Morphogenesis articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Using micropipette aspiration on donated human embryos, cell surface tensions during compaction were mapped, indicating a role for defective cell contractility in poor quality embryos.

    • Julie Firmin
    • , Nicolas Ecker
    •  & Jean-Léon Maître

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Combining single-cell RNA-sequencing with high-resolution multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization reveals in detail the cellular interactions and specialization of cardiac cell types that form and remodel the human heart.

    • Elie N. Farah
    • , Robert K. Hu
    •  & Neil C. Chi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An insertion of an Alu element into an intron of the TBXT gene is identified as a genetic mechanism of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes, with implications for human health today.

    • Bo Xia
    • , Weimin Zhang
    •  & Itai Yanai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In zebrafish embryos, active complexes of Wnt5b and its membrane-bound receptor Ror2 are transported between cells via cellular protrusions called cytonemes to initiate paracrine Wnt5b signalling in cells that do not endogenously express the receptor.

    • Chengting Zhang
    • , Lucy Brunt
    •  & Steffen Scholpp

  • Article |

    Experiments in zebrafish and human tissues show that, during retinal morphogenesis, emerging photoreceptor cells migrate in a bidirectional manner, which lessens competition for space and helps to ensure that the retina is formed correctly.

    • Mauricio Rocha-Martins
    • , Elisa Nerli
    •  & Caren Norden

  • 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

  • Article |

    A mechanism involving intracellular recycling of the morphogen Decapentaplegic (Dpp) underlies the scaling of the Dpp gradient in the Drosophila wing disc, and this is modulated by the extracellular factors Pentagone and Dally.

    • Maria Romanova-Michaelides
    • , Zena Hadjivasiliou
    •  & Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan

  • Article |

    The rate of scale regeneration in zebrafish is controlled by the frequency of rhythmic travelling waves of Erk activity, which are broadcast from a central source to induce ring-like patterns of osteoblast tissue growth.

    • Alessandro De Simone
    • , Maya N. Evanitsky
    •  & Stefano Di Talia

  • Article |

    Differences in the mechanical properties of individual cardiomyocytes drive their segregation into compact versus trabecular layer, thereby transforming the myocardium in a developing heart from a simple epithelium into an intricately patterned tissue with distinct cell fates.

    • Rashmi Priya
    • , Srinivas Allanki
    •  & Didier Y. R. Stainier

  • Article |

    Miniature gut tubes grown in vitro from mouse intestinal stem cells are perfusable, can be colonized with microorganisms and exhibit a similar arrangement and diversity of specialized cell types to intestines in vivo.

    • Mikhail Nikolaev
    • , Olga Mitrofanova
    •  & Matthias P. Lutolf

  • Article |

    Nodal signalling coordinates embryonic development before and during gastrulation by directing perforation of the basement membrane via spatiotemporal regulation of matrix metalloprotease expression.

    • Christos Kyprianou
    • , Neophytos Christodoulou
    •  & Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

  • Article |

    Monitoring cells of the mouse presomitic mesoderm using the Achilles reporter fused to HES7 sheds light on the mechanisms that underpin synchronous oscillations in the expression of clock genes between neighbouring cells.

    • Kumiko Yoshioka-Kobayashi
    • , Marina Matsumiya
    •  & Ryoichiro Kageyama

  • Article |

    Tissue shape changes in the posterior endoderm of the early Drosophila embryo are driven by actomyosin contractions emerging from a transcriptional induction followed by a mechanically-driven propagation of RhoI–myosin II activation.

    • Anaïs Bailles
    • , Claudio Collinet
    •  & Thomas Lecuit

  • Letter |

    A mouse blastocyst model reveals how lumenal pressure, cell cortical tension and tissue stiffness act at the tissue scale to regulate embryo size, which in turn influences the division pattern of trophectoderm cells and their fate specification.

    • Chii Jou Chan
    • , Maria Costanzo
    •  & Takashi Hiiragi

  • Article |

    Cell competition in the developing mouse epithelium involves apoptosis and engulfment when the epithelium has only one layer, but switches to involve asymmetric cell division and differentiation of ‘loser’ cells as the epithelium becomes stratified.

    • Stephanie J. Ellis
    • , Nicholas C. Gomez
    •  & Elaine Fuchs

  • Letter |

    In the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) and fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), spatiotemporally coordinated integrin-dependent attachments between the blastoderm and vitelline envelope counteract tissue-intrinsic contractile forces to create asymmetric movements of embryonic tissue.

    • Stefan Münster
    • , Akanksha Jain
    •  & Pavel Tomancak

  • Letter |

    Cell-labelling experiments are used to demonstrate that the hindgut in the chick embryo is formed by cells moving through the stationary caudal intestinal portal as a result of a contractile force gradient directed by fibroblast growth factor signalling.

    • Nandan L. Nerurkar
    • , ChangHee Lee
    •  & Clifford J. Tabin

  • Letter |

    Stimulation of Wnt and Nodal pathways in micropatterned human embryonic stem cell colonies induce these colonies to exhibit characteristic spatial expression patterns of the organizer and reproduce organizer function when grafted into a host embryo.

