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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

  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[…]

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,[…]