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Heparan sulfate (HS) biosynthesis is tightly regulated during vertebrate embryo development. However, potential roles for HS biosynthesis in regulating the function of paracrine signaling molecules that bind t...
Nkx2.2 and Arx represent key transcription factors implicated in the specification of islet cell subtypes during pancreas development. Mice deficient for Arx do not develop any alpha-cells whereas beta- and delta...
Retinoic acid (RA) is important for vertebrate eye morphogenesis and is a regulator of photoreceptor development in the retina. In the zebrafish, RA treatment of postmitotic photoreceptor precursors has been s...
Epimorphic regeneration results in the restoration of lost tissues and structures from an aggregation of proliferating cells known as a blastema. Among amniotes the most striking example of epimorphic regenera...
We recently identified a novel oncogene, Cancer-upregulated gene 2 (CUG2), which is essential for kinetochore formation and promotes tumorigenesis in mammalian cells. However, the in vivo function of CUG2 has ...
Despite the detailed knowledge obtained over the last decade on the molecular regulation of gastrulation in amniotes, the process of amnion development has been poorly described and illustrated in mice, and co...
The development of vertebrate limbs has been a traditional system to study fundamental processes at work during ontogenesis, such as the establishment of spatial cellular coordinates, the effect of diffusible ...
Understanding the mechanisms governing cell fate specification remains one of the main challenges in the study of retinal development. In this context, molecular markers that identify specific cell types becom...
In a recent genomic study, Leung et al. used a factorial microarray analysis to identify Smarca4 (Brg1)-regulated genes in micro-dissected zebrafish retinas. Two hundred and fifty nine genes were grouped in th...
In vitro studies using the myogenic cell line C2C12 demonstrate that bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) converts the developmental pathway of C2C12 from a myogenic cell lineage to an osteoblastic cell lineag...
Whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH) is extensively used to characterize gene expression patterns in developing and adult brain and other tissues. To obtain an idea whether a novel gene might be involved in s...
The original article was published in BMC Developmental Biology 2011 11:11
Loss of heterozygosity at 18q, which includes the Deleted in Colorectal Cancer (DCC) gene, has been linked to many human cancers. However, it is unclear if loss of DCC is the specific underlying cause of these ca...
The ERBB3 gene is essential for the proper development of the neural crest (NC) and its derivative populations such as Schwann cells. As with all cell fate decisions, transcriptional regulatory control plays a si...
X-linked alpha thalassemia, mental retardation syndrome in humans is a rare recessive disorder caused by mutations in the ATRX gene. The disease is characterised by severe mental retardation, mild alpha-thalassem...
Heparan sulfate (HS) is present on the surface of virtually all mammalian cells and is a major component of the extracellular matrix (ECM), where it plays a pivotal role in cell-cell and cell-matrix cross-talk...
Sphingosine-1-phosophate (S1P) is a biologically active sphingolipid metabolite that influences cellular events including differentiation, proliferation, and migration. S1P acts through five distinct cell surf...
Paraxial protocadherin (PAPC) plays a crucial role in morphogenetic movements during gastrulation and somitogenesis in mouse, zebrafish and Xenopus. PAPC influences cell-cell adhesion mediated by C-Cadherin. A...
Teneurin-1 is a member of a family of type II transmembrane proteins conserved from C.elegans to vertebrates. Teneurin expression in vertebrates is best studied in mouse and chicken, where the four members teneur...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression and have been shown to play an important role during development. miR-1, miR-133a, miR-133b and miR-206 are expre...
Two stages of genome activation have been identified in the mouse embryo. Specifically, minor transcriptional activation is evident at the one-cell stage and a second major episode of activation occurs at the ...
The Drosophila wing represents a particularly appropriate model to investigate the developmental control of phenotypic variation. Previous studies which aimed to identify candidate genes for wing morphology demon...
The metamorphosis of the spionid polychaete Pseudopolydora vexillosa includes spontaneous settlement onto soft-bottom habitats and morphogenesis that can be completed in a very short time. A previous study on the...
The transition from fertilized egg to embryo is accompanied by a multitude of changes in gene expression, and the transcriptional events that underlie these processes have not yet been fully characterized. In ...
Consistent asymmetry of the left-right (LR) axis is a crucial aspect of vertebrate embryogenesis. Asymmetric gene expression of the TGFβ superfamily member Nodal related 1 (Nr1) in the left lateral mesoderm plate...
