The Kidney: From Normal Development to Congenital Disease

Key Features
* Hundreds of color figures depicting key events in all aspects of kidney development
* Full coverage of the genetic and cellular basis of kidney development
* Analysis of the genetic basis of the major congenital kidney diseases

Audience: Nephrologists, cell and developmental biologists, hematologists, and clinicians interested in kidney disease.

Organogenesis of the kidney has been intensely studied for over a century. In recent years advances in molecular techniques have not only made great inroads in exploring the genetic regulation of this complex process but have also begun to unravel the molecular basis of many forms of congenital kidney disease. The Kidney is divided into three major sections covering specific subject areas. The first presents invertebrate and embryonic kidneys as powerful new approaches to investigating the molecular regulation of specification, morphogenesis, organogenesis and physiology of the kidney. Section 2 describes the anatomy, development and physiology of the adult kidney, the metanephros in extraordinary detail. Separate chapters explore each stage and component of metanephric organogenesis from the first inductive interactions up until the acquisition of function. The final section explores our current knowledge of the molecular basis of congenital kidney disorders and the abnormal development programs that result in kidney disease.

Key Features
* Hundreds of color figures depicting key events in all aspects of kidney development
* Full coverage of the genetic and cellular basis of kidney development
* Model systems for embryologic and genetic investigations of organogenesis (chick, Drosophila, mouse, Xenopus, zebrafish)
* Molecular and developmental basis of kidney function
* Detailed methods and techniques that make the kidney a uniquely powerful experimental system
* Analysis of the genetic basis of the major congenital kidney diseases

Peter D. Vize uses the many advantages of model systems to explore the very first events in kidney development. These studies have characterized both the inductive signals that initiate kidney formation and also characterized the genetic response to these signals.

Adrian Woolf heads the Nephro-Urology Unit at the Institute of Child Health. His research focuses on defining the biological basis of low numbers of glomeruli; on elucidating the normal mechanisms of renal vessel differentiation; vascular remodeling in kidney disease; and the study of the clinical and genetic aspects of primary vesicoureteric reflux, duplex kidneys, glomerulocystic diseases (oral-facial-digital type 1 and the Renal Cysts and Diabetes syndromes), Bardet-Biedl syndrome, Kallmann's syndrome etc.

Jonathan Bard is a developmental biologist whose main interests are kidney development, the generation of structures in embryos and bioinformatics. He currently works on the cellular basis of nephron formation and on making ontologies of vertebrate anatomy for gene-expression databases.