To accompany the Biologists @ 100 conference, we’ve partnered with FocalPlane to bring to you an image competition. We shortlisted 15 images and asked you to vote for your favourite online and in person at the conference. On the final day of the conference, we announced the top3 images of the competition.

In this ‘Featured image’ post, we find out more about the story behind Julia Peloggia de Castro’s image, which was one of the runners-up in the competition.

What is your background?

I got my bachelor’s degree at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil. I majored in Biological Sciences with a focus on genetics and molecular biology. I then pursued my PhD at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City (USA), where I studied zebrafish development and phenotypic plasticity under the mentorship of Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski. I am now a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Los Angeles (USA) working with Dr. Heather Christofk.

What are you currently working on?

My current interests are in developmental metabolism, and how maternal metabolic states impact mouse embryonic development.

Can you tell us more about the story behind the image that you submitted to the image competition?

This image shows a zebrafish embryo after a few hours of development. One of my favorite things about zebrafish is how fast they develop, giving us the opportunity to watch it —and image it— in real time. This particular image was taken late at night in the laboratory while I was testing a reagent and optimizing imaging parameters before running a larger experiment later that week. The result was definitely worth staying late for!

What is your favourite technique?

I really appreciate any type of microscopy. From the foldscopes to confocal and electron microscopes. Looking at cells never gets old!

What excites you the most in the field of developmental and stem cell biology?

I think this is a very exciting moment in developmental biology research. The last decade has brought many technical revolutions and more fields are bridging towards developmental biology, generating new questions and new ways to approach them. This makes me think we are poised to discover new biological principles soon.

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Where is the lab?

Jennifer: You can find the Zenker Lab at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University. We are super lucky to call Australia, to be exact Melbourne, our home. More information is available on our Zenker lab webpage or follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @LabZenker or on LinkedIn @JennyZenker.

Research summary

The transformation of an early mammalian embryo from a tiny soccer ball-like structure into a newborn with four limbs, a beating heart, and big bright eyes is one of the most remarkable and fundamental processes of life. Errors in these early steps in development can profoundly shape a person’s lifelong ability to carry out essential tasks for everyday living. Improving the efficiency of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments ^{1, 2}, which are expensive, physically demanding and emotionally challenging, could set up parents-to-be for the best chance of a successful cycle when it is right for them. Our research vision is to implement a new cell biological paradigm for reproductive and regenerative medicine by uncovering the real-time movements inside single cells of the living embryo and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs).

Inside the soccer ball-like embryo resides a handful of “all-rounder” cells, known as pluripotent cells, which can give rise to any type of cell in the adult body. Using 4D (3D plus time) live-cell imaging, our research is the first in the world to conclusively demonstrate that pluripotent cells have a highly organised internal road map composed of the microtubule cytoskeleton. This road map guides the asymmetric transport of RNAs and organelles in single cells of the living mammalian embryo as a decision-making process of their future fate, becoming either part of the embryo proper or extraembryonic tissues, for instance placenta ^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7}. Together with national and international collaborators, we have been developing innovative tools and technologies. We generated the first in vitro model of human embryos, termed iBlastoids ⁸, producing the most spectacular images about this new Frontier in human stem cell biology, which will continue to be a world-leading approach for many years to come ⁹. Furthermore, we have been pioneering the application of innovative light-switchable regulators in living 3D physiological systems to allow the spatiotemporal manipulation of the microtubule network to control the potency and function of pluripotent cells non-invasively ^{3, 10}.

Can you give us a lab roll call?

Jennifer: I will have to start here with Louise, who is our research assistant and keeps the lab running smoothly and always stocked up. Every other lab member has their own research project. I like to design them so that team members can work easily together. There is a group of people working on the living mouse embryo. Postdoc Hongbin and two undergraduate students, Tia and Ava, are unravelling how the localisation of RNA subtypes inside single cells of the embryo contributes to the development of a healthy embryo. The project of PhD student Manlin is closely linked to it, but instead of looking at RNA subtypes, she is looking at various organelles. PostDoc Jess and undergraduate student Aya are developing new tools to interfere with the transport of RNAs or organelles by manipulating the microtubule cytoskeleton with spatial and temporal precision. PhD student Tracey and undergraduate student Zhi Bie aim to understand how similar (or not) such processes are between mouse and human model systems. Then we have PhD student Oliver, graduate student Adam and undergraduate student Micaela who are all working with human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to translate our discoveries in reproductive biology to regenerative medicine. This area is now even more strengthened by our newest member PhD student Minoo who is working with both systems to understand how one cell can have the capacity to give rise to all cell types an adult body is made of.