The zinc finger transcription factor Egr-1 (Early growth response 1) is central to several growth factors and represents an important activator of target genes not only involved in physiological processes like...
Neurogenesis control and the prevention of premature differentiation in the vertebrate embryo are crucial processes, allowing the formation of late-born cell types and ensuring the correct shape and cytoarchit...
The embryonic organizer (i.e., Spemann organizer) has a pivotal role in the establishment of the dorsoventral (DV) axis through the coordination of BMP signaling. However, as impaired organizer function also r...
Oocyte-derived maternal RNAs drive early embryogenesis when the newly formed embryo is transcriptionally inactive. Recent studies in zebrafish have identified the role of microRNAs during the maternal-to-embry...
Peroxisomes are organelles whose roles in fatty acid metabolism and reactive oxygen species elimination have contributed much attention in understanding their origin and biogenesis. Many studies have shown that d...
Bryozoans represent a large lophotrochozoan phylum with controversially discussed phylogenetic position and in group relationships. Developmental processes during the budding of bryozoans are in need for revis...
Lipid rafts enriched in glycosphingolipids (GSLs), cholesterol and signaling molecules play an essential role not only for signal transduction started by ligand binding, but for intracellular events such as or...
In humans, myocardial infarction is characterized by irreversible loss of heart tissue, which becomes replaced with a fibrous scar. By contrast, teleost fish and urodele amphibians are capable of heart regener...
FGF signalling regulates numerous aspects of early embryo development. During gastrulation in amniotes, epiblast cells undergo an epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) in the primitive streak to form the ...
The gene transformer-2, which is involved in sex determination, has been studied in Drosophila, Musca, Ceratitis, Anastrepha and Lucilia. All these members of Diptera belong to the suborder Brachycera. In this wo...
Endothelial-specific knockout of the transcription factor serum response factor (SRF) results in embryonic lethality by mid-gestation. The associated phenotype exhibits vascular failure in embryos as well as v...
Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades (p38, JNK, ERK pathways) are involved in cell fate acquisition during development. These kinase modules are associated with scaffold proteins that control their...
Studies on artificial hybridization of different Anguilla species were conducted recently, i.e. female A. australis with male A. dieffenbachii, and female A. japonica with male A. anguilla. The existence of these...
The production of nephrons suddenly ends in mice shortly after birth when the remaining cells of the multi-potent progenitor mesenchyme begin to differentiate into nephrons. We exploited this terminal wave of ...
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase is evolutionarily conserved as a responder to various forms of stress. Though PARP's role in cell death is well addressed, its role in development and multicellularity is still an e...
We developed an efficient in vitro method to differentiate mouse ES cells into the definitive endoderm (DE) and then Pdx1-expressing pancreatic lineages using mesodermal-derived supporting cells, M15. Using this ...
The signaling cascades that direct the morphological differentiation of the vascular system during early embryogenesis are not well defined. Several signaling pathways, including Notch and VEGF signaling, are ...
Epigenetic reprogramming is critical for genome regulation during germ line development. Genome-wide demethylation in mouse primordial germ cells (PGC) is a unique reprogramming event essential for erasing epi...
The C. elegans sperm protein SPE-42, a membrane protein of unknown structure and molecular function, is required for fertilization. Sperm from worms with spe-42 mutations appear normal but are unable to fertilize...
The transcription factor Nkx2-1 (also known as TTF-1, Titf1 or T/EBP) contains two apparently redundant activation domains and is post-translationally modified by phosphorylation. We have generated mouse mutan...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Developmental Biology 2016 16:29
Although the transcriptome of minute quantities of cells can be profiled using nucleic acid amplification techniques, it remains difficult to distinguish between active and stored messenger RNA. Transcript sto...
Vitamin A (VA) has a key role in vertebrate morphogenesis, determining body patterning and growth through the control of cell proliferation and differentiation processes. VA regulates primary molecular pathway...
The skeletal elements of vertebrate embryonic limbs are prefigured by rod- and spot-like condensations of precartilage mesenchymal cells. The formation of these condensations depends on cell-matrix and cell-ce...
The three distinct types of kidneys, pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros, develop consecutively in vertebrates. The earliest form of embryonic kidney, the pronephros, is derived from intermediate mesoderm ...
The plastic monomer and plasticizer bisphenol A (BPA), used for manufacturing polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is produced at over 2.5 million metric tons per year. Concerns have been raised that BPA ac...
