“There is no such thing as a non-model organism”
R. Behringer

This bold statement was announced less than a week into our Embryology course and has left a lasting impression on lecturers and students alike. At first it seemed like a sympathetic statement to the extensive and diverse systems us students were arriving from… “yeah, your work is relevant, don’t worry, people care about sturgeon skeletal patterns.” But as the course has moved forward it’s become increasingly apparent that it’s not the system that’s relevant but rather what questions we now have the ability to answer in that system. Why is this? What has changed in the recent years or in particular this year? ..it’s kind of a one word answer – CRISPR/Cas9.

The CRISPR/Cas9 system has revolutionized the way we can now design experiments for any system for which we can obtain genomic or transcript sequence. Want to know how many functional neural crest genes amphioxus has? Just spend less than an hour designing and ordering a few guide RNA oligo templates. You can be injecting in a few days. Want to test the function of dorsalizing genes only in the neural lineage of Xenopus? Inject the guide RNAs into the corresponding blastomeres. Also think about all the cell-autonomous questions you could address with expressing CRISPR/Cas9 mosaically. For almost every lecture and sweat-box discussion we have had in the past weeks I think at least one of us has come up with a CRISPR/Cas9 answer to a pending question or hypothesis in organisms spanning the tree of life….also we’re embryologists, we really like designing experiments that involve injecting things.

It’s not just the CRISPR/Cas9 system that has changed the prospects of embryology and development biology this year; it’s also the cheap and plentiful influx of genome sequences of these ‘non-model’ organisms. The technology and financial feasibility of sequencing whole genomes and transcriptomes has broken down the barriers for the genome targeting possibilities of CRISPR/Cas9. These genomes are broadening our perspectives and giving researchers the ability to step away from the traditional model organisms, with all their caveats and developmental exceptions, and address broader questions about the evolution of developmental mechanisms used across whole genera or clades.

We have also heard some really inspiring possibilities and probably the future of developmental biology research labs using multiple organisms. Bronner and Wallingford really hammered home the idea that working on just one traditional organism is going to be real lame, real soon. I’m ok with that…if it doesn’t work on the first one, move on to the next right?

I’ll end this with some inspiring quotes and advice from some of our Embryology lecturers this year:

“Humbling, educational, awe-inspiring…spiritual….that’s what it’s like to look at the worm” –Dave Sherwood
“Just nurture them and let them grow and cherish them” –Athula Wikramanayake
“It worked because you didn’t know it wouldn’t” – Nipam Patel
“The only two things you need to make this work are spinning the tubes and FAITH” –Nipam Patel
“As you become embryologists, you are going to see a lot of beautiful things, but they may not all be essential.” – Geraldine Seydoux
“You have to just buy into the dream (CRISPR/Cas9)” –Richard Behringer
“BMP forever means you are a belly forever… which is not so exciting” –Brigitte Galliot
“Know your blastopore from a hole in the ground” –Ray Keller
“We’re all walking mutants in one form or another” –Paul Trainor
“Axolotologist” –Elke Ober
“You can even get natural Double D’s “- John Q Henry
“All you need is Wnt” –Mark Q Martindale

The moment I really got fascinated by biology was when, aged 16, I saw a water flea’s heart beating in a school lesson. Up until that point I liked the subject but had never been really excited. Labelling the parts of a flower or an eye was fine, but not thrilling!

I was discussing my experience with Daphnia with Isabel Torres, a like-minded post-doc in the same department, and we decided to establish an outreach project introducing the microscopic world to even younger children. The idea was to try to spark an interest in science that would persist for as a long as possible. It was an experiment; we did not know how much the children would take in or what they would like to see the most. We were very lucky to receive generous funding for educational microscopes and cameras from the Lister Institute and the MRC, who have supported primary research in my lab. We spent a fun few days trying different samples. One afternoon we had about a quarter of the LMB’s Cell Biology department along to marvel at Tetrahymena ingesting carmine particles!

Once reasonably confident in our “Microscopes4Schools” program we persuaded a local school to act as our guinea pigs. We found that the 10 and 11-year olds were thrilled by the microscopic world and were engaged by all the activities. With the help of many great volunteers from our institute, particularly Monica Brenni and Marwah Hassan, we’ve since run the workshop at several local schools, at three Cambridge Science Festivals and for hundreds of children at our institute’s open day.

