ALT 40 years of the homeobox A large family of developmental genes share a 180 bp DNA sequence, called the homeobox, which encodes a DNA-binding domain. This year, 2024, marks the 40th year since the discovery of the homeobox in 1984, a landmark that fundamentally impacted several fields including genetics, developmental biology, neuroscience and evolution. To celebrate this anniversary, Development has commissioned a series of articles from leaders in the field demonstrating the impact of the homeobox discovery on different disciplines. These review-type articles will be published throughout 2024, starting with an introductory Editorial and collated here. We hope you find these articles interesting and we welcome your future submissions detailing how this remarkable family functions in development, stem cells and regeneration.

ALT On this flyer, we see Gastruloids, an in vitro multicellular model of embryo gastrulation. Caption: Expression of different developmental markers indicating anterior-posterior polarity in multicellular in vitro models of embryonic gastrulation, called gastruloids, here formed from mouse embryonic stem cells. The images are projections of 3D images obtained by confocal imaging of immunofluorescently labelled gastruloids. Research unit - Laboratory: Physics of biological functions Credit : Institut Pasteur/Mélody Merle