This Developmental Biology Select discusses recent progress toward understanding the regulation of stem cell division and the impact of stem cell self-renewal on tissue homeostasis. New findings include the discovery that stem cell division is diminished by misorientation of centrosomes during aging. Other recent work sheds light on the effects of stress signaling on stem cell proliferation, re...

Evolutionary developmental biology is the study of evolutionary change (called phylogeny) as it is revealed through the embryological development of individual organisms (called ontogeny). On this approach, the understanding of ontogeny contributes to our understanding of phylogeny, and vice versa. Evolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth century almost all held what may be called the core doctr...

The theory that the spatial organization of cell fate is orchestrated by gradients of diffusing molecules was a major contribution to 20th century developmental biology. Although the existence of morphogens is no longer in doubt, studies on the formation and function of their gradients have yielded far more puzzles than answers. On close inspection, every morphogen gradient seems to use a rich ...

Recent advances in genetics and neurobiology have greatly increased the degree of variation that one finds in what is taken to provide the biological foundations of our species-specific linguistic capacities. In particular, this variation seems to cast doubt on the purportedly homogeneous nature of the language faculty traditionally captured by the concept of "Universal Grammar." In this articl...

A central challenge in developmental biology is understanding the creation of robust spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Generally, the mathematical treatments of biological systems have used continuum, mean-field hypotheses for their constituent parts, which ignores any sources of intrinsic stochastic effects. In this paper we consider a stochastic space-jump process as a description of diffusion, i...

Ecological model systems provide a conduit to understand the ecological impact of information gained from laboratory model species. Here, I review a 2011 meeting which focused on the systematic, ecological, evolutionary and developmental biology of the ecological model genus Boechera.

Clearly, the fossil record from the Cambrian period is an invaluable tool for deciphering animal evolution. Less clear, however, is how to integrate the paleontological information with molecular phylogeny and developmental biology data. Equally challenging is answering why the Cambrian period provided such a rich interval for the redeployment of genes that led to more complex body plans.

We analyze the transient dynamics leading to the establishment of a steady state in reaction-diffusion problems that model several important processes in cell and developmental biology and account for the diffusion and degradation of locally produced chemical species. We derive expressions for the local accumulation time, a convenient characterization of the time scale of the transient at a giv...

The generation of asymmetry is a key event in many developmental processes, including cell differentiation, embryonic axis specification, and organogenesis. Recent research highlights the identification of factors needed to establish stomata during plant development and the role that timing plays in directing left-right asymmetry during nervous system development in zebrafish. Other recent stud...

An active interchange of ideas has begun to develop in recent years between developmental biologists and physiologists interested in the development of complex traits. It is clear that this is a time of exciting challenges for both fields, challenges that present opportunities for significant mutual illumination between them. Members of both fields met at a workshop held in Arlington, Virginia,...