Developmental Biology

Stimulatory and inhibitory G-protein signaling relays drive cAMP accumulation for timely metamorphosis in the chordate Ciona

1. Akiko Hozumi
2. Nozomu M Totsuka
3. Arata Onodera
4. Yanbin Wang
5. Mayuko Hamada
6. Akira Shiraishi
7. Honoo Satake
8. Takeo Horie
9. Kohji Hotta
10. Yasunori Sasakura

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work substantially advances our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the timing of the initiation of metamorphosis of the Ciona ascidian tadpole larva. Through the combination of gene knockdown experiments and fluorescent molecular reporters the authors provide compelling evidence about a crosstalk between different G protein mediated signalling pathways and are able to place different signalling molecules within a signalling network. The work will be of interest to molecular, developmental and marine biologists and to scientists working on animal metamorphosis.

Reviewed by eLife

Mouse scalp development requires Rac1 and SRF for the maintenance of mechanosensing mesenchyme

1. Bharath H. Rathnakar
2. Alex Rackley
3. Hae Ryong Kwon
4. William L. Berry
5. Lorin E. Olson

Reviewed by Review Commons

Glycolytic flux controls retinal progenitor cell differentiation via regulating Wnt signaling

1. Joseph Hanna
2. Yacine Touahri
3. Alissa Pak
4. Lauren Belfiore
5. Edwin van Oosten
6. Luke Ajay David
7. Sisu Han
8. Yaroslav Ilnytskyy
9. Igor Kovalchuk
10. Deborah Kurrasch
11. Satoshi Okawa
12. Antonio del Sol
13. Robert A Screaton
14. Isabelle Aubert
15. Carol Schuurmans

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study advances our understanding of the role that energy metabolism, specifically anaerobic glycolysis, plays during retinal development. Convincing in vitro genetic and pharmacological evidence demonstrates that glycolytic flux controls retinal progenitor cell proliferation rates and the timing of photoreceptor maturation. Interesting evidence suggests potential downstream roles for intracellular pH and Wnt/β-catenin signaling; however, more direct evidence is needed to show they are the key mechanisms through which glycolytic flux regulates retinogenesis in vivo. This work is expected to stimulate broad interest and possible future studies investigating the link between metabolism and development in other tissue systems.

  [Editors’ note: Primary data for this manuscript are not available due to a corrupted hard drive that occurred during the course of peer review. However, preprocessed data are available.]

Reviewed by eLife

A library of lineage-specific driver lines connects developing neuronal circuits to behavior in the Drosophila ventral nerve cord

1. Jelly HM Soffers
2. Erin Beck
3. Daniel J Sytkowski
4. Marianne E Maughan
5. Devasri Devarakonda
6. Yi Zhu
7. Beth A Wilson
8. Yu-Chieh David Chen
9. Ted Erclik
10. James W Truman
11. James B Skeath
12. Haluk Lacin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents an important genetic toolkit for Drosophila neurobiologists to access and manipulate neuronal lineages during development and adulthood. The evidence supporting the fidelity of this toolkit after revision is compelling. This work will interest Drosophila neurobiologists in general, and some of the genetic tools may be used outside the nervous system. The conceptual approaches used in this paper are likely transferable to other fields as comparable data and genomic methods are obtained.

Reviewed by eLife

Planar cell polarity coordination in a cnidarian embryo provides clues to animal body axis evolution

1. Julie Uveira
2. Antoine Donati
3. Marvin Léria
4. Marion Lechable
5. François Lahaye
6. Christine Vesque
7. Evelyn Houliston
8. Tsuyoshi Momose

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This analysis of the formation of the oral-aboral body axis in cnidarians, the sister group of bilaterians, is a significant and fundamental contribution to the field of Wnt signalling and planar cell polarity, particularly in or understanding in gradient formation, non-canonical Wnt signalling and Wnt-Frizzled interactions in cnidarians. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling and has the potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of Wnt signalling in cnidarians and metazoans in general. These findings, which are presented in a thoughtful and scholarly manner, will be of broad interest to developmental and evolutionary biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Drosophila hamlet mediates epithelial tissue assembly of the reproductive system

