Notochord Morphogenesis: A Prickly Subject for Ascidians

Notochord Morphogenesis: A Prickly Subject for Ascidians

Orchestrated cell movements marshalled by proper cell polarity in the developing body axes are fundamental to the elongation of the notochord during chordate embryogenesis. A recent study shows that, in ascidians, the planar cell polarity gene prickle regulates sequential establishment of cell polarity during two phases of notochord morphogenesis.

A Prickly Subject: Apoptotic Regulation by Hedgehog Morphogens

Morphogens, as intercellular signalling proteins, provide a non-cell-autonomous mechanism to impart positional information to cells and govern essential cellular processes such as apoptosis. Individual morphogen pathways utilise diverse strategies to regulate the assembly and activity of the pro-apoptotic multi-protein complexes – namely the apoptosome and the death-inducing signalling complex ...

Chemical genetics suggests a critical role for lysyl oxidase in zebrafish notochord morphogenesis{

As a result of a chemical genetic screen for modulators of metalloprotease activity, we report that 2-mercaptopyridine-N-oxide induces a conspicuous undulating notochord defect in zebrafish embryos, a phenocopy of the leviathan mutant. The location of the chemically-induced wavy notochord correlated with the timing of application, thus defining a narrow chemical sensitivity window during segmen...

The multidimensionality of cell behaviors underlying morphogenesis: a case study in ascidians.

Databases where different types of information from different sources can be integrated, cross-referenced and interactively accessed are necessary for building a quantitative understanding of the molecular and cell biology intrinsic to the morphogenesis of an embryo. Tassy and colleagues recently reported the development of software tailor-made to perform such a task, along with the generation ...

Prickly pear