The children use cheap, robust stereomicroscopes to identify mutant fruit flies and to match up samples (ladybirds, butterflies, seeds, flowers) with high magnification images that we provide. Activities with compound microscopes include looking at live Daphnia (!), Tetrahymena, Volvox and the children’s cheek cells.

We’ve learnt that it does not take a lot of money to run such an outreach activity. The stereomicroscopes cost approximately £40 (€50/$70) and the compound microscopes cost just under £200 (€250/$350), yet producing images of great quality (see diatom image below). Although we’ve typically taken several microscopes to schools I’ve recently run a scaled down version with a single educational compound scope and a CCTV camera, which I connected to a data projector. This was for five to seven year olds and they too were thrilled to see the samples.

Another successful initiative has been to lend a user-friendly digital microscope to local schools for two weeks so that they can take images of samples collected by the children. This has evolved into a “Science Image Award” (an example of an entry is shown below) with the best image winning an educational microscope, which is generously provided by a sponsor. This activity brings the children in contact with the natural world, which does not happen regularly for many of them.

We put together our experiences in a website, www.microscopes4schools.co.uk, which includes advice on sourcing suitable microscopes and supplies, as well as suggestions for experiments. Judging by Google Analytics this site has had a far-reaching impact (67,000 visitors from 186 countries in the two years it has been active).

As many of us engaged in outreach will attest, the whole process is a lot of fun and highly rewarding. Seeing children enthused by science is a great joy. Plus I still get to marvel at all kinds of things down the microscope, which is what got me into this game in the first place!

Simon Bullock

The “Stereomicroscope Challenge” in the classroom

Entry for Science Image Award: Dragonfly pupal case

Image of diatom from £200 educational microscope

This post is part of a series on science outreach. You can read the introduction to the series here and read other posts in this series here.

The Node’s next stop is the capital of Austria- Vienna! Our visit will be in two parts:

Cat, the Node community manager, will be giving a talk at the Vienna Biocenter Campus entitled ‘Joining the online conversation: how to use social media to communicate your science’. This will be an informal talk and Q&A which will discuss how scientists can use social media, especially Twitter and blogging, to share the word about their research and advance their career. The talk will take place at the IMP Lecture Hall, Institute of Molecular Pathology, and is open to everyone! Join us on Tuesday the 22nd of July at 12h30.

Cat will also be attending the 5th meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, which will take place from the 22nd to the 25th of July at the Campus of the University of Vienna. She will be around for the whole meeting, and would love to meet you and hear your thoughts on the Node! Drop the Node an email or say hello to Cat if you see her. The Node will also be tweeting  from the meeting.

We look forward to meeting you in Vienna!

By Henrique Marques-Souza and Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca

Widely known as the country of soccer, samba and beautiful beaches, one might wonder if it is possible to perform high quality research in Developmental Biology in Brazil with so many distractions. What are the pros and cons of doing research in this area in Brazil?  Is there any tradition? How is the actual funding situation and scientific environment? How many research groups research Developmental Biology and what are the future perspectives?

2014 is a special year for Brazil not only because of the World Cup but also because of the 150 years of the publication of the book of the great German Naturalist Fritz Mueller Fur Darwin (1864), which has beautifully described Brazilian Crustacean Development and its evolutionary relationships providing an astonishing support to Darwin’s theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. Interestingly, Fritz Muller´s descriptions were done at home with the help of a simple microscope, since no universities were present at that time in Brazil.

Many years have passed since Mueller´s discoveries and it is reasonable to say that the field of Developmental Biology remained for a long time dormant in Brazil, even during the revolution that happened in Germany and in the US with the rise of Drosophila developmental genetics in the 80´s. Many laboratories in Europe and in the US have set the ground state of Evolutionary and Developmental Biology, as it was only in the late 90’s that Brazilian researches, that had joined these pioneer laboratories as postdoctoral fellows, started to change this situation by returning to establish their labs in Brazil. In 2001, these researchers joined efforts to organize the First International Symposium of Developmental Biology in the city of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, with several renowned speakers from Europe and US joining in. This meeting represented the first countrywide contact between researchers and was vital to attract many young students to the developmental biology field, including one of the authors of this post. In parallel, the Unesco Chair of Developmental Biology, led by Nicole Le Douarin, (http://www.anato.ufrj.br/catedraunesco2008/en/unesco.htmBrazilian) has organized and supported several practical courses in Developmental Biology since 1999, especially in less developed states in Brazil. Today, laboratories in different Universities, all over the country, are specifically dedicated to Developmental Biology, with a young and active research community that provides the field with a interactive network of peers and laboratories, allowing for critical discussions and exchange of students and techniques between labs. As a consequence, Brazilian researchers are a significant part of the Latin American Society of Developmental Biology (http://lasdbbiology.ning.com/), having today the Brazilian Developmental Biologist José Xavier-Neto as the president.

