Development, Genes and Evolution Signs Off After 130 Years as Discover Developmental Biology

Development, Genes and Evolution, one of the oldest journals in developmental biology, has published its last issue under its current name. In a farewell editorial, Editor-in-Chief Angelika Stollewerk announced that she is stepping down at the end of 2024 and that the journal will be relaunched as Discover Developmental Biology, a fully open-access title in the Springer Nature Discover series.

Stollewerk, who has led the journal since 2016, wrote that the final issue marks both the end of the journal’s current identity and the end of her own tenure. She will take on a new role as Co-Editor-in-Chief at Frontiers in Zoology. The journal, she noted, has changed its name several times across its 130-year existence, and the move to open access continues that pattern of reinvention.

Founded in 1894 by Wilhelm Roux with the support of influential developmental biologists of his era, the journal has deep historical roots. Roux, Hans Driesch, Hilde Mangold and Hans Spemann all published landmark papers in its pages, addressing fundamental questions ranging from cell fate specification to regeneration and the influence of the environment on development.

During her eight years as editor, Stollewerk initiated several changes. She invited more women onto the editorial board to broaden the diversity of expertise, and the board revised the journal’s aims, scope and article types to better reflect the current research landscape in evolutionary developmental biology.

Two special issues appeared under her leadership. The first, ‘Size and Shape’, was begun by her predecessor Volker Hartenstein, published in 2016, and edited by Nikola-Michael Prpic-Schäper and Nico Posnien. The second, ‘Crossroads in Spider Research’, grew out of a London meeting of spider researchers and collaborators and was published in 2020, edited by Matthias Pechmann and Stollewerk. Both collections are highly accessed, and some articles have been cited hundreds of times.

Review editor Kristen Panfilio also commissioned several reviews during this period, including a 2024 review on BMP signalling in secondary axis patterning of Cnidaria and Bilateria by Mörsdorf and colleagues, and a 2023 review by Cheatle and Wexler on advances in genome sequencing that reveal changes in gene content contributing to arthropod macroevolution.

In the final year, the journal launched a new topical collection that draws on its long history. The collection brings together reviews discussing historical theories of development and evolution, based predominantly on papers published in the journal. At the time of writing it contains three publications.

The first, ‘From “self-differentiation” to organoids – the quest for the units of development’ by Gerhard Schlosser, revisits the question raised by Roux and others in 1885: whether organisms and their parts develop autonomously or require extrinsic signals. Using the inner ear as an example, the review examines the continued relevance of that historical concept. The second, by Benoni Boilly, Hubert Hondermarck and editorial board member Maite Aguado, reviews segment regeneration in polychaete annelids, drawing on work from the 1960s and 1970s showing that nerves and the availability of mesodermal cells are essential for the function of the segment addition zone, and that mesodermal regeneration cells differ in relevance between anterior and posterior regeneration.

The third contribution, authored by editorial board members Volker Hartenstein, Tamara Franz-Odendaal and Stollewerk, investigates women authors in the journal’s first 50 years. Because key discoveries in the then-new field of developmental mechanics are usually associated with male scientists such as Spemann, Morgan and Boveri, the authors examined the careers and research environments of women contributors. They found that women contributed to all research areas of developmental mechanics and helped shape its future direction.

Stollewerk closed the editorial by thanking the authors, readers, supporters and editorial board who shaped the journal, and by expressing hope that it will thrive under its new open-access concept as Discover Developmental Biology.

Subject of Research: The renaming of the journal Development, Genes and Evolution to Discover Developmental Biology and a retrospective on its history and editorial legacy.

Article Title: Editorial

Article References: Stollewerk, A. (2024). Editorial. Development Genes and Evolution, 234(2), 55-56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-024-00725-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00427-024-00725-1

Keywords: Development Genes and Evolution, Discover Developmental Biology, editorial, Wilhelm Roux, developmental biology, evolutionary developmental biology, topical collection, open access, Springer Nature, journal history, women in science, regeneration