Developmental Biology

Paternal over- and under-nutrition program fetal and placental development in a sex-specific manner in mice

1. Hannah L. Morgan
2. Nader Eid
3. Nadine Holmes
4. Matthew Carlile
5. Sonal Henson
6. Fei Sang
7. Victoria Wright
8. Marcos Castellanos-Uribe
9. Iqbal Khan
10. Nazia Nazar
11. Sean T. May
12. Rod T. Mitchell
13. Federica Lopes
14. Robert S. Robinson
15. Augusto A. Coppi
16. Vipul Batra
17. Adam J. Watkins

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates that paternal diet influences not only testicular morphology but also placental and fetal development, supporting a role for paternal contributions to offspring health. The authors combine transcriptomic and histological analyses across multiple tissues, and the evidence supporting the central conclusions is convincing. While aspects of the paternal gut phenotype remain largely descriptive, and the paternal and fetoplacental findings are discussed separately, clearer integration of these elements and additional methodological clarification would strengthen interpretation.

Reviewed by eLife

Imp1 acts as a dosage- and stage-dependent temporal rheostat orchestrating radial glial fate transitions and cortical morphogenesis

1. Romie Angelo G. Azur
2. Daniel Feliciano
3. Isabel Espinosa-Medina
4. Raghabendra Adhikari
5. Joaquin Lilao-Garzón
6. Ella Jensen
7. Ching-Po Yang
8. Tzumin Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study presents new insights into the post-transcriptional mechanisms that govern cortical development. Through state-of-the-art methodology to track neuronal birth order, the data provide compelling evidence that Imp1 (Igf2bp1/Zbp1) orchestrates radial glia fate transitions and cortical neurogenesis. The findings establish a new framework for understanding how post-transcriptional mechanisms integrate with transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory layers to control cortical temporal patterning.

Reviewed by eLife

Simple Methods to Acutely Measure Multiple Timing Metrics among Sexual Repertoire of Male Drosophila

1. Yutong Song
2. Dongyu Sun
3. Xiao Liu
4. Fan Jiang
5. Xuejiao Yang
6. Woo Jae Kim

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful paper describes a software tool, "DrosoMating", which allows automated, high-throughput quantification of 6 common metrics of courtship and mating behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster. The validity of the tool is quite convincingly demonstrated by comparing expert human assessments with those made by DrosoMating. The work, however, does not address how DrosoMating compares with or advances on other existing tools for exactly the same purpose, whether it can be used for studies of other Drosophila species, and/or whether finer aspects of courtship response timing - which depend on proximal female signals to the male - could be extracted with more detailed analyses. Some additional statistical analyses would also help further strengthen the authors' current conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Heterochronic scaling of neurogenesis for species-specific dosing of cortical excitatory subtypes

1. Yuki Y. Yamauchi
2. Xuanhao D. Sheu
3. Rafat Tarfder
4. Takuma Kumamoto
5. Jun Hatakeyama
6. Haruka Sato
7. Pauline Rouillard
8. Merve Bilgic
9. Shuto Deguchi
10. Tomonori Nakamura
11. Yusuke Kishi
12. Kazuo Emoto
13. Ikuo K. Suzuki

Reviewed by Review Commons

Jam2 Signaling Functions Downstream of Hand2 To Initiate The Formation Of Organ-Specific Vascular Progenitors In Zebrafish

1. Martyna Griciunaite
2. Julius Martinkus
3. Sanjeeva Metikala
4. Ricardo DeMoya
5. Suman Gurung
6. Diandra Rufin Florat
7. Saulius Sumanas

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses the question of how organ-specific blood vessels form during different stages of development, and how specific genes may regulate these processes. New genetic tools were developed to label distinct endothelial cell populations and track them over time in different mutant backgrounds. The results are solid; however, additional data quantification, lineage tracing, and cell autonomy experiments would further strengthen the conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Genetic Network Shaping Kenyon Cell Identity and Function in Drosophila Mushroom Bodies

1. Pei-Chi Chung
2. Kai-Yuan Ku
3. Sao-Yu Chu
4. Chen Chen
5. Hung-Hsiang Yu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study uses the Drosophila mushroom body as a model to understand the molecular machinery that controls the temporal specification of neuronal cell types. With convincing experimental evidence, the authors make the finding that the Pipsqueak domain-containing transcription factor Eip93F plays a central role in specifying a later-born neuronal subtype while repressing gene expression programs for earlier subtypes.

Reviewed by eLife

Tissue mechanics and systemic signaling safeguard epithelial tissue against spindle misorientation

1. Floris Bosveld
2. Baptiste Tesson
3. Eric van Leen
4. Sam Amirebrahimi
5. Raphael Thinat
6. Yohanns Bellaiche

Reviewed by preLights

Dynamics of bicoid mRNA localisation and translation dictate morphogen gradient formation

1. T. Athilingam
2. E.L. Wilby
3. P. Bensidoun
4. A. Trullo
5. M. Verbrugghe
6. X. Shi
7. M. Lagha
8. T.E. Saunders
9. T.T. Weil

Reviewed by Review Commons

The Fd4 transcription factor translates transient spatial cues in progenitors into long-term lineage identity

1. Sen-Lin Lai
2. Chris Q Doe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of neuronal diversity. Taking advantage of a well-defined neuroblast lineage in Drosophila, the authors provide convincing evidence that two transcription factors of the conserved forkhead box (FOX) family offer a mechanistic link between transient spatial cues that specify neuroblast identity and terminal selector genes that define post-mitotic neuron identity. The findings will be of interest to developmental neurobiologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Massively parallel reporter assay for mapping gene-specific regulatory regions at single nucleotide resolution

1. Alastair J Tulloch
2. Ryan N Delgado
3. Rinaldo Catta-Preta
4. Constance L Cepko

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents a valuable methodological approach to investigating context-dependent activity of cis-regulatory activity within defined genomic loci. The authors combine a locus-specific massively parallel reporter assay, enabling unbiased and high-coverage profiling of enhancer activity across large genomic regions, with a degenerate reporter assay to identify nucleotides critical for enhancer function. The data supporting the conclusions are solid, highlighted by successful identification and characterization of both previously known and new regulatory elements across multiple developmental stages, cell types, and species. While the approach has inherent limitations in sensitivity, and indirect assignment of regulatory elements to target genes, it provides a flexible platform for nominating candidate cis-regulatory elements across defined loci.

Reviewed by eLife