1. Huazhen Wang
2. Ludivine Bertonnier-Brouty
3. Isabella Artner
4. Jiayu Wen
5. Qi Dai

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses an essential morphogenetic process-epithelial fusion-by identifying the transcription factor Hamlet as a potential master regulator. Using a combination of genetic, cell biological, and omics approaches, including a comprehensive RNAi screen and high-quality imaging, the authors provide compelling evidence for Hamlet's role in coordinating cell fate and differentiation. The findings are robust and of broad interest to developmental biologists and geneticists.

Reviewed by eLife

Krüppel Regulates Cell Cycle Exit and Limits Adult Neurogenesis of Mushroom Body Neural Progenitors in Drosophila

1. Dongni Shao Chen
2. Jin Man
3. Xian Shu
4. Haoer Shi
5. Xue Xia
6. Yusanjiang Abula
7. Yuu Kimata

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important insights into the regulation of neuroblast lifespan and proliferation in the Drosophila mushroom body, identifying Krüppel (Kr) as a key transcription factor promoting timely termination of these neuroblasts by repressing Imp expression, and proposes an antagonistic role of Krüppel homolog 1 (Kr-h1), whose overexpression leads to prolonged mushroom body neuroblast proliferation and tumor-like expansion. The findings are impactful for researchers interested in temporal patterning and neural development, and the methods and data analysis are solid, however, the precise regulatory interactions between Kr and Kr-h1 and their modes of action remain incompletely tested. Further experiments would be required to fully elucidate the mechanistic interplay between the factors involved.

Reviewed by eLife

Endothelial Slit2 guides the Robo1-positive sympathetic innervation during heart development

1. Juanjuan Zhao
2. Susann Bruche
3. Konstantinos Lekkos
4. Carolyn Carr
5. Joaquim M Vieira
6. John G Parnavelas
7. William D Andrews
8. Mathilda TM Mommersteeg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding on the role of Slit-Robo signaling in cardiac innervation. The evidence supporting the main claims of the authors is solid. The use of several mouse models including constitutive and cell type specific knockout models make the findings more robust. The scope of the presented studies is somewhat limited, as they primarily focus on evaluating the phenotypic changes in cardiac innervation following the loss of various Slit or Robo genes.

Reviewed by eLife

map3k1 is required for spatial restriction of progenitor differentiation in planarians

1. Bryanna Isela-Inez Canales
2. Hunter O King
3. Peter W Reddien

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study examines the role of map3k1, a MAP3K family member that has both kinase and ubiquitin ligase domains, in the differentiation of progenitors in the flatworm Planaria. The convincing analyses demonstrate that map3k1 acts within progenitors to restrict their premature differentiation and to prevent formation of teratomas. This work would be of interest to researchers in the fields of regeneration, developmental biology, and aging.

Reviewed by eLife

Changes in neural progenitor lineage composition during astrocytic differentiation of human iPSCs

1. Zongze Li
2. Lucia Fernandez Cardo
3. Michal Rokicki
4. Jimena Monzón-Sandoval
5. Viola Volpato
6. Frank Wessely
7. Caleb Webber
8. Meng Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The manuscript by Li and coworkers analyzed astrocytic differentiation of midbrain floor plate-patterned neural cells originating from human iPS cells, with a LMX1A reporter. This valuable work identifies transcriptomic differences at the single-cell level, between astrocytes generated from LMX1A reporter positive or negative cells, as well as non-patterned astrocytes and neurons. The evidence is solid, but the paper can be strengthened by further analyses of the transcriptomic data, and astrocytic morphology; also, searching for some of the differentially expressed genes by immunohistochemistry in different regions of the mammalian brain, or in human specimens, would be very informative.

Reviewed by eLife