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The mosquito A. aegypti is vector of dengue and other viruses. New methods of vector control are needed and can be achieved by a better understanding of the life cycle of this insect. Embryogenesis is a part of A...
Somitogenesis is the earliest sign of segmentation in the developing vertebrate embryo. This process starts very early, soon after gastrulation has initiated and proceeds in an anterior-to-posterior direction ...
Decapentaplegic (Dpp) is one of the best characterized morphogens, required for dorso-ventral patterning of the Drosophila embryo and for anterior-posterior (A/P) patterning of the wing imaginal disc. In the larv...
Apert syndrome is characterized by craniosynostosis and limb abnormalities and is primarily caused by FGFR2 +/P253R and +/S252W mutations. The former mutation is present in approximately one third whereas the ...
Postnatal growth in mouse is rapid, with total skeletal muscle mass increasing several-fold in the first few weeks. Muscle growth can be achieved by either an increase in muscle fibre number or an increase in ...
In a large number of studies, members of the microRNA (miRNA)-34 family such as miRNA-34a, miRNA-34b, miRNA-34c, as well as miRNA-125b and miRNA-155, have been shown to be regulators of apoptosis. The ability ...
The vertebrate pancreas contains islet, acinar and ductal cells. These cells derive from a transient pool of multipotent pancreatic progenitors during embryonic development. Insight into the genetic determinan...
Growing demand for three dimensional (3D) digital images of embryos for purposes of phenotypic assessment drives implementation of new histological and imaging techniques. Among these micro-computed tomography...
The tetracycline-inducible gene regulation system is a powerful tool that allows temporal and dose-dependent regulation of target transgene expression in vitro and in vivo. Several tetracycline-inducible trans...
The chick middle ear bone, the columella, provides an accessible model in which to study the tissue and molecular interactions necessary for induction and patterning of the columella, as well as associated mul...
Axolotls have the unique ability, among vertebrates, to perfectly regenerate complex body parts, such as limbs, after amputation. In addition, axolotls pattern developing and regenerating autopods from the ant...
Astacins are a large family of zinc metalloproteases found in bacteria and animals. They have diverse roles ranging from digestion of food to processing of extracellular matrix components. The C. elegans genome c...
Mammalian Ras genes regulate diverse cellular processes including proliferation and differentiation and are frequently mutated in human cancers. Tumor development in response to Ras activation varies between d...
In embryos the maternal-to-zygotic transition (MTZ) integrates post-transcriptional regulation of maternal transcripts with transcriptional activation of the zygotic genome. Although the molecular mechanisms u...
The Class II DNA transposons are mobile genetic elements that move DNA sequence from one position in the genome to another. We have previously demonstrated that the naturally occurring Tol2 element from Oryzias l...
Bats comprise the second largest order of mammals. However, there are far fewer morphological studies of post-implantation embryonic development than early embryonic development in bats.
The Ly-6 (Ly-6/uPAR) superfamily members share the Ly-6 domain defined by distinct disulfide bonding patterns between 8 or 10 cysteine residues. They comprise membrane- and secretory-type proteins. We recently...
Retinal cell development has been extensively investigated; however, the current knowledge of dynamic morphological and molecular changes is not yet complete.
The J-domain-containing protein auxilin, a critical regulator in clathrin-mediated transport, has been implicated in Drosophila Notch signaling. To ask if this role of auxilin is conserved and whether auxilin has...
The transcription factor Pax6 is essential for the development of the central nervous system and it exerts its multiple functions by regulating the expression of downstream target molecules. To screen for gene...
Neurogenesis, the production of neural cell-types from neural stem cells (NSCs), occurs during development as well as within select regions of the adult brain. NSCs in the adult subependymal zone (SEZ) exist i...
The Six1 homeobox gene is highly expressed in the embryonic mammary gland, continues to be expressed in early postnatal mammary development, but is lost when the mammary gland differentiates during pregnancy. How...
Recently we have performed a detailed analysis of early development of zebrafish swimbladder, a homologous organ of tetrapod lung; however, the events of swimbladder development are still poorly characterized....
Female reproductive potential, or the ability to propagate life, is limited in mammals with the majority of oocytes lost before birth. In mice, surviving perinatal oocytes are enclosed in ovarian follicles for...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules (~22 nucleotides) which have been shown to play an important role both in development and in maintenance of adult tissue. Conditional inactivation of miRNAs in the ey...
