the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by Eva Amsen on August 11th, 2010
(This interview by Kathryn Senior originally appeared in Development on August 10) Shin-Ichi Nishikawa is Group Director of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, where his stem cell research focuses on understanding the mechanisms involved in cell differentiation. He joined Development as an editor in 2009. We interviewed Shin-Ichi to find out[…]
Posted by Seema Grewal on August 10th, 2010
The Bicoid gradient, epigenetic control of BMP signalling, haematopoietic stem cells and more…here are the highlights from the current issue of Development: The Bicoid gradient gets into shape without nuclei Morphogen gradients provide key positional information during embryogenesis but how they are established is not well understood. A gradient of the transcription factor Bicoid is[…]
Posted by Natascha Bushati on August 9th, 2010
I’ve just come back from a lab retreat in a country house in Sussex, UK. The weather was good and we had our scientific sessions, ranging from discussions on Sonic Hedgehog signaling in the neural tube to the latest super-resolution imaging techniques, outdoors in the courtyard. However, every once in a while, we would be[…]
Posted by James Briscoe on August 7th, 2010
Before everyone disappears on their summer holidays, I wanted to let you know that there are a few places left at the British Society for Developmental Biology Autumn meeting. The theme is the Development of Sensory Systems and its from Tuesday 7th September to Thursday 9th September 2010 at St Anne’s College, Oxford University (fantastic location[…]
Posted by Eva Amsen on August 5th, 2010
Today is the first day of the SDB meeting in Albuquerque. The program looks amazing, and I’m looking forward to many of the talks. The meeting is held jointly with the Japanese Society for Developmental Biologists, so many of the attendees came all the way from Japan. Development and the Node are here in Albuquerque[…]
Posted by Eva Amsen on August 4th, 2010
Model organisms never looked so delicious… The baking blog Not So Humble Pie features science cookies made by the author or by her fans. Many of the cookies are biology-themed, and I think the model organisms are my favourites. These zebrafish have edible glitter on them to give them that familiar fishy shine wild-type Drosophila[…]
Posted by Laurel Hiebert on August 3rd, 2010
Imagine an ordinary louse. You might be thinking of the small insects that infest the human scalp and cause intense itching. What you may not know: lice actually exist on great variety of birds and mammals. Even whales have ‘lice,’ which are not closely related to human head lice and are giant in comparison (can[…]
Posted by Eva Amsen on August 2nd, 2010
It’s not often that the introductory part of a research talk is beautiful as well as informative, but Hans Clevers achieves both by using this video about the intestinal crypt in his presentations. (Click either screenshot to see the video) The video shows how stem cells at the base of the intestinal crypt produce the[…]
Posted by the Node on July 29th, 2010
A few bits of news and reminders about the Node, just to keep you all up to date: -We’ll be interviewing Jorge Cham, creator of the grad student comic Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD), this weekend. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask him? I asked for input via our Twitter account, and[…]
Posted by Sorrel Bickley on July 27th, 2010
We are in our last week of the Embryology Course at Wood’s Hole now, and currently working on annelid and squid embryos. Things are still going at a frenetic pace but I’d like to take this chance to talk a little more about some of the work we did using vertebrates. The course covers many[…]
