the community site for and by developmental biologists
the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by the Node Interviews on February 8th, 2019
This interview, the 57th in our series, was recently published in Development The molecular regulation of pluripotency has been most intensively studied in early mammalian development, but whether the transcriptional networks revealed in mouse and man also regulate pluripotency in other deuterostomes has remained unclear. A paper in this issue of Development now addresses the evolution of pluripotency[…]
Posted by Daniel Smith-Paredes on December 20th, 2018
Birds are a dominant group of land Vertebrates (probably the largest in numbers with +10000 species described), highly successful and diverse. Birds originated from members of the Theropoda: the meat-eating dinosaurs that included famous forms like T. rex or Velociraptor, well-known from the movies. The fact that birds are a kind of dinosaur has been[…]
Posted by ChemaMD on December 19th, 2018
An ERC-funded Postdoctoral Research Assistant position is available at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in Dr José M (Chema) Martín-Durán’s group, to work on the epigenetic regulation of conditional and autonomous development in spiral cleaving animals (e.g. annelid worms, molluscs, and nemerteans). Queen Mary is one of the top research-led universities in the[…]
Posted by ChemaMD on December 19th, 2018
Mutualistic relationships between bacteria and complex organisms have repeatedly evolved and this has allowed host organisms to exploit new environments and foods. Siboglinid annelid worms (e.g. Riftia and Osedax) are able to live in particularly extreme environments including deep sea hydrothermal vents and carcases thanks to a particular symbiosis: as juveniles, these annelids acquire bacteria from the[…]
Posted by ChemaMD on December 19th, 2018
DNA methylation is a major mechanism for regulating gene expression in mammals, and it is often altered in prevalent human diseases like cancers. While common invertebrate biomedical systems, such as Drosophila melanogaster and C. elegans, lack this epigenetic mark, spiralians (e.g. molluscs and annelids) exhibit significant levels of DNA methylation. In collaboration with Dr Robert[…]
Posted by Shinichi on December 10th, 2018
I am Shinichi Morita, a postdoctoral researcher in Teruyuki Niimi’s lab at the National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan (Fig. 1A, B). Our research interests focus on the evolutionary novelties that insects have acquired, and how various insect morphologies have arisen during evolution (Fig. 1C-P). Beetle horns are thought to be an evolutionary[…]
Posted by JNMalagon on November 14th, 2018
Using computer simulations and mathematical modeling to study the evolution of morphogenesis Juan N. Malagon and Ernest Ho tell the story behind their recent paper in PLOS Computational Biology. In the Larsen lab, we are interested in testing a 50-year old question: How do sex combs rotate in fruit flies? Despite extensive studies of the[…]
Posted by rorylcooper on November 7th, 2018
Understanding how complex biological patterns arise is a long standing and fascinating area of scientific research. The patterning, or spatial arrangement, of vertebrate skin appendages (such as feathers, hair and scales) has enabled diverse adaptations, allowing animals to both survive and thrive in varied and challenging environments. Such adaptations include temperature control of mammalian hair1[…]
Posted by chrisbonatto on October 15th, 2018
There is a vast amount of information known about how some animals pattern their bodies into repeated segments, especially in the fruit-fly Drosophila melanogaster. However, when compared to other arthropods, there are several characteristics that are derived in the fruit fly. It has a very short development time, a syncytium at the blastoderm stage allowing[…]
Posted by ChemaMD on October 4th, 2018
An ERC-funded Postdoctoral Research Assistant position is available at Queen Mary University of London in Dr José M (Chema) Martín-Durán’s group. The project focuses on the epigenetic regulation of conditional and autonomous development in spiral cleavage. Queen Mary is one of the top research-led universities in the UK and was ranked 9th among the UK[…]
