The Marsden Lab in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University is seeking a full-time Research Assistant/Lab Manager. The successful applicant will facilitate the lab’s day-to-day operations, participate in training undergraduate and graduate students, and engage in research projects focused on understanding the genetic and neural circuit basis of behavior.  This is[…]

Dear Researchers, it is our great pleasure to announce the 2nd International FishMed Conference on Zebrafish Research (FishMed2018), which will be held on March 25-27, 2018 at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw (IIMCB), Poland. We organize this event to share with you the most recent knowledge and developments in zebrafish research[…]

Embryogenesis begins with fertilisation, and defective activation of the egg by the sperm is implicated in human infertility. Today’s paper, published in the most recent issue of Development, investigates the role of the sperm protein PLCζ in egg activation and the calcium oscillations that accompany it. We caught up with co-first author Alaa Hachem and his[…]

Here are the highlights from the current issue of Development:   PLCζ ‘waves in’ mammalian oocyte activation At fertilisation, fusion of the sperm with the oocyte activates a slew of downstream processes to kick-start embryogenesis. This ‘oocyte activation’ event induces the cortical reaction to prevent polyspermy, triggers oocyte metabolic and DNA synthesis pathways, and reactivates meiosis. In[…]

Curator position at Xenbase, the Xenopus Model Organism database Xenbase (www.xenbase.org) is the Xenopus bioinformatics and genomics resource. Xenopus is a major model for fundamental cell and developmental biology and a model for human disease. Xenbase is a totally free, and globally accessible database, used by Xenopus researchers worldwide, and is funded by the National[…]