The people behind the papers – Chaitanya Dingare and Virginie Lecaudey

A recent paper in Development reveals that the Hippo pathway effector Taz directs the formation of the micropylar cell, a unique enlarged follicle cell in the ovary, and hence is crucial for fertility. First author and PhD student Chaitanya Dingare and his supervisor Virginie Lecaudey share the background to their discovery.

Review - Left-right asymmetry in heart development and disease: forming the right loop

Audrey Desgrange, Jean-François Le Garrec and Sigolène M. Meilhac review the mechanisms underlying asymmetric heart morphogenesis and their dynamics in fish, chick and mouse, relating them to clinical presentations and providing an evolutionary perspective.

Following the recent Company of Biologists Workshop ‘Thinking beyond the dish: taking in vitro neural differentiation to the next level’, Denis Jabaudon and Madeline Lancaster highlight the limitations and potential applications of organoid-based technologies. 

Workshop – Chromatin-based regulation of development

We are pleased to announce a Company of Biologist's Workshop, organised by Benoit Bruneau and Joanna Wysocka, focusing on the field of chromatin biology and its potential for revealing exciting new insights into developmental processes. The Workshop will be held in April 2019 at Wiston House, UK. Ten funded early-career places are available - apply here before 21 December 2018.

The reported birth of CRISPR edited humans: reactions from the field

We’d love to hear your thoughts on reports of CRISPR-edited human babies. The Node has collected the most useful links we could find surrounding the story, and we reached out to members of the community for their perspectives.

preLights – Rapid embryonic cell cycles defer the establishment of heterochromatin by Eggless/SetDB1 in Drosophila

Gabriel Aughey highlights a recent preprint from Patrick O'Farrell and colleagues, which uses innovative approaches to identify a key factor involved in deposition of heterochromatin, and points towards a mechanism that implicates cell cycle rate in the regulation of this process.

Catch up with recent preLights selected for the developmental biology community.

Articles of interest in our sister journals

Basal constriction during midbrain–hindbrain boundary morphogenesis is mediated by Wnt5b and focal adhesion kinase
Jennifer H. Gutzman, Ellie Graeden, Isabel Brachmann, Sayumi Yamazoe, James K. Chen, Hazel Sive
Biology Open 2018 7: bio034520

Generation of mouse-zebrafish hematopoietic tissue chimeric embryos for hematopoiesis and host-pathogen interaction studies
Margarita Parada-Kusz, Cristina Penaranda, Elliott J. Hagedorn, Anne Clatworthy, Anil V. Nair, Jonathan E. Henninger, Christoph Ernst, Brian Li, Raquel Riquelme, Humberto Jijon, Eduardo J. Villablanca, Leonard I. Zon, Deborah Hung, Miguel L. Allende
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2018 11: dmm034876