Favourite technique, and why?

Jennifer: There is only one answer — live imaging. Being able to see in real-time how a new life starts developing is simply mind-blowing, better than any science-fiction movie or so you can watch at the movies. 

Apart from your own research, what are you most excited about in developmental and stem cell biology?

Jennifer: Developmental and stem cell biology is the foundation for regenerative medicine, which is one of the newest fields of research. It is an amazing time to be involved in such a rapidly evolving field. it has an exceptional potential to help the wider society worldwide by improving our capabilities to more effectively treat a wide range of diseases. I might be bias but that’s the future.

How do you approach managing your group and all the different tasks required in your job?

Jennifer: There is one quote that says it all: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. It is a lot indeed, but I love to plan and prepare, being on an exact time schedule and writing to-do lists sorted by priority and time requirements. But all this only works if there is an open, clear and effective communication across all lab members.

What is the best thing about where you work? 

Oliver: The best thing about where I work is being part of a great team that works on interesting and important research. We are all working together to produce cutting-edge discoveries and there is a huge amount of satisfaction that comes from that. I am also lucky that working here gives me access to high-quality facilities and instruments, as well as interactions with exceptional colleagues.

Zhi Bie: For me, it’s the opportunity to attend various internal and external seminars hosted by ARMI. Although all the research groups belong to the same institution and share a general goal in regenerative medicine, I still have a limited understanding of areas outside my own group. The weekly institute seminars provide a welcoming, knowledgeable, and meaningful platform where staff and students can engage, share ideas, and gain novel perspectives from researchers with similar backgrounds.

Hongbin: I enjoy the active exchange of scientific ideas and findings here at ARMI, through weekly internal seminars, as well as regular external seminars that invite researchers from other universities or even other countries. These seminars not only provide insights into their scientific work but also offer opportunities to discuss career paths and professional development.

Adam: In my opinion, one of the best things about working at ARMI is the people I work with. Not only are the people friendly and enthusiastic to help you however they can, but I think it is really beneficial to share a workspace that is rich in diversity because you gain valuable insight into various cultural heritages and research backgrounds.

Tia: The community, both in the institute and in the lab, is extremely special. Specifically, I like how the community continuously views science in an almost child-like wonder whilst trying to do the best we can to discover new ways to help people. Furthermore, outside of the laboratory and seminars, there is a strong sense of support that extends past just science.

Micaela: The best thing about where we work is the community among the different labs, and the always smiling faces in the tea room.

What’s there to do outside of the lab?

Louise: I started playing badminton again when I joined the lab, encouraged by my supervisor Jenny Zenker with her attitude to sport and exercise. Now I am putting more effort into this sport outside the lab with more training and I am feeling much better physically and mentally. I think that is what Jenny wants to deliver via her non-scientific role outside the lab —triathlete.

Manlin: Melbourne is one of the best student cities in the world (QS World University Rankings). As the cultural and educational hub of Australia, it offers a vibrant academic environment, diverse communities, and a high quality of life. I truly enjoy studying and living here!

Zhi Bie: Melbourne is surrounded by the sea, and I love driving along the coastal roads at sunset. Chasing the light as it fades over the ocean gives me a sense of peace and clarity—it’s windy, cozy, and feels incredibly freeing. I’m also passionate about playing squash and badminton. The time I spend on the court brings a deep sense of focus and an exhilarating sensation of explosive muscle power.

Hongbin: Outside of the lab, I enjoy Melbourne’s beautiful mountains and beaches, which help me relax, recharge, and gather fresh energy for the work ahead.

Adam: As someone who has recently joined the lab from the UK, I enjoy spending my time outside of work indulging myself in everything Australia has to offer. Whether this be early morning runs along the Yarra River trying to spot wild kangaroos, road trips to explore the Great Ocean Road and stunning rainforest or simply lazy days at the beach enjoying the Melbourne sun — no two weekends are the same!

Tia: On site, the campus is filled with many spots to explore nature while you eat lunch that are truly stunning and relaxing. Off-site, there are some amazing beaches just a short drive from the lab that are great for decompressing after a day of running experiments.  

Micaela: Outside of work there are beautiful coastlines to explore where you can go swimming, surfing or hiking. At the right time of the year you can even watch humpback whales migrating up the southeast coast of Australia, which is one of the most extraordinary things to witness. 

