Editorial highlights

The document highlights recent advances in developmental biology, focusing on three studies. The first study establishes a zebrafish model for Diamond-Blackfan anemia like (DBAL), showing that epoa-deficient zebrafish can be used to screen treatments for anemia, with recombinant human EPO improving erythrocyte numbers. The second study investigates the role of Alx4 in craniofacial and hair development, using Alx4fx/fx conditional mice to explore the mechanisms of ALX4-related disorders and alopecia, finding that Alx4 loss leads to developmental defects and hair loss. The third study examines the mTORC1 signaling pathway's role in retinal development, demonstrating that its disruption in retinal progenitor cells causes lamination deficits and visual behavior loss, highlighting mTORC1's importance in CNS histogenesis.