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 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

Genetic evidence: zebrafish hoxba and hoxbb clusters are essential for the anterior-posterior positioning of pectoral fins

1. Morimichi Kikuchi
2. Renka Fujii
3. Daiki Kobayashi
4. Yuki Kawabe
5. Haruna Kanno
6. Sohju Toyama
7. Farah Tawakkal
8. Kazuya Yamada
9. Akinori Kawamura

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study advances our understanding of vertebrate forelimb development, specifically the contribution of Hox genes to zebrafish pectoral fin formation. While there are reservations about some of the descriptions and interpretations of the data, the results are mostly convincing. The authors have employed a robust and extensive genetic approach to tackle a key and unresolved question. The findings will be of broad interest to developmental and evolutionary biologists.

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

A tissue boundary orchestrates the segregation of inner ear sensory organs

1. Ziqi Chen
2. Magdalena Żak
3. Shuting Xu
4. Javier de Andrés
5. Nicolas Daudet

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study is a first report investigating the boundary formation between sensory and non-sensory tissues of the inner ear, which has broad relevance to the developmental field in general. All three reviewers thought the results and data analyses presented are solid. However, the causal relationship between the morphological evidence and the role of Lmx1a is not well supported by the results. The mechanism linking Lmx1a to ROCK is also incomplete, considering ROCK is involved in so many processes.

Reviewed by eLife

Changes in neural progenitor lineage constituent 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

  This useful study differentiated pluripotent stem cells to astrocytes, using a genetic modification that allows the long-lasting tracing of cells that initially turn on the gene LMX1A, crucial for midbrain identity. After selecting the positive cells, there were differences in physiological responses and some cellular processes with negative cells. The presented results, however, are incomplete to fully support the conclusions.

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