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the Node is a community blog for and by developmental biologists.
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- August 2, 2010
- 04:17 AM
- 1,937 views
The Intestinal Crypt
It’s not often that the introductory part of a research talk is beautiful as well as informative, but Hans Clevers achieves both by using this video about the intestinal crypt in his presentations. (Click either screenshot to see the video)
The video shows how stem cells at the base of the intestinal crypt produce the epithelial [...]... Read more »
Barker, N., van Es, J., Kuipers, J., Kujala, P., van den Born, M., Cozijnsen, M., Haegebarth, A., Korving, J., Begthel, H., Peters, P.... (2007) Identification of stem cells in small intestine and colon by marker gene Lgr5. Nature, 449(7165), 1003-1007. DOI: 10.1038/nature06196
Barker, N., Ridgway, R., van Es, J., van de Wetering, M., Begthel, H., van den Born, M., Danenberg, E., Clarke, A., Sansom, O., & Clevers, H. (2008) Crypt stem cells as the cells-of-origin of intestinal cancer. Nature, 457(7229), 608-611. DOI: 10.1038/nature07602
- September 2, 2010
- 12:01 PM
- 1,660 views
Evolution of cerebral cortex traced back to Precambrian era
In a paper published today in Cell, Detlev Arendt, Raju Tomer and colleagues reveal evidence that the cerebral cortex evolved much earlier than previously believed. Using a new technique to detect and image simultaneously expressed genes in a compact brain area, they discovered that the gene expression patterns in the olfactory processing region (mushroom bodies) [...]... Read more »
Raju Tomer, Alexandru S. Denes, Kristin Tessmar-Raible, & Detlev Arendt. (2010) Profiling by Image Registration Reveals Common Origin of Annelid Mushroom Bodies and Vertebrate Pallium. Cell, 142(5), 800-809. info:/10.1016/j.cell.2010.07.043
- February 8, 2011
- 08:28 PM
- 1,622 views
Embryonic stem cell origin — food for thought
by Erin Campbell in the Node
What I love about developmental biology is the collaborative nature of the field. The vast majority of biologists feel that by sharing ideas, data, and reagents, we can learn more than if we were all to work alone with blinders on our heads. A recent paper in Development puts forth a hypothesis about embryonic stem [...]... Read more »
Nichols, J., & Smith, A. (2010) The origin and identity of embryonic stem cells. Development, 138(1), 3-8. DOI: 10.1242/dev.050831
- December 8, 2010
- 03:06 PM
- 1,608 views
Evolution of development and an uncommon model organism
by Erin Campbell in the Node
We can all articulate the importance of using model organisms to understand biology, but many of us fall short in our understanding of some of the more uncommon model organisms. Thankfully, there are amazing biologists out there that save the day! These researchers use some of the more atypical model organisms to understand how different [...]... Read more »
Vargas-Vila, M., Hannibal, R., Parchem, R., Liu, P., & Patel, N. (2010) A prominent requirement for single-minded and the ventral midline in patterning the dorsoventral axis of the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. Development, 137(20), 3469-3476. DOI: 10.1242/dev.055160
- April 12, 2011
- 04:00 PM
- 1,522 views
Establishing a niche
by Erin Campbell in the Node
If there is hope to fully understand stem cells, then the environment surrounding those stem cells must be understood too. A recent Development paper describes important results on niche establishment in Drosophila. Stem cell niches play an important role in regulating stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. The Drosophila testis has two populations of stem cells [...]... Read more »
Okegbe, T., & DiNardo, S. (2011) The endoderm specifies the mesodermal niche for the germline in Drosophila via Delta-Notch signaling. Development, 138(7), 1259-1267. DOI: 10.1242/dev.056994
- March 31, 2011
- 07:06 AM
- 1,502 views
Marion Silies wins GfE thesis award