    • I. Martyn
    • , T. Y. Kanno
    •  & A. H. Brivanlou

  • Letter |

    Exit of epiblasts from an unrestricted naive pluripotent state is required for epithelialization and generation of the pro-amniotic cavity in mouse embryos and for amniotic cavity formation in human embryos and human embryonic stem cells.

    • Marta N. Shahbazi
    • , Antonio Scialdone
    •  & Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

  • Letter |

    Two parallel signalling pathways, driven by Nodal and BMP, respectively integrate left- and right-handed information that drives heart looping and morphogenesis, and are conserved between zebrafish, chicken and mouse.

    • Oscar H. Ocaña
    • , Hakan Coskun
    •  & M. Angela Nieto

  • Article |

    Alx3-induced modulation of Mitf expression alters melanocyte differentiation and gives rise to the hair colour differences underlying the repeated evolution of dorsal stripes in rodents.

    • Ricardo Mallarino
    • , Corneliu Henegar
    •  & Hopi E. Hoekstra

  • Letter |

    Hoxa- and Hoxd-deficient zebrafish generated using Crispr/Cas with fate mapping have reduced fin rays and increased endochondral elements, establishing homology between the developmental programs that create fin rays and the wrists and digits of mammals.

    • Tetsuya Nakamura
    • , Andrew R. Gehrke
    •  & Neil H. Shubin

  • Letter |

    D’Arcy Thompson predicted a century ago that animal body shape is conditioned by gravity, but there has been no animal model to study how cellular forces are coordinated to generate body shapes that withstand gravity; the hirame medaka fish mutant, with pronounced body flattening, reveals how the hirame/YAP gene controls gravity-resisting cellular forces to produce complex 3D organs and body shapes.

    • Sean Porazinski
    • , Huijia Wang
    •  & Makoto Furutani-Seiki

  • Letter |

    Apoptotic cell death is required for morphogenesis of the developing leg joint of fruitflies; using this model system, the authors show here that within apoptotic cells a transient pulling force exerted through a highly dynamic apico-basal myosin II cable-like structure acts as a mechanical signal to increase tissue tension and modify tissue shape.

    • Bruno Monier
    • , Melanie Gettings
    •  & Magali Suzanne

  • Article |

    Body axis elongation from head to tail is essential for animal development, however, the spatial cues that direct cell rearrangements relative to the anterior–posterior axis were unknown; this Drosophila study of convergent extension reveals that three Toll family receptors, expressed in overlapping stripes, modulate the contractile properties of cells to generate the polarized cell rearrangements that lead to body axis elongation.

    • Adam C. Paré
    • , Athea Vichas
    •  & Jennifer A. Zallen

  • Letter |

    The Drosophila tumour suppressors Scribbled and Discs large 1 are found to be essential regulators of planar spindle alignment during epithelial cell division; aberrant effects of spindle alignment are shown to be corrected through apoptosis, and the suppression of this mechanism can result in epithelial dysplasia and tumorigenesis.

    • Yu-ichiro Nakajima
    • , Emily J. Meyer
    •  & Matthew C. Gibson

  • Letter |

    Opaque tissues provide a challenge for live imaging of Xenopus laevis development; a problem solved by in vivo time-lapse X-ray microtomography that is shown to provide a high-resolution three-dimensional view of structural changes and dynamics of gastrulation, and that is applied to identify and analyse new aspects of gastrulation in frog embryos.

    • Julian Moosmann
    • , Alexey Ershov
    •  & Ralf Hofmann

  • Letter |

    Tooth development is used as a model to examine which aspects of phenotype can be optimized by natural selection; this reveals that the complexity of the relationship between genotypic and phenotypic variation can affect adaptation

    • Isaac Salazar-Ciudad
    •  & Miquel Marín-Riera

  • Letter |

    Genetically encoded probes for the non-peptidic morphogen retinoic acid allow the quantitative measurement of physiological RA concentration in vivo; the results support the source–sink diffusion model of morphogen dynamics proposed by Francis Crick in 1970.

    • Satoshi Shimozono
    • , Tadahiro Iimura
    •  & Atsushi Miyawaki

  • Letter |

    Drosophila epithelial tracheal placode invagination is shown to be driven by mitotic cell rounding along with epithelial growth factor receptor signalling and myosin contractility in neighbouring cells, revealing a new cell-division-independent role for mitotic events in morphogenesis.

    • Takefumi Kondo
    •  & Shigeo Hayashi

  • Letter |

    As it develops from a single-celled zygote to a mature plant embryo, the thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana passes through a stage during which phylogenetically very ancient genes are preferentially expressed, showing that animals and plants have independently acquired the developmental hourglass as a similar way of managing gene expression as they pass through embryogenesis, even though their morphological development is very different.

    • Marcel Quint
    • , Hajk-Georg Drost
    •  & Ivo Grosse

  • Article |

    Using a conditional multicolour tracing approach, the contributions of individual cardiomyocytes to zebrafish heart morphogenesis are defined, revealing clonal dominance as a key mechanism.

    • Vikas Gupta
    •  & Kenneth D. Poss

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Morphogenesis across other nature.com journals