Vascular organogenesis

Vascular organogenesis: dream or reality?

Dicer1 activity in the stromal compartment regulates nephron differentiation and vascular patterning during mammalian kidney organogenesis

MicroRNAs, activated by the enzyme Dicer1, control post-transcriptional gene expression. Dicer1 has important roles in the epithelium during nephrogenesis, but its function in stromal cells during kidney development is unknown. To study this, we inactivated Dicer1 in renal stromal cells. This resulted in hypoplastic kidneys, abnormal differentiation of the nephron tubule and vasculature, and pe...

Studies on Organogenesis

1. Isolated blood cells, when placed for incubation in a plasma substratum, are capable of constructing highly organized, tubular processes that project from the explanted cell mass into the surrounding medium. 2. The tubular structures have fibrillar walls that may be covered, eventually, by a membranous layer of leukocytes. Their lumina contain blood cells suspended in fluid. 3. The formation...

Organogenesis: Drosophila goes gonadal

In many animals, germ cells migrate to the gonad to assemble into a functional organ. Recent work in Drosophila has built a picture of the gene activities that specify the gonad and allow it to attract germ cells, and has led to the identification of a gene, columbus, that may encode the attractive factor.

Stages of Kidney Organogenesis

temporal coordination of numerous biomolecular interactions. Approaches geared toward elucidating the molecular and cellular basis of kidney development and branching morphogenesis have focused on the study of discrete molecules and signaling pathways by using genetic and in vitro approaches (reviewed in Refs. 11 and 71), more recently combined with microarray studies (66, 74, 75). To date, int...