the community site for and by developmental biologists
the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by the Node Interviews on June 19th, 2019
This interview, the 64th in our series, was recently published in Development One of the most obvious examples of left-right asymmetry in animal bodies comes from snails: in most species or strains, the shells coil dextrally, but some coil sinistrally. The control of coiling is genetic and begins in the early embryo. Previous work has implicated the[…]
Posted by nwebster on June 5th, 2019
A PhD position is available in the laboratory of Néva P. Meyer at Clark University in Worcester, MA USA (https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nmeyer/) beginning as early as August 2019 as follows: Spiralians are a great group of animals to study evolution of body plans in part because many spiralian taxa develop via a stereotypic and likely ancestral cleavage[…]
Posted by Kohei Oguchi on May 31st, 2019
How do genes and their environment interact during development and evolution to generate phenotypic diversity? To answer these questions in the Miura lab, by focusing on diverse animal taxa, we are studying physiological and developmental mechanisms of phenotypic changes in animal life cycles in response to environmental shifts. By the way, I’m Kohei Oguchi, a[…]
Posted by ChemaMD on March 11th, 2019
Background Mutualistic relationships between bacteria and complex organisms have repeatedly evolved and this has allowed host organisms to exploit new environments and foods. One of the most extreme and fascinating cases of symbiosis in the animal kingdom is observed in annelid worms of the genus Riftia and Osedax. These animals are able to live in particularly[…]
Posted by the Node on March 5th, 2019
Alexander Blackwell and James Gahan At the beginning of November 2018, thirty researchers congregated at Wiston House to attend a workshop titled ‘Evo-chromo: towards an integrative approach of chromatin dynamics across eukaryotes’. The workshop was organised by Frederic Berger (Gregor Mendel Institute) and Ines Anna Drinnenberg (Institut Curie), and was the 27th workshop hosted[…]
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 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[…]
