The Kidney: From Normal Development to Congenital 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 into exploring the genetic regulation of this complex process but also began to unravel the molecular basis of many forms of congenital kidney disease. This book is a comprehensive study on these findings and the only book available with such in depth coverage of the kidney.

• 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

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 (see http://genex.hgu.mrc.ac.uk" target="_blank">http://genex.hgu.mrc.ac.uk)