{"title":"A case for broadening our view of mechanism in developmental biology.","authors":"B Duygu Özpolat, Swathi Arur, Mansi Srivastava","doi":"10.1242/dev.204605","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Developmental biologists can perform studies that describe a phenomenon (descriptive work) and/or explain how the phenomenon works (mechanistic work). There is a prevalent perception that molecular/genetic explanations achieved via perturbations of gene function are the primary means of advancing mechanistic knowledge. We believe this to be a limited perspective, one that does not effectively represent the breadth of work in our field. We surveyed a representative and diverse group of colleagues to share their views on what it takes to infer mechanism. Here, we briefly examine the factors that have shaped the dominant view of mechanism, summarize responses to the survey, present our views, and suggest a path forward that embraces a broad outlook on the diversity of studies that advance knowledge in our field.</p>","PeriodicalId":11375,"journal":{"name":"Development","volume":"152 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11829770/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Development","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.204605","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/16 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Developmental biologists can perform studies that describe a phenomenon (descriptive work) and/or explain how the phenomenon works (mechanistic work). There is a prevalent perception that molecular/genetic explanations achieved via perturbations of gene function are the primary means of advancing mechanistic knowledge. We believe this to be a limited perspective, one that does not effectively represent the breadth of work in our field. We surveyed a representative and diverse group of colleagues to share their views on what it takes to infer mechanism. Here, we briefly examine the factors that have shaped the dominant view of mechanism, summarize responses to the survey, present our views, and suggest a path forward that embraces a broad outlook on the diversity of studies that advance knowledge in our field.
期刊介绍：
Development’s scope covers all aspects of plant and animal development, including stem cell biology and regeneration. The single most important criterion for acceptance in Development is scientific excellence. Research papers (articles and reports) should therefore pose and test a significant hypothesis or address a significant question, and should provide novel perspectives that advance our understanding of development. We also encourage submission of papers that use computational methods or mathematical models to obtain significant new insights into developmental biology topics. Manuscripts that are descriptive in nature will be considered only when they lay important groundwork for a field and/or provide novel resources for understanding developmental processes of broad interest to the community.
Development includes a Techniques and Resources section for the publication of new methods, datasets, and other types of resources. Papers describing new techniques should include a proof-of-principle demonstration that the technique is valuable to the developmental biology community; they need not include in-depth follow-up analysis. The technique must be described in sufficient detail to be easily replicated by other investigators. Development will also consider protocol-type papers of exceptional interest to the community. We welcome submission of Resource papers, for example those reporting new databases, systems-level datasets, or genetic resources of major value to the developmental biology community. For all papers, the data or resource described must be made available to the community with minimal restrictions upon publication.
To aid navigability, Development has dedicated sections of the journal to stem cells & regeneration and to human development. The criteria for acceptance into these sections is identical to those outlined above. Authors and editors are encouraged to nominate appropriate manuscripts for inclusion in one of these sections.
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