References

[1] Jin H, Han Y, Zenker J. Cellular mechanisms of monozygotic twinning: clues from assisted reproduction. Hum Reprod Update. 2024;30(6):692-705. doi:10.1093/humupd/dmae022

[2] Jin H, Zenker J (2024) Seeing is believing: Visualising the Formation of Monozygotic Twins in IVF. J Reprod Med Gynecol Obstet 9: 180.

[3] Zenker J, White MD, Templin RM, et al. A microtubule-organizing center directing intracellular transport in the early mouse embryo. Science. 2017;357(6354):925-928. doi:10.1126/science.aam9335

[4] Zenker J, White MD, Gasnier M, et al. Expanding Actin Rings Zipper the Mouse Embryo for Blastocyst Formation. Cell. 2018;173(3):776-791.e17. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2018.02.035

[5] Hawdon A, Geoghegan ND, Mohenska M, et al. Apicobasal RNA asymmetries regulate cell fate in the early mouse embryo. Nat Commun. 2023;14(1):2909. Published 2023 May 30. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38436-2

[6] Hawdon A, Aberkane A, Zenker J. Microtubule-dependent subcellular organisation of pluripotent cells. Development. 2021;148(20):dev199909. doi:10.1242/dev.199909

[7] Stathatos GG, Dunleavy JEM, Zenker J, O’Bryan MK. Delta and epsilon tubulin in mammalian development. Trends Cell Biol. 2021;31(9):774-787. doi:10.1016/j.tcb.2021.03.010

[8] Liu X, Tan JP, Schröder J, et al. Modelling human blastocysts by reprogramming fibroblasts into iBlastoids. Nature. 2021;591(7851):627-632. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03372-y

[9] Palacios Martínez S, Greaney J, Zenker J. Beyond the centrosome: The mystery of microtubule organising centres across mammalian preimplantation embryos. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2022;77:102114. doi:10.1016/j.ceb.2022.102114

[10] Greaney J, Hawdon A, Stathatos GG, Aberkane A, Zenker J. Spatiotemporal Subcellular Manipulation of the Microtubule Cytoskeleton in the Living Preimplantation Mouse Embryo using Photostatins. J Vis Exp. 2021;(177):10.3791/63290. Published 2021 Nov 30. doi:10.3791/63290

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Written by Li-Kun Phng

Behind the Paper Story of “Combined forces of hydrostatic pressure and actin polymerisation drive endothelial tip cell migration and sprouting angiogenesis”.

A critical function of blood vessels is the transportation of plasma, blood cells, nutrients, and metabolites efficiently across the body. The formation and maintenance of blood vessels as hollow tubes is thus important for their function and is a research interest in our lab. One long-standing question in this subject is how apical membranes expand at luminal patches, which form between endothelial cells, at the initial phase of lumen formation. We questioned whether this could occur through physical forces generated from within the luminal patch that would drive the expansion of apical membranes to form a bigger lumen. This led to the hypothesis that endothelial cells may expel water at its apical surface into the luminal space to build up hydrostatic pressure that would consequently inflate the lumen. While we were exploring this idea, an scRNAseq screen in my lab identified two endothelial water channels, aqp1a.1 and aqp8a.1, to be differentially expressed within blood vascular networks of the developing zebrafish embryo. While aqp1a.1 mRNA is ubiquitously expressed in all blood vessels, aqp8a.1 mRNA expression is confined to the posterior trunk vessels and in the ventral regions of intersegmental vessels (ISVs). We therefore speculated that these two Aquaporins may have distinct roles in blood vessel formation and function. 

Igor, the first author of the paper, subsequently generated zebrafish mutants using CRISPR/Cas9 to investigate the function of Aqp1a.1 and Aqp8a.1. Our initial analysis was focused on determining whether blood vessel lumens formed normally in aqp1a.1 and aqp8a.1 mutants. To address this, we performed microangiography experiments to examine lumen patency at 2 and 3 days post fertilisation (dpf), after trunk vessels have lumenised. This analysis showed a decrease in the number of ISVs that are fully perfused and an increase in the number of partially perfused ISVs (Fig. 1), which supported our hypothesis that Aquaporin-mediated water flow may have a role in lumen formation. However, we needed to exclude the possibility that the decrease in fully perfused ISVs may have arisen from a defect in an earlier phase of ISV formation. We therefore examined sprouting angiogenesis in aqp1a.1 and aqp8a.1 mutants. This took a long time as we needed to cross three mutant zebrafish lines (aqp1a.1^-/-, aqp8a.1^-/- and aqp1a.1^-/-;aqp8a.1^-/-) to a transgenic endothelial reporter line to visualise endothelial cell shape and behaviours. Eventually, through time-lapse live imaging, we discovered that endothelial tip cells lacking endothelial Aquaporins take longer to emerge from the dorsal aorta (or not at all), generate fewer membrane protrusions and migrate more slowly, thus impairing sprouting angiogenesis¹. This was an unexpected finding since it is a commonly held perception that endothelial cell migration depends predominantly on the remodelling of actin cytoskeleton. Our findings instead implicate Aquaporin-mediated water flow as an alternative mechanism of endothelial cell migration in vivo, and the defects in lumen perfusion observed is secondary to incomplete ISV formation.

