Developmental Biology

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

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

Different cellular and molecular mechanisms of chitin deposition contribute to the specificity of the two chitin synthases in D. melanogaster

1. Joan Bertran-Mas
2. Ettore De Giorgio
3. Nicolás Martín
4. Marta Llimargas

Reviewed by Review Commons

Comparative analysis of the syncytiotrophoblast in placenta tissue and trophoblast organoids using snRNA sequencing

1. Madeline M Keenen
2. Liheng Yang
3. Huan Liang
4. Veronica J Farmer
5. Rizban E Worota
6. Rohit Singh
7. Amy S Gladfelter
8. Carolyn B Coyne

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study uses single-cell transcriptomics to analyze syncytiotrophoblasts in two trophoblast organoid models compared to primary placental tissue, providing compelling insights into syncytialization and highlighting the utility of organoid models in placental research. It also serves as an invaluable resource for the field.

Reviewed by eLife

The glycosyltransferase POGLUT1 regulates muscle stem cell development and maintenance in mice

1. Soomin Cho
2. Emilia Servián-Morilla
3. Victoria Navarro Garrido
4. Beatriz Rodriguez-Gonzalez
5. Youxi Yuan
6. Raquel Cano
7. Arjun A. Rambhiya
8. Radbod Darabi
9. Robert S. Haltiwanger
10. Carmen Paradas
11. Hamed Jafar-Nejad

Reviewed by Review Commons

Ecdysone-mediated intestinal growth contributes to microbiota-driven developmental plasticity under malnutrition

1. Longwei Bai
2. Stéphanie Bellemin
3. Elodie Guillemot
4. Maura Strigini
5. Benjamin Gillet
6. Cathy Isaura Ramos
7. François Leulier

Reviewed by Review Commons

Fat body-derived cytokine Upd2 controls disciplined migration of tracheal stem cells in Drosophila

1. Pengzhen Dong
2. Yue Li
3. Yuying Wang
4. Qiang Zhao
5. Tianfeng Lu
6. Jian Chen
7. Tianyu Guo
8. Jun Ma
9. Bing Yang
10. Honggang Wu
11. Hai Huang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study investigates how inter-organ communication between the tracheal stem cells and the fat body plays a key role in the directed migration of tracheal stem cells in Drosophila pupae. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing. The work would be of broad interest to researchers in the fields of developmental biology and cancer biology.

Reviewed by eLife