What about funding? Over the past years Brazil’s investments in science and technology has significantly increase. While federal funding agencies are the lonely responsible for the funding for most Brazilian states, the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, have their own funding agencies. Due to the higher state income taxes, these states have a much higher funding availability than the remaining regions of the Country. As a consequence, most research groups are located in these three states in Southeastern of Brazil. Only in 2013, the São Paulo funding agency (FAPESP) invested over US$511 million in funding awarded to research projects (http://www.scidev.net/global/funding/feature/funding-brazil-s-science-sao-paulo-s-success-story-1.html). With good scientists and funding available, is there any limitation to Brazil’s advance in Developmental Biology?

 Participants of the last International Symposium on Developmental Biology, held in the charming coast city of Paraty, in November of 2013.

Here we highlight three issues that we consider some of the most important. First, the scientific community in Brazil studying Developmental Biology, although in the rise, is still very small, with national meetings hosting not more then 200 participants countrywide. This fact has a direct impact on the influence that this community could have scientifically and politically in the country and worldwide. Second, Brazil has one of the largest taxes and bureaucracies for imported goods. Antibodies, enzymes, primers, cell lines, media, genetically modified animals, and everything else related to research that comes from abroad has its price tripled due to taxes bureaucracy. Also, since we depend on importing most of our reagents and equipment, the experiments and lab stocks have to be tightly programed to avoid having to freeze research while reagents are being shipped. Third, science has the great advance of being fluent, stateless and worldwide. Today, through science, anyone can study anywhere at any time. In Brazil, the program Ciênicas sem Fronteiras has allowed Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students to spend time studying and doing research abroad. Also, the state funding agencies and graduate programs finance and stimulate students to perform part of their research abroad. This great advance of the fluency of science is still not that advantageous to Brazil. On can image that the best students are being recruited to the best universities and research institute all over the world. One day Brazil will for sure be also attractive for science, but until then, the brain evasion has being affecting us, especially in basic research such as Development Biology. As everywhere, the more impact our research make in the scientific community, more attractive it will be, not only for Brazilians abroad, but also for every scientist interested in competitive research. Great times are coming!

A recent wave of ‘comebacks’ happened in the past few years, with young scientists that did their PhD and postdoctoral training in the US and Germany returning and establishing research groups in different states of Brazil. These research groups are very well funded, creating solid networks of interaction among then and with research groups abroad, and hunger to help the pioneers to take Brazil’s Developmental Biology research to impact the world with original and cutting edge science!

If you are interested, we welcome you into this fascinating journey….

Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca is a Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in Macaé, in Rio de Janeiro State, and Henrique Marques-Souza is a Professor at University of Campinas, in São Paulo State.

The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is an organization that ‘promotes excellence in the life sciences’ in Europe and beyond. With more than 1500 members (leaders in their respective fields), it is a driving force in European science. Since its inception in 1964, EMBO has played an active role in promoting research in the life sciences, organising meetings and workshops, publishing several important journals in the molecular biology arena, supporting young researchers and influencing science policy in Europe. Many European (and non-European) scientists have benefited hugely from EMBO’s activities over the years – including several of us here at The Company of Biologists! 

To mark the occasion of EMBO’s 50th anniversary, we have highlighted below some of the past Node posts that  have a connection with EMBO- either highlighting the annual EMBO meetings, reporting form a workshop, or interviewing an award winner or EMBO director. For a great overview of why EMBO was first formed and its history in the last 50 years, do read this great article in Nature. Happy birthday EMBO!

