Frontiers in biology

New Frontiers for Organismal Biology

June 2013 / Vol. 63 No. 6 www.biosciencemag.org have generated extensive fundamental knowledge that now has us superbly positioned for “returning to the organism” (Stillman et al. 2011). The challenge is to extend, integrate, and exploit the insights from “outward” and “inward” gene-oriented biology to develop a deeper understanding of individual organisms’ higher-order emergent characteristics...

New frontiers in plant female reproductive biology

Frontiers of optofluidics in synthetic biology.

The development of optofluidic-based technology has ushered in a new era of lab-on-a-chip functionality, including miniaturization of biomedical devices, enhanced sensitivity for molecular detection, and multiplexing of optical measurements. While having great potential, optofluidic devices have only begun to be exploited in many biotechnological applications. Here, we highlight the potential o...

Developmental biology: frontiers for clinical genetics.

Teeth arise from sequential and reciprocal interactions between the oral epithelium and the cranial neural crest-derived mesenchyme. Their formation involves a precisely orchestrated series of molecular and morphogenetic events. Numerous regulatory genes that have been primarily found in organisms such as Drosophila, zebrafish, xenopus and mouse are associated with all stages of tooth formation...

Developmental Biology: Frontiers for Clinical Genetics

Vascular anomalies are localized defects of the vasculature, and usually affect a limited number of vessels in a restricted area of the body. They are subdivided into vascular malformations and vascular tumours. Most are sporadic, but Mendelian inheritance is observed in some families. By genetic analysis, several causative genes have been identified during the last 10 years. This has shed ligh...