the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by kaitlynmurphy on August 28th, 2018
For some scientists, the decision to pursue a research career stems from a youthful curiosity for the natural world that gradually builds over many years. Whereas in others, there is single moment when they realize that their desired future involved research. My interest is a mix of both – I decided I was going to[…]
Posted by Stefania Gutierrez on August 28th, 2018
Have you heard of an animal that can lose most of its body tissues and the remnant tissues aggregate to regenerate the lost parts and recovery its original form? Do you know an animal that can quickly colonize marine surfaces by asexual reproduction, just like weed would in terrestrial environments ? Do you know an[…]
Posted by Jill Harrison on August 24th, 2018
Very excited to invite applications from post-doctoral researchers to join my lab to work on a Leverhulme Trust- funded project to look at the mechanisms regulating branching in Selaginella kraussiana. I would like to use a candidate gene approach, looking at Selaginella PIN and TCP function. I have written a bit about the project here,[…]
Posted by Naomi on August 23rd, 2018
When people digest food, the flow of fluids and digestive enzymes to the gut is critical. Until recently, researchers had marvelled at the incredibly complex system of ducts that transports a stream of enzymes and mucus from the pancreas to the gut. Astonishingly, a research project led by Professor Grapin-Botton has revealed that the ducts[…]
Posted by Michelle Collins on August 23rd, 2018
In our recently published paper https://elifesciences.org/articles/34880, we report that the transcription factor Pitx2c has an unexpected role during gastrulation, where it acts cell non-autonomously to promote mesendodermal cell migration required for axis extension in zebrafish. “It is not birth, marriage or death which is the most important time in your life, but gastrulation. –[…]
Posted by dbsste on August 23rd, 2018
It’s an age-old mystery of the heart: do opposites attract, or will like do better with like? We can now answer this pressing question, at least for Drosophila cardioblasts: cells prefer to ‘swipe right’ on a shared transcriptional profile, but the resulting relationships are stronger if there are some unattractive alternatives around to remind them[…]
Posted by Matthew R Johnson on August 21st, 2018
All life requires energy. For early metazoan development, demand is especially high, as the transition from a single cell to a complex, multicellular organism requires a massive energetic input. In the earliest stages of development, however, an organisms’ inability to feed poses an apparent problem: how is the energy necessary to drive development obtained? In[…]
Posted by HelenMcNeill on August 21st, 2018
A postdoctoral position is available in the lab of Helen McNeill at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA (mcneilllab.wustl.edu). Our laboratory studies how tissue organization and tissue patterning are coordinated in development, using flies, mice and hydra. A major focus of the lab is understanding how Fat cadherins and the[…]
Posted by Martyna Lukoseviciute on August 20th, 2018
Summer of 2018 will genuinely be the summer to remember for all 24 MBL embryology students. To me, the MBL embryology 2018 course was like a wonderland full of breath-taking experimental adventures, unexpected discoveries, scientific growth and madly passionate researchers. Thus, let me take you on a journey across the five wonders of this course.[…]
Posted by Paul Gerald Layague Sanchez on August 16th, 2018
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being,[…]
