Morphogenesis articles from across Nature Portfolio

The flightless emu wings have a striking resemblance to immobilization phenotypes. Here, authors report that cell death of dual-identity muscle progenitors during embryonic development contributes to distal muscle absence, linked to skeletal shortening and asymmetry in this vestigial structure.

Albu et al. show that muscle cells in the cardiac atrium construct structures through heterogeneous cell behaviors that are different, at the cellular and molecular levels, from those involved during ventricular chamber maturation.

Growth and differentiation of pulmonary epithelial cells is precisely controlled to form the alveoli that create the gas exchange region of the lung. Here, the authors demonstrate that epigenetic modulation of the genome by PRDM3/16 mediates NKX2-1 activity to control alveolar cell fate and differentiation during embryonic and perinatal lung development.

Schliffka et al. show that in the early mouse embryo, hemispherical intrusions, or inverse blebs, grow into cells at cell–cell adhesion sites in response to luminal fluid accumulation and pressure build-up, and may serve as pumps moving fluid into hydraulic sinks.

Mechanical forces act at the core of bird embryonic self-organization, shaping both tissues and gene expression to robustly yet plastically canalize early development.

Boulgakoff et al. show that during cardiac regeneration, ventricular trabeculae participate in the repair of the contractile myocardium resulting in an excessive production of immature Purkinje fibers forming a hyperplastic PF network and altered ventricular conduction.

An article in Nature Materials describes the bioprinting of hydrogel force sensors directly into the tissues of live embryos to quantify the mechanical forces driving morphogenesis.

Cell–cell adhesions are inevitably exposed to mechanical forces. A landmark paper by Yonemura et al. identified how tension alters molecular function of the cadherin adhesion apparatus. Its legacy lies in the many on-going efforts to understand how mechanical force is used in cell–cell communication.

Analysis of cells shed from the mouse gut, using bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, as well as single-molecule FISH and intravital imaging, revealed that shed cells are diverse, remain viable for a few hours and upregulate anti-microbial gene expression programs.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Sarah Paramore (from the Devenport and Nelson labs) discusses the use of mouse strains carrying genomic alterations in PCP genes and how they can increase our understanding of mammalian planar cell polarity.

Originally from central Mexico and now found worldwide, the axolotl is a prominent model organism in numerous fields of research.

On the 70th anniversary of Alan Turing’s seminal paper on morphogenesis, we look back at the history of the paper and its many applications.