Every two years, the German society for developmental biology (Gesellschaft für Entwicklungsbiologie - GfE) hands out an award for the best PhD thesis of the previous two years. At their society meeting last week, this award went to Marion Silies, for her PhD thesis on glial cell migration. I met up with Marion after her [...]... Read more »
Silies M, & Klämbt C. (2010) APC/C(Fzr/Cdh1)-dependent regulation of cell adhesion controls glial migration in the Drosophila PNS. Nature neuroscience, 13(11), 1357-64. PMID: 20890296
- May 3, 2011
- 12:00 PM
- 1,499 views
An After Thought to Evolution: Exceptional ways of Controlling Gene “Expression”
Unusual control of miR166/65 expression by AGO10 is required for meristem development in Arabidopsis... Read more »
Zhu H, Hu F, Wang R, Zhou X, Sze SH, Liou LW, Barefoot A, Dickman M, & Zhang X. (2011) Arabidopsis Argonaute10 Specifically Sequesters miR166/165 to Regulate Shoot Apical Meristem Development. Cell, 145(2), 242-56. PMID: 21496644
- November 8, 2010
- 01:34 PM
- 1,463 views
Transparent mouse embryos and hematopoietic cell clusters
by Erin Campbell in the Node
I was lucky in graduate school and my postdoctoral research—I was a microscopist working on a transparent organism (C. elegans). Some microscopists don’t have that luxury, but have developed amazing techniques in order to visualize development in organisms such as mice. In the November 1 issue of Development, Yokomizo and Dzierzak use a technique that [...]... Read more »
Yokomizo, T., & Dzierzak, E. (2010) Three-dimensional cartography of hematopoietic clusters in the vasculature of whole mouse embryos. Development, 137(21), 3651-3661. DOI: 10.1242/dev.051094
- September 8, 2011
- 02:27 AM
- 1,454 views
Optical clearing with Scale
by Paul O'Neill in the Node
Transparency. A desirable virtue in many walks of life, and a particularly useful trait in developmental biology. Model organisms that are see-through offer unique advantages, especially when it comes to detailed 3D imaging. A new report in Nature Neuroscience offers a potential advance in this area. Researchers from Japan have stumbled upon a novel aqueous [...]... Read more »
Hama, H., Kurokawa, H., Kawano, H., Ando, R., Shimogori, T., Noda, H., Fukami, K., Sakaue-Sawano, A., & Miyawaki, A. (2011) Scale: a chemical approach for fluorescence imaging and reconstruction of transparent mouse brain. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2928
- September 1, 2010
- 10:17 AM
- 1,447 views
Phenologs and unlikely models
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here”, were the first words of Edward Marcotte’s talk at the SDB meeting last month. After all, he was about to speak about systems biology in a session on organogenesis. What followed was not only a new way to identify genes involved in developmental processes, but also a perfect example [...]... Read more »
Kriston L. McGary, Tae Joo Park, John O. Woods, Hye Ji Cha, John B. Wallingford, & Edward M. Marcotte. (2010) Systematic discovery of nonobvious human disease models through orthologous phenotypes. PNAS. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910200107
- April 7, 2011
- 06:40 AM
- 1,423 views
A new view on eye development
How do you make an eye? In the developing embryo, this process begins with the formation of the optic vesicle from the neural tube. This optic vesicle then invaginates to form an optic cup, which in turn develops into the outer pigmented layer of the retina and the inner neurosensory layer. Normally, this all takes [...]... Read more »
Eiraku, M., Takata, N., Ishibashi, H., Kawada, M., Sakakura, E., Okuda, S., Sekiguchi, K., Adachi, T., & Sasai, Y. (2011) Self-organizing optic-cup morphogenesis in three-dimensional culture. Nature, 472(7341), 51-56. DOI: 10.1038/nature09941
- February 17, 2011
- 08:04 PM
- 1,416 views
A Lab Murder Mystery
“A researcher is found dead hunched over her lab bench, and seven suspects are in custody. Now it’s up to 30 high school students to determine who killed her.” To quote from the UBC Science newsletter. Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t tabloid fodder. It’s actually part of a high school out-reach program, organized by UBC’s grad student [...]... Read more »
