Developmental biology articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By using phylogenetic analyses of multiple microdissected samples from both cancer and non-cancer lesions, unique evolutionary histories of breast cancers harbouring a common driver alteration are shown, providing new insight into how breast cancer evolves.

    • Tomomi Nishimura
    • , Nobuyuki Kakiuchi
    •  & Seishi Ogawa

  • Article |

    Rapid activation of protein synthesis in the axolotl highlights the unanticipated impact of a translatome on orchestrating the early steps of wound healing and provides a missing link in our understanding of vertebrate regenerative potential.

    • Olena Zhulyn
    • , Hannah D. Rosenblatt
    •  & Maria Barna

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A multiomics approach is used to produce a spatiotemporal atlas of the human maternal–fetal interface in the first half of pregnancy, revealing relationships among gestational age, extravillous trophoblasts and spiral artery remodelling.

    • Shirley Greenbaum
    • , Inna Averbukh
    •  & Michael Angelo

  • News & Views |

    Activation of gene transcription is precisely regulated in early embryos. The identification of key transcription factors now shows how the transcription machinery is guided to the right place at the right time in mice.

    • Edlyn Wu
    •  & Nadine L. Vastenhouw

  • Nature Podcast |

    A roundup of stories from the Nature Briefing, including the pros and cons of writing a paper with AI, record-breaking global temperatures, and a protein that boosts monkeys’ memories.

    • Noah Baker
    • , Benjamin Thompson
    •  & Dan Fox

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Co-culture of wild-type human embryonic stem cells with two types of extraembryonic-like cell engineered to overexpress specific transcription factors results in an embryoid model that recapitulates multiple features of the post-implantation human embryo.

    • Bailey A. T. Weatherbee
    • , Carlos W. Gantner
    •  & Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Following skin injury, wild-type epithelial cells outcompete oncogenic Ras G12V mutant cells owing to differential activation of the EGFR signalling pathway during injury repair.

    • Sara Gallini
    • , Karl Annusver
    •  & Valentina Greco

  • News & Views |

    In the earliest stages of mammalian development, individual cells possess the unrestricted potential to form a new organism. Researchers are closing in on the goal of growing these cells in the laboratory.

    • Martin F. Pera

  • Article |

    Complementary single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic analyses of Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor and Setaria viridis root cells provide insights into the evolution of cell types and gene modules that control key traits in these important crop species.

    • Bruno Guillotin
    • , Ramin Rahni
    •  & Kenneth D. Birnbaum

  • News & Views |

    The observation that melanocyte stem cells migrate up and down the hair follicle, differentiating into melanocytes and then returning to a stem-cell identity, calls into question long-held assumptions about adult stem cells.

    • Carlos Galvan
    •  & William E. Lowry

  • News & Views |

    A screen of mouse stem cells that exploits their propensity to gain or lose chromosomes in cell culture has been used to convert male XY to female XX cells. Subsequent differentiation generates functional eggs and live offspring.

    • Jonathan Bayerl
    •  & Diana J. Laird

  • Article |

    Mouse induced pluripotent stem cells derived from differentiated fibroblasts could be converted from male (XY) to female (XX), resulting in cells that could form oocytes and give rise to offspring after fertilization.

    • Kenta Murakami
    • , Nobuhiko Hamazaki
    •  & Katsuhiko Hayashi

  • Article |

    A technique to detect the release of N-terminal fragments of Drosophila adhesion G-protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs) provides insight into the dissociation of aGPCRs, and shows that receptor autoproteolysis enables non-cell-autonomous activity of aGPCRs in the brain.

    • Nicole Scholz
    • , Anne-Kristin Dahse
    •  & Tobias Langenhan

  • News & Views |

    A computational tool called CellOracle can predict how networks of genes interact to program cell identity during embryonic development. The tool should help to hone efforts to understand how development is regulated.

