Nephrogenesis in health and disease

Abstract The mammalian renal tract is a physically integrated group of organs whose main functions are to generate and void urine. The renal tract comprises the kidney and the urinary tract, the latter incorporating the renal pelvis, the ureter, the urinary bladder, and the urethra. The embryonic origin and subsequent shaping, or morphogenesis, and cellular differentiation of the renal tract are multistep processes, so they are unsurprisingly prone to error. This chapter addresses the normal development of the renal tract, with an emphasis on the early steps of development of the metanephric kidney. We then proceed to consider certain genetic and environmental causes of renal tract malformations. Given that the theme of this book is regeneration, we consider whether aberrations of renal tract development can be rescued by manipulation of, for example, growth factor signaling.