How do we demonstrate that Aquaporins mediate water flow in endothelial tip cells in vivo?

Aquaporins are widely known to increase water permeation by allowing water to flow across the plasma membrane up an osmotic gradient². However, we did not know in which direction water flows as endothelial tip cells migrate. This was (and still is) a technical challenge since there is no available method to track water flow inside cells in a living organism. We thus attempted to address whether the loss of Aquaporin function would lead to changes in cytoplasmic viscosity by tracking (Video 1) and calculating the diffusion coefficient (Fig. 2) of genetically encoded multimeric nanoparticles, which self-assemble into spherical particles with a diameter of 50nm (50nm-GEMs)³. Unfortunately, we were unable to observe a difference in 50nm-GEM mobility between wildtype and aqp1a.1^-/-;aqp8a.1^-/- endothelial tip cells. Still, this did not necessarily mean that Aquaporins do not mediate water flow in endothelial cells since the diffusion coefficient of particles depends on their size⁴. In our experiment, the 50nm-GEMs may not be sensitive enough to detect small changes in cytoplasmic viscosity that is altered by water influx or efflux, or that the changes in viscosity may be confined to local regions of the cell. We next resorted to measuring tip cell volume, with the assumption that cytoplasmic volume would increase if Aquaporins mediate water influx or decrease if they mediate water efflux. Using this approach, we found that the cytoplasmic volume of tip cells decreased when both Aqp1a.1 and Aqp8a.1 were depleted; conversely, tip cell volume increased when Aqp1a.1 was overexpressed. Coupled with a reduction in tip cell elongation in aqp1a.1^-/-;aqp8a.1^-/- embryos, we concluded that Aquaporins mediate water influx into tip cells and in doing so, increase cytoplasmic hydrostatic pressure.

What controls the direction of water flow?

That there is directed water flow into tip cells points towards the generation of an osmotic gradient by endothelial tip cells. Upon one of the reviewers’ suggestions, we investigated whether the anion channel, SWELL1 (also known as LRRC8A), may generate an osmotic gradient across the cell membrane to control water flow. To our surprise, chemical inhibition of SWELL1 phenocopied many of the defects found in aqp1a.1^-/-;aqp8a.1^-/- zebrafish including decreased membrane protrusions, migration velocity and ISV length. All in all, our work on endothelial Aquaporin function uncovered a novel role of osmotic pressure-driven water inflow and increased hydrostatic pressure in driving endothelial tip cell migration and sprouting angiogenesis in vivo ¹.

These new findings took me back to my post-doctoral work more than 10 years ago, when I discovered that endothelial tip cells continued to migrate, albeit more slowly, after the inhibition of actin polymerisation and in the absence of filopodia⁵. (This finding was another surprise as it challenged the previously held dogma that filopodia are necessary for polarised tip cell migration.) Curiously, tip cells were able to generate lamellipodia-type membrane protrusions under the low dose of Latrunculin B (Lat. B) treatment used to inhibit filopodia formation. Back then, I had assumed that the low dose of Lat. B used did not inhibit all actin polymerisation events so that some actin-based membrane protrusions could still be generated to drive the slower migration observed. However, our new results suggested that local increases in hydrostatic pressure in the cytoplasm could instead be the driving force for the observed residual migration. To support this, we inhibited both actin polymerisation and hydrostatic pressure by treating aqp1a.1^-/-;aqp8a.1^-/- embryos with Lat. B and discovered that tip cell migration and ISV formation were more severely impaired compared to their individual inhibition. This final experiment cemented the conclusion that endothelial tip cells employ two modes of migration – actin polymerisation and hydrostatic pressure – to ensure robust sprouting angiogenesis in physically confined tissues.