Caylib Durand and Santiago Ramón-García. (2010) The Use of Popular Fiction to Present a Professional Scientific Career to High School Students. JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY , 166-167. info:/10.1128/jmbe.v11i2.19
- March 9, 2011
- 02:58 PM
- 1,407 views
The amazing neural crest
by Erin Campbell in the Node
The power of stem cells lies in the ability to give rise to many different cell types. The stem cells found in the neural crest are no exception, and a recent Development paper describes the importance of Foxd3 in maintaining self-renewal and multipotency of these stem cells, and in regulating the fate choice of these [...]... Read more »
Mundell, N., & Labosky, P. (2011) Neural crest stem cell multipotency requires Foxd3 to maintain neural potential and repress mesenchymal fates. Development, 138(4), 641-652. DOI: 10.1242/dev.054718
- September 7, 2011
- 10:35 AM
- 1,402 views
Turtles in a nutshell
by Bruno Vellutini in the Node
Turtles are peculiar vertebrates. They have a compact skull with no temporal openings, a beak instead of teeth, a contractible neck, and a shell covering its trunk. The famous turtle shell is composed of two halves, a plastron (ventral) and a carapace (dorsal). The latter is an exquisite arrangement of vertebrae and fan-shaped ribs with [...]... Read more »
Kuratani, S., Kuraku, S., & Nagashima, H. (2011) Evolutionary developmental perspective for the origin of turtles: the folding theory for the shell based on the developmental nature of the carapacial ridge. Evolution , 13(1), 1-14. DOI: 10.1111/j.1525-142X.2010.00451.x
Nagashima, H., Sugahara, F., Takechi, M., Ericsson, R., Kawashima-Ohya, Y., Narita, Y., & Kuratani, S. (2009) Evolution of the Turtle Body Plan by the Folding and Creation of New Muscle Connections. Science, 325(5937), 193-196. DOI: 10.1126/science.1173826
Nagashima, H., Kuraku, S., Uchida, K., Ohya, Y., Narita, Y., & Kuratani, S. (2007) On the carapacial ridge in turtle embryos: its developmental origin, function and the chelonian body plan. Development, 134(12), 2219-2226. DOI: 10.1242/dev.002618
Li, C., Wu, X., Rieppel, O., Wang, L., & Zhao, L. (2008) An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China. Nature, 456(7221), 497-501. DOI: 10.1038/nature07533
Reisz, R., & Head, J. (2008) Palaeontology: Turtle origins out to sea. Nature, 456(7221), 450-451. DOI: 10.1038/456450a
- January 11, 2011
- 09:26 AM
- 1,398 views
Arrested Development in miRNA Mutants
Animals and Plants have hundreds of miRNAs with diverse roles in gene regulation. In humans, each miRNA family can control up to several hundred genes (or 500 to be exact, in humans). A loss of function in one, can lead to array of developmental defects. Similarly in plants, an miRNA mutant can have a variety of phenotypes. However, interestingly, many miRNAs only have one target, which is frequently a transcription factor that in turn, controls many genes itself. It's really like a house of car........ Read more »
Garzon, R., Marcucci, G., & Croce, C. (2010) Targeting microRNAs in cancer: rationale, strategies and challenges. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 9(10), 775-789. DOI: 10.1038/nrd3179
Allen, R., Li, J., Stahle, M., Dubroue, A., Gubler, F., & Millar, A. (2007) From the Cover: Genetic analysis reveals functional redundancy and the major target genes of the Arabidopsis miR159 family. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(41), 16371-16376. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707653104
Schwab, R., & Voinnet, O. (2009) miRNA processing turned upside down. The EMBO Journal, 28(23), 3633-3634. DOI: 10.1038/emboj.2009.334
SCHAUER, S., JACOBSEN, S., MEINKE, D., & RAY, A. (2002) : blind men and elephants in development. Trends in Plant Science, 7(11), 487-491. DOI: 10.1016/S1360-1385(02)02355-5
