Development

Numerous studies in animals demonstrate that embryonic exposure to ethanol (EtOH) at low-moderate doses stimulates neurogenesis and increases the number of hypothalamic neurons expressing the peptide, hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt). A recent study in zebrafish showed that this effect on the Hcrt neurons in the anterior hypothalamus (AH) is area specific, evident in the anterior (aAH) but not posterior (pAH) part of this region.

Positional information encoded in signaling molecules is essential for early patterning in the prosensory domain of the developing cochlea. The sensory epithelium, the organ of Corti, contains an exquisite repeating pattern of hair cells and supporting cells. This requires precision in the morphogen signals that set the initial radial compartment boundaries, but this has not been investigated.

The pituitary gland regulates growth, metabolism, reproduction, the stress response, uterine contractions, lactation, and water retention. It secretes hormones in response to hypothalamic input, end organ feedback, and diurnal cues. The mechanisms by which pituitary stem cells are recruited to proliferate, maintain quiescence or differentiate into specific cell types, especially thyrotropes, are not well understood.

The placenta is essential for reproductive success. The murine placenta includes polyploid giant cells that are crucial for its function. Polyploidy occurs broadly in nature but the regulators and significance in the placenta are unknown. We discovered that many murine placental cell types are polyploid. We identified factors that license polyploidy using single-cell RNA seq. c-Myc is a key regulator of polyploidy and placental development and is required for multiple rounds of DNA replication, likely via endocycles, in trophoblast giant cells.

Dentin is the major hard tissue of teeth formed by differentiated odontoblasts. How odontoblast differentiation is regulated remains enigmatic. Here, we report that the E3 ubiquitin ligase CHIP is highly expressed in undifferentiated dental mesenchymal cells and downregulated after differentiation of odontoblasts. Ectopic expression of CHIP inhibits odontoblastic differentiation of mouse dental papilla cells, whereas knockdown of endogenous CHIP has opposite effects.

Numerous studies have characterized the existence of cell subtypes, along with their corresponding transcriptional profiles, within the developing mouse pancreas. The upstream mechanisms that initiate and maintain gene expression programs across cell states, however, remain largely unknown. Here, we generate single-nucleus ATAC-Sequencing data of developing murine pancreas and perform an integrated, multi-omic analysis of both chromatin accessibility and RNA expression to describe the chromatin landscape of the developing pancreas at both E14.5 and E17.5 at single-cell resolution.

Neural progenitor cells lengthen their cell cycle to prime themselves for differentiation as development proceeds. It is currently not clear how they counter this lengthening and avoid being halted in the cell cycle. We show that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation of cell-cycle-related mRNAs ensures the proper cell-cycle progression of late-born retinal progenitor cells (RPCs), which are born toward the end of retinogenesis and have long cell-cycle length.

The ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) is the largest neurogenic region of the postnatal forebrain, containing neural stem cells (NSCs) that emerge from both the embryonic pallium and subpallium. Despite of this dual origin, glutamatergic neurogenesis declines rapidly after birth, while GABAergic neurogenesis persists throughout life. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing of the postnatal dorsal V-SVZ for unraveling the mechanisms leading to pallial lineage germinal activity silencing.

Zebrafish robustly regenerate fins, including their characteristic bony ray skeleton. Amputation activates intra-ray fibroblasts and dedifferentiates osteoblasts that migrate under a wound epidermis to establish an organized blastema. Coordinated proliferation and re-differentiation across lineages then sustains progressive outgrowth. We generate a single cell transcriptome dataset to characterize regenerative outgrowth and explore coordinated cell behaviors.