In sum, the journey behind our paper is one of twists and turns with a revisit of a past observation. Such discovery-based science filled with unexpected findings is what makes research exciting, and I look forward to uncovering more surprises in endothelial cell behaviours!

References:

1. Kondrychyn, I., He, L., Wint, H., Betsholtz, C. & Phng, L.-K. Combined forces of hydrostatic pressure and actin polymerization drive endothelial tip cell migration and sprouting angiogenesis. eLife 13, RP98612 (2025).

2. Agre, P. et al. Aquaporin water channels – from atomic structure to clinical medicine. J. Physiol. 542, 3–16 (2002).

3. Hernandez, C. M., Duran-Chaparro, D. C., Eeuwen, T. van, Rout, M. P. & Holt, L. J. Development and Characterization of 50 nanometer diameter Genetically Encoded Multimeric Nanoparticles. bioRxiv 2024.07.05.602291 (2024) doi:10.1101/2024.07.05.602291.

4. Sakai, K., Kondo, Y., Goto, Y. & Aoki, K. Cytoplasmic fluidization contributes to breaking spore dormancy in fission yeast. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 121, e2405553121 (2024).

5. Phng, L. K., Stanchi, F. & Gerhardt, H. Filopodia are dispensable for endothelial tip cell guidance. Development 140, 4031–4040 (2013).

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By Tatiana Lebedeva and Grigory Genikhovich

What is this?
This video shows early stages of the embryonic development of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. In green, you can see the dynamic localization of the β-catenin protein carrying a fluorescent tag. β-catenin is a crucial molecule during embryogenesis, serving a dual role: structurally, it helps cells stick together; functionally, it enters cell nuclei to regulate gene expression. In this video, you can clearly observe glowing cell boundaries and the nuclear translocation of β-catenin in specific embryonic cells at specific developmental stages.

Where can this be found?
In the wild, Nematostella vectensis inhabits shallow coastal waters along North America’s Atlantic coast. Today, it is a popular model organism in developmental biology labs worldwide. This specific fluorescent β-catenin-tagged Nematostella line was developed at the Department of Neuroscience and Developmental Biology, University of Vienna (Austria).

How was this taken?
We used CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to insert a GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) sequence into the Nematostella β-catenin gene. After injecting around 35,000 embryos, we successfully identified one male carrying the correct insertion in the germ cells. This allowed us to establish first a heterozygous F1 and then a homozygous F2 generation with “glowing β-catenin” in all cells, enabling detailed developmental imaging. For imaging, embryos were gently immobilized in low-melting agarose and filmed live using a spinning disk confocal microscope at the Medical University of Vienna, with valuable support from the Adameyko lab.

Why should people care about this?

Nematostella belongs to Cnidaria (corals, sea anemones, and jellyfish), a sister group to Bilateria (insects, worms, sea urchins, and humans). In bilaterians, β-catenin signaling activates the formation of the endomesoderm, which soon splits into an endoderm giving rise to the gut tube and its derivatives, and mesoderm forming muscles, reproductive organs, and more. For over two decades, scientists assumed β-catenin had a similar function in cnidarians.

Our study challenges previous assumptions and provides new insights into how animal developmental mechanisms evolved. Upon careful observation, you will notice that in the early embryo, β-catenin enters cell nuclei on one side of the embryo, while later, endomesodermal cells start to invaginate on the opposite side of the embryo, forming its gut. Combined with the existing gene knockdown data, this shows that β-catenin does not specify the endomesoderm in Nematostella, as previously thought, but rather protects non-endomesodermal cells (ectoderm) from becoming the endomesoderm. This unexpected finding highlights an important evolutionary shift, suggesting that using β-catenin to specify the endomesoderm in the embryo was an evolutionary innovation of Bilateria.

Where can people find more about it?
Read our recent paper in Nature Communications: 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57109-w

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At the end of each month, I pick a random year from the past 15 years of the Node, and take a look at what people were talking about back then.

Last month, I travelled back to February 2011 to have a look around the Node. This time, let’s turn the dial to March 2013…

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To accompany the Biologists @ 100 conference, we’ve partnered with FocalPlane to bring to you an image competition. We shortlisted 15 images and asked you to vote for your favourite online. The images were also displayed in a gallery at the Biologists @ 100 for those attending the conference.

We’re now delighted to announce the results of the image competition. Congratulations to Özge Özgüç, Allan Carrillo-Baltodano and Julia Peloggia de Castro! And thank you to everyone who submitted their images to the competition. You can still view the shortlisted images on the Node. Look out for posts in FocalPlane’s ‘Featured image’ series to discover more about some of the microscopists that shared images with us in this competition.

