Developmental Biology

Intrinsic and extrinsic cues time somite progenitor contribution to the vertebrate primary body axis

1. Lara Busby
2. Guillermo Serrano Nájera
3. Benjamin John Steventon

Reviewed by Review Commons

Long-ranged formation of the Bicoid gradient requires multiple dynamic modes that spatially vary across the embryo

1. Thamarailingam Athilingam
2. Ashwin V.S. Nelanuthala
3. Catriona Breen
4. Thorsten Wohland
5. Timothy E. Saunders

Reviewed by Review Commons

A critical role for heme synthesis and succinate in the regulation of pluripotent states transitions

1. Damien Detraux
2. Marino Caruso
3. Louise Feller
4. Maude Fransolet
5. Sébastien Meurant
6. Julie Mathieu
7. Thierry Arnould
8. Patricia Renard

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In their current study, Detraux D and colleagues provide some evidence suggesting a role for heme biosynthesis on FGF-ERK and TGF beta signalling and exit from naïve pluripotency, and in controlling the 2-cell-like cell state. The observations provided by the authors are interesting and potentially relevant in the field of pluripotent cell state transitions.

Reviewed by eLife

How enhancers regulate wavelike gene expression patterns

1. Christine Mau
2. Heike Rudolf
3. Frederic Strobl
4. Benjamin Schmid
5. Timo Regensburger
6. Ralf Palmisano
7. Ernst HK Stelzer
8. Leila Taher
9. Ezzat El-Sherif

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors describe a sophisticated method to follow enhancer activity in both live embryos and fixed embryos in Tribolium and present important data about the function of a number of enhancers in early development. They show that some of the enhancers are "dynamic" and others are "static" and use this to provide support for the "enhancer-switching" model of gene regulation suggested by some of these authors in the past. However, the evidence they provide is incomplete and although it is consistent with the model, it does not directly support it.

Reviewed by eLife

Low-level repressive histone marks fine-tune gene transcription in neural stem cells

1. Arjun Rajan
2. Lucas Anhezini
3. Noemi Rives-Quinto
4. Jay Y Chhabra
5. Megan C Neville
6. Elizabeth D Larson
7. Stephen F Goodwin
8. Melissa M Harrison
9. Cheng-Yu Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important work shows how a transcription factor, fruitless isoform C, fine-tunes the expression of stemness genes to maintain proper stem-cell identity during neurogenesis in Drosophila. The rationale of the work is well-thought-out, conclusions are supported by compelling evidence, and experiments are performed in a rigorous manner, although additional statistics would improve the conclusions. Overall, this work will be of interest to those working on chromatin regulation, transcription regulation, and stem-cell biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Microplastics are present in women’s and cows’ follicular fluid and polystyrene microplastics compromise bovine oocyte function in vitro

1. Nicole Grechi
2. Roksan Franko
3. Roshini Rajaraman
4. Jan B. Stöckl
5. Tom Trapphoff
6. Stefan Dieterle
7. Thomas Fröhlich
8. Michael J. Noonan
9. Marcia de A. M. M. Ferraz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript represents a valuable study showing that microplastics indeed accumulate in both bovine and human ovarian follicular fluid. It also presented data that direct exposure of bovine eggs to polystyrene, a microplastic commonly found in follicular fluid, negatively affects oocyte maturation, probably through the downregulation of key proteins involved in oxidative stress, DNA damage, apoptosis, and oocyte maturation. Despite the solid supporting evidence, inclusion of the demographics and reasons for assisted reproduction of the human subjects used, as well as the details on quality control for proteomic analyses would further strengthen the study. The work will be of interest to reproductive toxicologists, regulatory scientists and reproductive health care professionals.

Reviewed by eLife

Cell specification and functional interactions in the pig blastocyst inferred from single-cell transcriptomics and uterine fluids proteomics

1. Adrien Dufour
2. Cyril Kurylo
3. Jan B. Stöckl
4. Denis Laloë
5. Yoann Bailly
6. Patrick Manceau
7. Frédéric Martins
8. Ali G. Turhan
9. Stéphane Ferchaud
10. Bertrand Pain
11. Thomas Fröhlich
12. Sylvain Foissac
13. Jérôme Artus
14. Hervé Acloque

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Biallelic variants in MAD2L1BP (p31comet) cause female infertility characterized by oocyte maturation arrest

1. Lingli Huang
2. Wenqing Li
3. Xingxing Dai
4. Shuai Zhao
5. Bo Xu
6. Fengsong Wang
7. Ren-Tao Jin
8. Lihua Luo
9. Limin Wu
10. Xue Jiang
11. Yu Cheng
12. Jiaqi Zou
13. Caoling Xu
14. Xianhong Tong
15. Heng-Yu Fan
16. Han Zhao
17. Jianqiang Bao

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study identifies three independent patient mutations in MAD2L1BP (p31 comet) that cause infertility. Consistent with the known functions of p31 comet, solid experiments in mouse oocytes imply that infertility could be caused by a failure to silence the spindle assembly checkpoint, though the mechanism was not determined. Although the sample size is small, a rescue experiment in human oocytes promises the potential for therapy.

Reviewed by eLife

Single-cell profiling coupled with lineage analysis reveals vagal and sacral neural crest contributions to the developing enteric nervous system

1. Jessica Jacobs-Li
2. Weiyi Tang
3. Can Li
4. Marianne E Bronner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an elegant study combining virally-delivered lineage-tracing with single cell RNA-sequencing of the developing chicken enteric nervous system, showing potentially differential contribution of cell identities from the sacral and vagal neural crest. Addressing this important issue is pivotal to understanding basic enteric nervous system development as well as to devise therapeutic approaches to enteric neuropathies. The study is therefore generally interesting and in particular to researchers in the fields of enteric neuroscience and peripheral nervous system development. Lack of a basic classification scheme of neuronal cell types in the chicken, limited computational and functional analysis on a relatively immature stage and makes the conclusions of this work preliminary in its current state.

Reviewed by eLife

Comparative single-cell profiling reveals distinct cardiac resident macrophages essential for zebrafish heart regeneration

1. Ke-Hsuan Wei
2. I-Ting Lin
3. Kaushik Chowdhury
4. Khai Lone Lim
5. Kuan-Ting Liu
6. Tai-Ming Ko
7. Yao-Ming Chang
8. Kai-Chien Yang
9. Shih-Lei (Ben) Lai

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors analyze changes in the gene expression of different immune cells during heart regeneration using single-cell RNA-sequencing and assess changes upon drug treatment that depletes macrophages. They find that drug treatment affects the gene expression profiles of different and abundance of immune cells. The work provides a wealth of gene expression data and a nice analysis supporting immune cell interactions during heart regeneration, so will be a useful resource.

Reviewed by eLife