In skeletal muscle development, the myogenic regulatory factors myf5 and myoD play redundant roles in the specification and maintenance of myoblasts, whereas myf6 has a downstream role in differentiating myocytes and myofibers. It is not clear whether the redundancy between myf5 and myoD is within the same cell lineage or between distinct lineages. Using lineage tracing and conditional cell abl...

For adult stem cells to both self-renew and give rise to differentiating progenitors, they must undergo an inherently asymmetric division. This defining model of asymmetric cell division requires either that stem cells preferentially distribute internal factors, thereby maintaining a stem cell phenotype in one lineage, or that extrinsic signals determine the fate of daughter cells, allowing the...

BACKGROUND The cell lineage of nematodes is mostly invariant for a given species, but varies between species. One can thus wonder how a cell lineage varies during evolution. We have started a microevolutionary approach within two genera by observing lineage variations of vulval precursor cells in different natural nematode populations of the same and closely related species. RESULTS In Caenor...