Wang

  • Article |

    RibosomeST—a ribosome with a specialized nascent polypeptide exit tunnel—cotranslationally regulates the folding of a subset of male germ-cell-specific proteins that are essential for the formation of sperm.

    • Huiling Li
    • , Yangao Huo
    •  & Jiahao Sha

  • Article |

    The zebrafish segmentation clock drives sequential segmentation of somites by periodically lowering double-phosphorylated Erk and therefore projecting its oscillation on the double-phosphorylated Erk gradient.

    • M. Fethullah Simsek
    • , Angad Singh Chandel
    •  & Ertuğrul M. Özbudak

  • Research Briefing |

    In the neocortex of the brain, excitatory neuronal cells that arise from the same progenitor cell express patterned combinations of clustered protocadherin proteins (cPCDHs). The pattern of cPCDHs expressed by a neuron regulates its spatial positioning and its connections with other neurons.

  • News & Views |

    Mounting evidence suggests that developing neurons and metastatic cancer cells migrate through similar mechanisms. Characterization of a previously unknown complex involved in cell migration confirms this idea.

    • Alain Chédotal

  • News & Views |

    The discovery of a gene that mediates periodic segmentation of the developing backbone of vertebrate embryos opened up research into how the pace of development is controlled by a molecular clock that has a species-specific rhythm.

    • Ryoichiro Kageyama

  • News & Views |

    Human tissue resembling the brain’s cortex can be grown from stem cells in vitro. Transplanting this tissue into a developing rat cortex enables it to mature, integrate into neuronal circuits and influence behaviour.

    • J. Gray Camp
    •  & Barbara Treutlein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A multi-omic atlas of brain organoid development facilitates the inference of an underlying gene regulatory network using the newly developed Pando framework and shows—in conjunction with perturbation experiments—that GLI3 controls forebrain fate establishment through interaction with HES4/5 regulomes.

    • Jonas Simon Fleck
    • , Sophie Martina Johanna Jansen
    •  & Barbara Treutlein

  • News & Views |

    Two groups have grown self-organizing models of mouse embryos from stem cells in vitro. The models mimic mid-gestation embryos, providing an unparalleled opportunity to study early embryonic development.

    • Neal D. Amin
    •  & Sergiu P. Pașca

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of early human embryos reveals that DNA duplication after fertilization is highly inefficient. This causes DNA damage, chromosome breaks and abnormal numbers of chromosomes, impairing embryo development.

    • Tommaso Cavazza
    •  & Melina Schuh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synthetic mouse embryos assembled from embryonic stem cells, trophoblast stem cells and induced extraembryonic endoderm stem cells closely recapitulate the development of wild-type and mutant natural mouse embryos up to embryonic day 8.5.

    • Gianluca Amadei
    • , Charlotte E. Handford
    •  & Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

  • Outlook |

    Science is only now uncovering the complex interaction between hormones, neurosteroids and mood disorders.

    • Bianca Nogrady

  • News & Views |

    Egg cells need to stay out of harm’s way to keep the next generation healthy and free of unwanted mutations. A mechanism by which eggs avoid the ravages caused by harmful reactive oxygen species has now been discovered.

    • Deepak Adhikari
    •  & John Carroll

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