    • Jeffrey A. Farrell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A machine-learning-based strategy called CellOracle combines computational perturbation with modelling of gene-regulatory networks to analyse how cell identity is regulated by transcription factors, and correctly predicts phenotypic changes after transcription factor perturbation in the developing zebrafish.

    • Kenji Kamimoto
    • , Blerta Stringa
    •  & Samantha A. Morris

  • Technology Feature |

    Automated microscopes that adapt to each sample’s quirks can capture elusive biological phenomena at high resolution.

    • Jyoti Madhusoodanan

  • Research Briefing |

    Immune cells called T cells were activated in mice and transferred to new mice; the process was repeated several times. The T-cell population derived from the original mice continued to respond to the same immune trigger after ten years — which is about four times the lifespan of a mouse.

  • Research Briefing |

    In egg cells, the ribosomes — the machinery responsible for protein synthesis — are stored in a dormant state that is released later in the developing embryo. An evolutionarily conserved set of proteins has been shown to bind to ribosomes in the egg cells of vertebrates, stabilizing the ribosomes and suppressing their activity.

  • Article |

    Mass spectrometry and structural studies demonstrate the specific changes in protein composition that accompany the transition of ribosomes in zebrafish and Xenopus eggs from a dormant to an active state during early embryogenesis.

    • Friederike Leesch
    • , Laura Lorenzo-Orts
    •  & Andrea Pauli

  • News & Views |

    Regions of the human genome that evolved rapidly after the separation between hominins and chimpanzees have now been charted. They contain genomic elements that are unique to humans and are linked to neurodevelopment and disease.

    • Eucharist Kun
    •  & Vagheesh M. Narasimhan

  • Article |

    An in vitro system that recapitulates temporal characteristics of embryonic development demonstrates that the different rates of mouse and human embryonic development stem from differences in metabolic rates and—further downstream—the global rate of protein synthesis.

    • Margarete Diaz-Cuadros
    • , Teemu P. Miettinen
    •  & Olivier Pourquié

  • News & Views |

    Mouse and human embryos undergo similar developmental steps, but the exact timings differ. An analysis reveals that differences in metabolic activity set the timing of one such step on the road to formation of the vertebrae.

    • Katharina Sonnen

  • Article |

    A 3D model of human segmentation and somitogenesis derived from induced pluripotent stem cells captures the oscillatory dynamics of the segmentation clock as well as morphological and molecular features of the developing embryonic axis and tail.

    • Yoshihiro Yamanaka
    • , Sofiane Hamidi
    •  & Cantas Alev

  • News & Views |

    Radiation-damaged paternal DNA has been found to cause embryos of the second generation of nematode worms, but not the first, to die. The proposed mechanisms help to explain the observed lack of such an effect in humans.

    • Ronald Cutler
    •  & Jan Vijg

  • News & Views |

    Cells in a state of arrested growth, called senescence, have been characterized in skeletal muscle in mice. Senescent cells promote inflammation and block regeneration, and thus might induce harmful changes in aged muscle.

    • David J. Glass

  • Article |

    Somitoids and segmentoids—culture systems that recapitulate the formation of somite-like structures—reveal that an initial salt-and-pepper expression pattern of MESP2 in a newly formed segment is transformed into compartments of anterior and posterior identity through an active cell-sorting mechanism.

    • Yuchuan Miao
    • , Yannis Djeffal
    •  & Olivier Pourquié

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In-depth transcriptomic analyses of 56,636 single cells from monkey embryos revealed transcriptional features of major perigastrulation cell types, and comparative analyses with mouse embryos and human embryoids uncovered conserved and divergent features of perigastrulation development across species.

    • Jinglei Zhai
    • , Jing Guo
    •  & Hongmei Wang

  • Article |

    RibosomeST���a ribosome with a specialized nascent polypeptide exit tunnel—cotranslationally regulates the folding of a subset of male germ-cell-specific proteins that are essential for the formation of sperm.

    • Huiling Li
    • , Yangao Huo
    •  & Jiahao Sha

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