Laufs, P. (2004) MicroRNA regulation of the CUC genes is required for boundary size control in Arabidopsis meristems. Development, 131(17), 4311-4322. DOI: 10.1242/dev.01320
- September 8, 2011
- 09:45 AM
- 1,355 views
Satellite cells muscle their way into the stem cell spotlight
by Erin Campbell in the Node
Researchers have long known about regeneration of injured muscles, and have debated about the exact source of the muscle stem cells that perform this amazing feat. A group of papers in a recent issue of Development shine a stem cell spotlight on satellite cells. Following injury, skeletal muscles are regenerated by muscle stem cells, but [...]... Read more »
Lepper, C., Partridge, T., & Fan, C. (2011) An absolute requirement for Pax7-positive satellite cells in acute injury-induced skeletal muscle regeneration. Development, 138(17), 3639-3646. DOI: 10.1242/dev.067595
- May 9, 2011
- 08:59 AM
- 1,314 views
The story behind the screen – flashbacks from the first RNAi screen in a whole vertebrate
by Raman Das in the Node
The story of our recently released Development paper ‘FatJ acts via the Hippo mediator Yap1 to restrict the size of neural progenitor cell pools’ (http://dev.biologists.org/content/138/10/1893.full) involves hundreds of dozens of fresh free-range eggs and not trivial amounts of time spent peering down a microscope. I have written this with Nick van Hateren, who is the joint first author of this paper along with me.... Read more »
Van Hateren, N., Das, R., Hautbergue, G., Borycki, A., Placzek, M., & Wilson, S. (2011) FatJ acts via the Hippo mediator Yap1 to restrict the size of neural progenitor cell pools. Development, 138(10), 1893-1902. DOI: 10.1242/dev.064204
- August 9, 2011
- 02:06 PM
- 1,220 views
Waves of early transcriptional activation and pluripotency program initiation during human preimplantation development
by izpisuabelmonte in the Node
Since I was an undergraduate student at the Veterinary School in Milan, and throughout the rest of my scientific career, I have been fascinated with the complexities of mammalian preimplantation development. That’s why the publication of our recent paper “Waves of early transcriptional activation and pluripotency program initiation during human preimplantation development” feels like the [...]... Read more »
Vassena, R., Boue, S., Gonzalez-Roca, E., Aran, B., Auer, H., Veiga, A., & Belmonte, J. (2011) Waves of early transcriptional activation and pluripotency program initiation during human preimplantation development. Development, 138(17), 3699-3709. DOI: 10.1242/dev.064741
- September 27, 2010
- 12:19 PM
- 1,210 views
Pleiades Promoter Project
A recent paper in PNAS describes the development of MiniPromoters: human DNA promoters of less than 4 kb, designed to drive gene expression in specific areas of the brain. The initiative is called the Pleiades Promoter Project, and so far they have confirmed brain-region specific activity in knockin mice for 27 of their MiniPromoters. The [...]... Read more »
Portales-Casamar, E., Swanson, D., Liu, L., Leeuw, C., Banks, K., Ho Sui, S., Fulton, D., Ali, J., Amirabbasi, M., Arenillas, D.... (2010) A regulatory toolbox of MiniPromoters to drive selective expression in the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16589-16594. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009158107
- July 14, 2011
- 07:10 AM
- 1,174 views
Sperm stem cells and that trusty old friend Wnt
by Erin Campbell in the Node
Sperm stem cells have a lot riding on their success. Not only must they produce the actual sperm, but they must maintain a life-long supply. So, the self-renewal of spermatogonial stem cells is a finely-tuned talent of these stem cells. A recent paper in the Journal of Cell Science describes the role of Wnt signaling [...]... Read more »
Yeh JR, Zhang X, & Nagano MC. (2011) Wnt5a is a cell-extrinsic factor that supports self-renewal of mouse spermatogonial stem cells. Journal of cell science, 124(Pt 14), 2357-66. PMID: 21693582
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