Embryonic induction articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The endometrium is activated by the pregnancy hormones estrogen and progesterone to facilitate embryo implantation, and errors in endometrial responsiveness can lead to reduced fertility or endometriosis. Here they show that GREB1 interacts with hormone receptors in the endometrium, leading to normal or pathological consequences depending on the hormones involved.

    • Sangappa B. Chadchan
    • , Pooja Popli
    •  & Ramakrishna Kommagani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identical twins from a single embryo are formed in multiple species, albeit rarely. It is not clear how such twinning is suppressed during early development. Here they show that calcium signalling activity is propagated through the extraembryonic tissue to prevent ectopic primitive streak formation during gastrulation.

    • Hyung Chul Lee
    • , Nidia M. M. Oliveira
    •  & Claudio D. Stern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mitotic spindle assembles in each blastomere to segregate duplicated chromosomes during cleavage of the fertilized egg. Here, the authors establish functional assays in fish embryos and find that Ran-GTP assembles a microtubule network at the metaphase spindle center that is essential for chromosome segregation.

    • Ai Kiyomitsu
    • , Toshiya Nishimura
    •  & Tomomi Kiyomitsu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While metabolic reprogramming has been shown to drive changes in cell identity, the link between cellular metabolism and gene expression remains poorly characterized. Here they show that histone lactylation couples metabolism and transcription during neural crest cell differentiation in the early embryo.

    • Fjodor Merkuri
    • , Megan Rothstein
    •  & Marcos Simoes-Costa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How invertebrates with spiral cleavage establish their body plans is unclear. Here the authors show that, like molluscs, a basal annelid uses ERK1/2 to instruct body patterning, suggesting that this is a deep ancestral trait in animal embryogenesis.

    • Océane Seudre
    • , Allan M. Carrillo-Baltodano
    •  & José M. Martín-Durán

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synthetic embryo models have arisen as an approach to probe early development in vitro, facilitating the study of difficult to access stages. Here the authors present a simple system for generating embryo-like structures that resemble peri-implantation mouse embryos.

    • Jan Langkabel
    • , Arik Horne
    •  & Hubert Schorle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organs and cells have complex tree-like morphologies, but how these patterns emerge during development from global guidance cues and local self-organization remains unclear. Here, the authors develop a theory for the influence of both factors and test it on neuronal branching data.

    • Mehmet Can Uçar
    • , Dmitrii Kamenev
    •  & Edouard Hannezo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The role of the transcriptional effector SMAD4 in vertebrate embryo development remains unresolved. Here the authors show that in the absence of Smad4, dorsal/ventral embryo patterning is disrupted due to the loss of BMP signaling, while Nodal signaling is maintained, but insufficient for optimal endoderm specification.

    • Luca Guglielmi
    • , Claire Heliot
    •  & Caroline S. Hill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Activation of the zygotic genome is a critical transition during development, though the link to tissue-specific gene regulation remains unclear. Here the authors demonstrate distinct functions for Satb2 before and after zygotic genome activation, highlighting the temporal coordination of these roles.

    • Saurabh J. Pradhan
    • , Puli Chandramouli Reddy
    •  & Sanjeev Galande

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that post-transcriptional regulation of the cilia-driven leftward flow target dand5 is central to symmetry breakage in frog, fish and mouse and is mediated by a 139 nt Bicc1 responsive element in the dand5 3′UTR, and they present evidence that Pkd2 regulates this Bicc1/dand5 module.

    • Markus Maerker
    • , Maike Getwan
    •  & Axel Schweickert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Centrioles are ancient organelles with a conserved architecture and their rigidity is thought to restrict microtubule sliding. Here authors show that, in mammalian sperm, the atypical distal centriole and its surrounding atypical pericentriolar matrix form a dynamic basal complex that facilitates a cascade of internal sliding deformations, coupling tail beating with asymmetric head kinking.

    • Sushil Khanal
    • , Miguel Ricardo Leung
    •  & Tomer Avidor-Reiss

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How maternal RNA clearance is regulated in human preimplantation embryos is unclear. Here, the authors show there is a potential correlation between maternal mRNA decay defects and early developmental arrest from in vitro fertilized human embryos, suggesting that M-decay and Z-decay pathways may regulate such early development.

    • Qian-Qian Sha
    • , Wei Zheng
    •  & Heng-Yu Fan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Embryonic development produces different cell types in response to a small number of inductive signals. Here, the authors characterise how maternal factors modify chromatin to specify initial competence in Xenopus tropicalis, finding that the pioneering activity of the pluripotency factors Pou5f3 and Sox3 establishes competence for germ layer formation by remodelling chromatin before the onset of signalling.

    • George E. Gentsch
    • , Thomas Spruce
    •  & James C. Smith

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tracheal development arises due to tube morphogenesis but how this is regulated is unclear. Here, the authors identify polarization of smooth muscle progenitors as controlling murine tracheal development, activating noncanonical Wnt signaling followed by subepithelial morphogenesis and ring cartilage development.

    • Keishi Kishimoto
    • , Masaru Tamura
    •  & Mitsuru Morimoto

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Hox genes are known to regulate head-tail axis patterning but their molecular role in animals diverged from the bilaterian lineage is unclear. Here, Fabian Rentzsch and Thomas W. Holstein comment on a paper by Mark Martindale and colleagues on the functional role of two Hox genes in axial patterning of the sea anemone.

    • Fabian Rentzsch
    •  & Thomas W. Holstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wnt proteins mediate embryonic development but how protein localization and patterning is regulated is unclear. Here, the authors show that distinct structures with different heparan sulfate modifications (‘N-sulfo-rich’ and ‘N-acetyl-rich’) regulate cellular localization and signal transduction of Wnt8 in Xenopus.

    • Yusuke Mii
    • , Takayoshi Yamamoto
    •  & Masanori Taira

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early in human embryonic development, it is unclear how amniotic sac formation is regulated. Here, the authors use a human pluripotent stem cell-based model, termed the post-implantation amniotic sac embryoid, to recapitulate early embryogenic events of human amniotic sac development.

    • Yue Shao
    • , Kenichiro Taniguchi
    •  & Jianping Fu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ingression of cells from the lateral plate mesoderm (LPM) initiates gonad differentiation but how these events are triggered is unclear. Here, the authors show that gonadal progenitor cells at the ventromedial LPM initiate gonadogenesis, and are activated by Hedgehog and BMP4 signalling.

    • Takashi Yoshino
    • , Hidetaka Murai
    •  & Daisuke Saito

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organizers are regions in the embryo that induce cell fate and impart pattern on neighbouring regions. Here, the authors search for new organizers based on a common gene signature, and show that the Anterior Intestinal Portal endoderm induces cardiac identity, specifies ventricle and inhibits atrial character.

    • Claire Anderson
    • , Mohsin A. F. Khan
    •  & Claudio D. Stern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early development is controlled by maternally deposited mRNAs and the RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that regulate them. Here the authors describe the identification of a large number of RBPs bound to polyadenylated RNAs in Drosophilaembryos before and after the maternal-to-zygotic transition, revealing changes in RBPs activity during development.

    • Vasiliy O. Sysoev
    • , Bernd Fischer
    •  & Anne Ephrussi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the developing eye, the lens and retina are derived from different embryonic tissues, and how these two structures develop next to each other is of interest. In this study, the authors show that transforming growth factor-β secreted by neural crest cells is critical for the positioning of the lens next to the retina.

    • Timothy Grocott
    • , Samuel Johnson
    •  & Andrea Streit

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