EMBO on the Node:

– Last year we interviewed EMBO’s current director, the developmental biologist Maria Leptin. In this interview she discussed her career and her vision for EMBO.

– Alexis Webb attended an EMBO course on lab management and considered the importance of postdocs acquiring the soft skills necessary to successfully run a lab.

– Alfonso Martinez-Arias shared his thoughts on the EMBO workshop ‘Morphogen Gradients’, and on the brave new world of quantitative developmental biology.

– Eva Amsen, the previous Node community manager, attended the EMBO meeting in 2012. She posted a day by day report (read the posts from day 1, 2, 3 &4). Eva also interviewed the winner of the EMBO Gold Medal 2012, the plant developmental biologist Jiří Friml and keynote speaker Linda Partridge.

– Natascha Bushati attended the EMBO meeting in 2011. There she had the opportunity to discuss the field with Eric Wieschaus and Marcos González-Gaitán, attend the career day and report from the talk sessions (here and here).

– In 2011 Ana Tavares was part of the committee organising the EMBO workshop on Biophysical Mechanisms of Development. They organised a science art competition entitled ‘The Physics of Life’ ,  and Ana’s post gave an overview of the competition (including a link to the competition’s beautiful image gallery!).

The Grewal lab at the University of Calgary, Canada is looking to recruit new postdocs and grad students. Our lab investigates how growth is controlled during animal development. We use a combination of molecular and genetic approaches to investigate the cell-cell signalling pathways and the genetic mechanisms that govern the control of cell, tissue and body growth in Drosophila. Our main focus to-date has been the conserved insulin and TOR kinase pathways, and understanding how they regulate cellular and animal metabolism to drive growth. Further information on our research can be found here. Recent publications can be found here.

POSTDOCS: applicants with a Ph.D. and strong background in developmental biology, genetics, or molecular biology are encouraged to apply. Interested individuals should send a CV, a short statement of research interests, and three names of references to grewalss@ucalgary.

GRAD STUDENTS: applicants with a strong undergraduate degree in any area related to the biological sciences are encouraged to apply. Interested individuals should send a CV, a short statement of research interests, and three names of references to grewalss@ucalgary.

Department/Location: Wellcome Trust – Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge

Salary: £28,132-£36,661

Reference: PS03788

Closing date: 10 August 2014

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available until 30 June 2017 in the first instance.

The Stem Cell Institute is a world-leading centre of excellence in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, supported by a strategic funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (www.stemcells.cam.ac.uk).

Increasing awareness and understanding of the promise and challenges of stem cell research is embedded in the Stem Cell Institute vision; “deep understanding of stem cell biology for the prevention and treatment of human disease”. The Institute’s 5 strategic goals include “Communication and public engagement; providing reliable information, useful resources, and dialogue opportunities for a range of audiences including schools, policy makers, patient groups, professional bodies and the media”.

The central role of the Public Engagement Officer (PEO) is to foster a community of scientists who recognise the importance of dialogue with the public and who have the skills and opportunities to undertake public engagement activities. The PEO will build networks with local schools, arts groups and businesses to develop activities/events with/for them. The PEO will liaise with other Public Engagement officers in the University, Wellcome Trust Centres and Medical Research Council Institutes/Units and will participate in international networks via EuroStemCell, ISSCR and other trans-national initiatives.

We are seeking a dynamic, innovative and self-motivated individual who will bring expertise and leadership for the Institute’s outreach activities. Experience of working in the HE or research sector would be an advantage. Educated to degree level (or equivalent) in a scientific discipline, you will be responsible for growing a community of researchers who are enthusiastic about dialogue with the public and who have the skills and confidence to deliver stimulating interactive events.

The Stem Cell Institute, is currently spread across several sites in Cambridge, you will organise training, logistics and activities with the aim that all groups in SCI will contribute to at least one event each year. The PEO will expand the existing Public Engagement strategy and design and implement innovative public engagement activities that will interconnect the SCI with target audiences. You will develop measures for evaluating the effectiveness and impact of public engagement activities. You will submit reports to the Institute steering committee and sponsors and will prepare funding applications for public engagement activities.

You must demonstrate a proven track record in relationship building, event organisation, report writing, and data management. You will have outstanding organisational and administrative experience and be comfortable working to tight deadlines with minimal supervision. You should have demonstrable experience in web-based/social media communication and you should have excellent written and verbal communication and negotiation skills. You will be IT literate and able to work both on your own and as part of a team.