During development, different signaling pathways interact to specify cell fate by regulating transcription factors necessary for fate specification and morphogenesis. In Caenorhabditis elegans, the EGF-Ras and Wn...
Tissue heating has been employed to study a variety of biological processes, including the study of genes that control embryonic development. Conditional regulation of gene expression is a particularly powerfu...
The molecular mechanisms that govern stem cell differentiation along the endothelial lineage remain largely unknown. Ets related gene (ERG) has recently been shown to participate in the transcriptional regulat...
Many fish alter their expressed visual pigments during development. The number of retinal opsins expressed and their type is normally related to the environment in which they live. Eels are known to change the...
While several cell types are known to contribute to bone formation, the major player is a common bone matrix-secreting cell type, the osteoblast. Chondrocytes, which plays critical roles at several stages of e...
Tissue plasticity and a substantial regeneration capacity based on stem cells are the hallmark of several invertebrate groups such as sponges, cnidarians and Platyhelminthes. Traditionally, Acoela were seen as...
Studies have examined the function of PI 3-kinase in the early developmental processes that operate in oocytes or early embryos of various species. However, the roles of egg-associated PI 3-kinase and Akt, esp...
Cochlear hair cells are high-frequency sensory receptors. At the onset of hearing, hair cells acquire fast, calcium-activated potassium (BK) currents, turning immature spiking cells into functional receptors. ...
The exocrine pancreas is composed of a branched network of ducts connected to acini. They are lined by a monolayered epithelium that derives from the endoderm and is surrounded by mesoderm-derived mesenchyme. ...
The homeodomain containing transcription factor Nkx2.2 is essential for the differentiation of pancreatic endocrine cells. Deletion of Nkx2.2 in mice leads to misspecification of islet cell types; insulin-expr...
During the development of the Drosophila eye, specific cell types differentiate from an initially equipotent group of uncommitted precursor cells. The lozenge (lz) gene, which is a member of the Runt family of tr...
Mammalian spermatogenesis involves formation of haploid cells from the male germline and then a complex morphological transformation to generate motile sperm. Focusing on meiotic prophase, some tissue-specific...
Failure of sperm differentiation is one of the major causes of male sterility. During spermiogenesis, spermatids undergo a complex metamorphosis, including chromatin condensation and cell elongation. Although ...
During early steps of embryonic development the hindbrain undergoes a regionalization process along the anterior-posterior (AP) axis that leads to a metameric organization in a series of rhombomeres (r). Refin...
Proper patterning of the follicle cell epithelium over the egg chamber is essential for the Drosophila egg development. Differentiation of the epithelium into several distinct cell types along the anterior-poster...
The vertebrate head skeleton is derived largely from cranial neural crest cells (CNCC). Genetic studies in zebrafish and mice have established that the Hedgehog (Hh)-signaling pathway plays a critical role in ...
The lateral line system in zebrafish is composed of a series of organs called neuromasts, which are distributed over the body surface. Neuromasts contain clusters of hair cells, surrounded by accessory cells.
Nervous system development is dependent on early regional specification to create functionally distinct tissues within an initially undifferentiated zone. Within the retina, photoreceptors are topographically ...
The Drosophila CNS midline cells are an excellent model system to study neuronal and glial development because of their diversity of cell types and the relative ease in identifying and studying the function of mi...
Brisken et al (2000) showed that Wnt4 null mammary glands were deficient in early lobuloalveolar mammary outgrowth during pregnancy, and implicated Wnt4 as an effector for the progesterone-induced mammary grow...
Smad4 mutant embryos arrest shortly after implantation and display a characteristic shortened proximodistal axis, a significantly reduced epiblast, as well as a thickened visceral endoderm layer. Conditional r...
Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is a fundamental physiological process during normal development or in pathological conditions. The activation of apoptosis can be elicited by numerous signalling pathways....
The roles of the Hedgehog (Hh) pathway in controlling vertebrate retinal development have been studied extensively; however, species- and context-dependent findings have provided differing conclusions. Hh sign...
E-proteins are transcription factors important for the development of a variety of cell types, including neural, muscle and lymphocytes of the immune system. E2A, the best characterized E-protein family member...
Hedgehog (Hh) signaling from the urogenital sinus (UGS) epithelium to the surrounding mesenchyme plays a critical role in regulating ductal formation and growth during prostate development. The primary cilium,...
