An Interview with Mansi Srivastava

Mansi Srivastava is a John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. This year, she was awarded the Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award by the Society of Developmental Biology, which recognizes new group leaders who have performed outstanding research in developmental biology during the early stages of their independent career. Mansi's research focusses on investigating wound response and stem cell biology during regeneration in an evolutionary context. We talked to Mansi to discover how she feels about receiving this award, and about her career and her activities outside of the lab.

Special Issue “Feature Papers in Journal of Developmental Biology”

Here, we have assembled five interesting manuscripts that deserve special attention [...]

Towards Tabula Gallus

The Tabula Gallus is a proposed project that aims to create a map of every cell type in the chicken body and chick embryos. Chickens (Gallus gallus) are one of the most recognized model animals that recapitulate the development and physiology of mammals. The Tabula Gallus will generate a compendium of single-cell transcriptome data from Gallus gallus, characterize each cell type, and provide tools for the study of the biology of this species, similar to other ongoing cell atlas projects (Tabula Muris and Tabula Sapiens/Human Cell Atlas for mice and humans, respectively). The Tabula Gallus will potentially become an international collaboration between many researchers. This project will be useful for the basic scientific study of Gallus gallus and other birds (e.g., cell biology, molecular biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, physiology, oncology, virology, behavior, ecology, and evolution). It will eventually be beneficial for a better understanding of human health and diseases.

Novel MicroRNAs and Their Functional Targets from Phytophthora infestans and Phytophthora cinnamomi

Background: Even though miRNAs play viral roles in developmental biology by regulating the translation of mRNAs, they are poorly studied in oomycetes, especially in plant pathogen Phytophthora. Objective: The study was aimed to predict and identify the putative miRNAs and their targets in Phytophthora infestans and Phytophthora cinnamomi. Methods: Homology based comparative method was used to identify the unique miRNA sequences in P. infestans and P. cinnamomi with 148,689 EST and TSA sequences of these species. Secondary structure prediction of sRNAs for the 76 resultant sequences has been performed with MFOLD tool and their targets were predicted using psRNAtarget. Result: Novel miRNAs, miR-8210 and miR-4968 were predicted from P. infestans and P. cinnamomi, respectively along with their structural features. The newly identified miRNAs were identified to play important roles in gene regulation, with few of their target genes predicted as transcription factors, tumor suppressor genes, stress responsive genes, DNA repairing genes etc. Conclusion: The miRNAs and their targets identified have opened new interference and editing targets for the development of Phytophthora resistant crop varieties.

Clearing-induced tisssue shrinkage: A novel observation of a thickness size effect

The use of clearing agents has provided new insights in various fields of medical research (developmental biology, neurology) by enabling examination of tissue architecture in 3D. One of the challenges is that clearing agents induce tissue shrinkage and the shrinkage rates reported in the literature are incoherent. Here, we report that for a classical clearing agent, benzyl-alcohol benzyl-benzoate (BABB), the shrinkage decreases significantly with increasing sample size, and present an analytical formula describing this.

Towards organoid culture without Matrigel

Organoids—cellular aggregates derived from stem or progenitor cells that recapitulate organ function in miniature—are of growing interest in developmental biology and medicine. Organoids have been developed for organs and tissues such as the liver, gut, brain, and pancreas; they are used as organ surrogates to study a wide range of questions in basic and developmental biology, genetic disorders, and therapies. However, many organoids reported to date have been cultured in Matrigel, which is prepared from the secretion of Engelbreth-Holm-Swarm mouse sarcoma cells; Matrigel is complex and poorly defined. This complexity makes it difficult to elucidate Matrigel-specific factors governing organoid development. In this review, we discuss promising Matrigel-free methods for the generation and maintenance of organoids that use decellularized extracellular matrix (ECM), synthetic hydrogels, or gel-forming recombinant proteins.