The post will report to the Institute Director. You will have a degree (or equivalent).

Once an offer of employment has been accepted, the successful candidate will be required to undergo a health assessment.

To apply online for this vacancy and to view further information about the role, please visit: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/4403. This will take you to the role on the University’s Job Opportunities pages. There you will need to click on the ‘Apply online’ button and register an account with the University’s Web Recruitment System (if you have not already) and log in before completing the online application form.

Please upload your current CV and cover letter with your application by Sunday 10th August 2014.

Informal enquiries are also welcome via email: cscrjobs@cscr.cam.ac.uk.

Interviews will be held towards the end of August 2014. If you have not been invited for interview by 18th August 2014, you have not been successful on this occasion.

Please quote reference PS03788 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

The University values diversity and is committed to equality of opportunity.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.

Time for the second round of images from last year’s Woods Hole embryology course! Below you will find 4 fantastic images taken by students of the 2013 course. Choose the one you would like to see in the cover of Development by voting on the pole at the end of the post (you can see bigger versions by clicking on the images). The poll is set up to allow only one vote per person, so please stick to this rule to give all the images a fair chance!

Voting will close noon GMT on July the 30th.

1. Short-tailed fruit bat, Carollia perspicillata, at stage 20. This image was taken by Mary Colasanto (University of Utah) and Sophia Tintori (University of North Carolina).

2. Ovariole of a pupal stage Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) butterfly stained with DAPI (blue, nuclei) and Phalloidin (red, F- actin). Imaged on a Zeiss LSM 780 confocal. This image was taken by Ezgi Kunttas-Tatli (Carnegie Mellon University) and Duygu Ozpolat (University of Maryland).

3. Mouse embryo at E14.5 days. Preserved with Bouin’s fixative and imaged using a Zeiss Discovery V12 and a SPOT Flex camera. Multiple focal planes were assembled using Helicon Focus software. This image was taken by Georgina Stooke-Vaughan (University of Sheffield).

4. “Zebrabow” zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo 2 days post-fertilization. 4-Hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT) administration at 24 hr post-fertilization, leading to ubiquitous expression of active Cre recombinase, and subsequent expression of GFP, RFP and CFP after recombination. Imaged on a Zeiss LSM 700 confocal. This image was taken by Brijesh Kumar (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur).

Applications are invited for PhD projects in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago, New Zealand, including  developmental biology based projects and neuroscience.

Competitive PhD scholarship funding is available.

See the following link for project description and application process. Applications due by the 18th of July.

http://anatomy.otago.ac.nz/phd-opportunities

Here are the highlights from the current issue of Development:

Prime time for pluripotency

Embryonic stem cell (ESC) cultures display a marked heterogeneity in the expression of Nanog, one of several core pluripotency factors required for proper development in vivo. In addition, Nanog levels have also been shown to fluctuate in individual ESCs in vitro; however, the extent and functional consequences of these fluctuations in different pluripotency states has not been fully established. Now, on p. 2770, Domingos Henrique and colleagues take a closer look at Nanog expression in mouse (m) ESCs grown in both 2i/LIF and serum/LIF conditions, which promote naïve versus primed pluripotency states, respectively. Using confocal time-lapse imaging of individual Nanog-reporting mESCs, the authors show that the amplitude of Nanog fluctuation in individual mESCs is similar regardless of culture conditions. The authors also show that divergent Nanog levels exist even between sister cells, and that Nanog levels do not correlate in any way to the cell cycle. In both conditions, cells that expressed low levels of Nanog showed decreased clonogenic capacity and increased lineage priming, whereas the opposite was true when high levels of Nanog were observed. The authors conclude that fluctuating Nanog expression is a cell-intrinsic property that allows ESCs to explore available lineage options in the pluripotent space.

