A MODEL FOR LIFE
- Building genetic tools in Drosophila research: an interview with Gerald Rubin
Drosophila Collection: Ross Cagan spoke to Gerry Rubin about his career path and the story behind some of his key breakthroughs, as well as his unique and successful approach to management and mentorship.
REVIEW
- Using Drosophila to discover mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes
Drosophila Collection: Studies in Drosophila hold the potential to transform our understanding of the genetics of diabetes. We review important findings and provide a framework for diabetes gene discovery in the fly.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- Neurodegeneration in a Drosophila model of adrenoleukodystrophy: the roles of the Bubblegum and Double bubble acyl-CoA synthetases
Drosophila Collection: A new Drosophila model of ALD reveals dysregulation of fatty acid metabolism as causal of neurodegenerative pathologies and has led to the identification of a new candidate gene for ALD in humans.
- Phenotypic chemical screening using a zebrafish neural crest EMT reporter identifies retinoic acid as an inhibitor of epithelial morphogenesis
Editors' choice: Generation and characterization of a novel neural crest EMT reporter for rapid in vivo drug screening in zebrafish that identifies a small-molecule EMT inhibitor that blocks this process by activating retinoic acid signaling.
- 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors as hypothalamic targets of developmental programming in male rats
Summary: Maternal protein restriction increases fetal brain 5-HT and might contribute to changes in production and function of hypothalamic 5-HT2C and 5-HT2A receptors in the offspring later in life.
- Common arterial trunk and ventricular non-compaction in Lrp2 knockout mice indicate a crucial role of LRP2 in cardiac development
Summary: This paper sheds a new light on the role of the second heart field and neural crest cells in outflow tract formation in the mouse embryo. Depletion of the LPR2 results in a disturbed contribution pattern and subsequent common arterial trunk.
- Depletion of regulatory T cells leads to an exacerbation of delayed-type hypersensitivity arthritis in C57BL/6 mice that can be counteracted by IL-17 blockade
Summary: This paper increases the understanding of disease drivers and regulators in delayed-type hypersensitivity arthritis, a robust and reproducible arthritis model in C57BL/6 mice.
- Angiotensin-(1-7) attenuates disuse skeletal muscle atrophy in mice via its receptor, Mas
Summary: In this article, the authors demonstrate that a peptide with actions mainly in the cardiovascular system prevents the skeletal muscle damage induced by disuse.
RESOURCE ARTICLES
- Decreased N-TAF1 expression in X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism patient-specific neural stem cells
Summary: This study describes a new iPSC model of X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism (XDP), which was initially validated by demonstrating a similar transcriptional defect as has been previously reported in XDP brain tissue.
- New Wistar Kyoto and spontaneously hypertensive rat transgenic models with ubiquitous expression of green fluorescent protein
Summary: We have created two transgenic models expressing ubiquitous GFP in WKY and SHR rat lines to support in vivo and ex vivo studies. We show their characterisation and discuss their potential use for translational research.
- Multimodal analysis of ocular inflammation using the endotoxin-induced uveitis mouse model
Summary: A refined platform approach for endotoxin-induced uveitis, using multimodal ex vivo and in vivo assessment, to improve quantification and phenotyping in this ocular model of compartmentalised tissue inflammation.
This issue
Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editor’s choice – Perturbed development of cranial neural crest cells in association with reduced sonic hedgehog signaling underlies the pathogenesis of retinoic-acid-induced cleft palate
Takashi Yamashiro and colleagues identify the critical role of the retinoic acid-Sonic hedgehog signalling pathway in cranial neural crest and palate development.
A new Resource article by Nguyen et al. describes CFIN, a novel deep learning image analysis platform to assess cardiac function in embryonic zebrafish.
Yuyu Niu and colleagues summarise the history of genome editing in non-human primates and discusses the challenges and prospects of the technology.
Have you seen our interviews with the early-career first authors of our papers? Recently, we caught up with Alexander Akerberg and Jocelyn Wessels.
Travelling Fellowship – New imaging approach unveils a bigger picture
Find out how Pamela Imperadore’s Travelling Fellowship grant from The Company of Biologists took her to Germany, where she used new imaging techniques to investigate the cellular machinery underlying octopus arm regeneration. Don’t miss the next application deadline for 2020 travel, coming up on 29 November. Where will you go?
preLights – HSP110 dependent HSP70 disaggregation machinery mediates prion-like propagation of amyloidogenic proteins in metazoa
Highlighted by Tessa Sinnige, a recent preprint from Carmen Nussbaum-Krammer and co-workers shows that Hsp110 activity protects against amorphous protein aggregation but promotes amyloid aggregation and toxicity in C. elegans models.