How to make excitatory versus inhibitory neurons

The balance between excitatory versus inhibitory neuron specification during development is crucial for sensory information processing in later life. The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors Ascl1 and Ptf1a are crucial for establishing this specificity in the dorsal spinal cord, but how these two factors, which recognise a similiar DNA motif, can have opposite downstream effects is unclear. Now, on p. 2803, Jane Johnson and colleagues use chromatin immuno-precipitation sequencing (ChIP-Seq) and RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) to identify the precise target genes and DNA-binding motifs for both proteins in vivousing tissue from the developing mouse neural tube. The authors show that the downstream targets of Ascl1 and Ptf1a include many known homeodomain neuronal specification factors, but that the targets differ widely between the two proteins. Despite this distinction, Ascl1 and Ptf1a bind the same E-box motif; however, the authors show that Ptf1a also binds an additional motif where Ascl1 is not detected. This may explain, at least in part, some of the specificity achieved by Ptf1a. The authors also show that non-E-box motifs are enriched in Ascl1- and Ptf1a-bound regions, suggesting that cooperation from other transcription factors may further enhance this specificity.

Polarisation mediates lineage specification

During blastocyst development, asymmetric cell divisions generate polar and apolar daughter cells, which organise into outer and inner positions, respectively, to form the trophectoderm (TE) and inner cell mass (ICM) lineages. The Hippo signaling pathway is crucial for setting up this early lineage specification, but how Hippo signaling relates to cell position and polarity remains unclear. In this issue (p. 2813), Yojiro Yamanaka and colleagues carefully analyze the initiation process of the first lineage specifications in the 16-cell mouse embryo. The authors count the number of polar/apolar cells and outer/inner cells in intact embryos and find that many apolar cells are located in outer positions with only one or two cells fully internalized. Notably, many of these outer apolar cells have high cytoplasmic phosphorylated YAP, an early marker for inner cells. Further analysis of isolated 8-cell blastomeres confirms that polar and apolar cells have intrinsic differences in the regulation of phosphorylated YAP prior to setting up the outer/inner configurations in the embryo. The authors suggest that polarity regulates the outer/inner cell positioning, as well as Hippo signaling, in order to activate TE and ICM lineage specification.

Scribble gets done for intracellular trafficking

Cell polarity is fundamental for biological activity across many varied cell types within different animal species. Intracellular trafficking regulates the differential distribution of proteins that is fundamental to establishing cell polarity, but how cell polarity regulators exert their effects on trafficking machinery is largely unknown. Now, on p. 2796, David Bilder and colleagues identify a specific and unexpected role for Scribble, a conserved core polarity protein, in controlling cargo sorting during intracellular trafficking in several Drosophila epithelial tissues. The authors show that Scribble mutants phenocopy endocytic internalization mutants but that they themselves are not defective in endolysosomal trafficking. Instead, Scribble controls cargo sorting within the retromer pathway, a system used to recycle proteins from endosomes to the trans-Golgi network. Depletion of the Scribble module affects the localisation of canonical retromer-dependent cargo, such as Wntless and Crumbs, but does not affect cargos that are retromer independent. This work brings a new aspect to the interplay between membrane traffic and polarity, and will help to decipher how these two essential pathways interact to establish and maintain epithelial polarity.

PLUS…

Regeneration, morphogenesis and self-organization

In March 2014, the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, hosted a meeting entitled ‘Regeneration of Organs: Programming and Self-Organization’. Scientists from across the globe met to discuss current research on regeneration, organ morphogenesis and self-organization – and the links between these fields. As discussed by Daniel Goldman, a diverse range of experimental models and organ systems was presented at the meeting, and the speakers aptly illustrated the unique power of each. See the Meeting Review on p 2745.

Cellular and physical mechanisms of branching morphogenesis

Branching morphogenesis is the developmental program that builds the epithelial trees of various organs, including the airways of the lung, the collecting ducts of the kidney, and the ducts of the mammary and salivary glands. Recent advances in cell lineage analysis and real-time imaging have uncovered surprising differences in the mechanisms that build these diverse tissues. Victor Varner and Celeste Nelson review these studies and discuss the cellular and physical mechanisms that can contribute to branching morphogenesis. See the Review on p. 2750.

Harnessing developmental processes for vascular engineering and regeneration

The formation of the vasculature is essential for tissue maintenance and regeneration, and understanding how vascular formation is coordinated in vivo can offer valuable insights into engineering approaches for therapeutic vascularization and angiogenesis. Here, Kyung Min Park and Sharon Gerecht discuss how the process of vascular development can be used to guide approaches to engineering vasculature.  See the Review on p. 2760.