Winner

First runner-up

Second runner-up

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During the coffee break on the second day of the 3^rd Crick Beddington Symposium, I approached Dr Giulia Boezio, a postdoc in the Briscoe lab at the Francis Crick Institute. As a fellow chick embryologist, I was already aware of her work, but I was intrigued to learn more about the genomic barcoding technique that she has adapted for use in our favourite model organism!

The Briscoe lab are interested in how the huge diversity of neuronal subtypes arise in the spinal cord. Different cell types originate from different positions along the dorsoventral axis, constituting 11 discrete domains of progenitor cells (Holguera and Desplan, 2018; Le Dréau and Martí, 2012; Sagner and Briscoe, 2019). But we still don’t know how these cell types arise – does one type of mature neuron come from one specific progenitor, or might two different mature neurons share a bi-fated progenitor? Or perhaps the differentiation paths converge – two different progenitors might ultimately give rise to the same final cell type. Giulia aims to shed light on these questions, which surprisingly had not been revisited in over 30 years (Leber et al., 1990; Leber and Sanes, 1991).

Giulia has adapted a genomic barcoding technique called LARRY (Lineage and RNA Recovery; Weinreb et al., 2020) – originally developed for cells in culture – for use in the chick embryo. Viral infection is used to deliver barcodes into the chick spinal cord at stage 12 (day 2 of development). Each barcode is unique, and is expressed alongside GFP, allowing the infected cells to be tracked over time. The embryos are incubated to develop for several days, before the mature cells are collected at one of three time points (stage 28, 31 and 35). They are then FACS sorted to obtain the GFP-expressing cells, and profiled using single cell RNAseq. After identifying which cluster corresponds to which cell type, Giulia can then see which barcodes are present in each cluster. Since every cell with the same barcode is derived from a single progenitor, this allows a retrospective lineage history to be assembled. I wondered how they can guarantee that each barcode is completely unique, but Giulia explained, “we have almost half a million barcodes in our library. This wouldn’t normally be enough, if we were infecting many, many cells. But the bug that actually turned out to be a (good) feature is that the infection rate is not very high.” This means that the chance of infecting two independent cells with the same barcode is extremely slim. She also checked across five separate embryos, and found no barcode overlap – so it is safe to assume that within one embryo, each barcode is unique.

From the single cell RNAseq data, she found that spinal cord cells group into five lineage compartments – meaning that progenitors will mostly contribute to cells in one of these five lineage compartments, and rarely contribute to more than one. Some cell types were more abundant than others – this is particularly true for the dorsal dI4 and dI5 neurons, which make up more than half of all the neurons in the entire spinal cord. These sensory neurons are involved in touch and pain sensation (Lai et al., 2016), and despite their abundance, are not very well studied. Giulia observed that their ratios changed over time; at stage 28, she saw many more dI4 than dI5 neurons, but by stage 31 this had equalised to roughly 50:50 – this makes perfect sense, since one is an excitatory neuron, and the other is an inhibitory neuron in the same circuit.

But how does this imbalance arise, and how does it correct itself later on?  “Initially, when I saw this, I thought that the easiest explanation would be that the blue (dI4) cells are born earlier, and then eventually the orange (dI5) cells would catch up somehow. But we had to dig a bit deeper into the clonal data, and this explanation didn’t seem to fit”, Giulia said, after observing an initial peak of dI4 neurons, followed by a peak in both dI4 and dI5 neurons later in development. It turns out that at earlier stages, most dI4 neurons derive from clones that only produce dI4 neurons, while at later stages, the vast majority of clones produce an even ratio of dI4 and dI5 neurons. This suggests that there are two different progenitor types – one that only produces dI4 neurons, and one that produces both dI4 and dI5 in equal quantities. Giulia is currently working on fitting this data to different mathematical models to find a differentiation trajectory that might explain this result.

Does this system apply to other species? To find out, Giulia used ex vivo cultures of human embryonic trunk slices – a technique (which truly sounds like science fiction to me!) in which transverse sections of the spinal cord are grown using an air-liquid interface, exposed to cell culture media from the bottom, and the air from above. Work with human embryos is notoriously difficult, as you cannot control the availability, nor what stage will be available to work on. Giulia managed to obtain some 6 week old (CS17) human embryos – older than she would have liked, but she decided to go ahead with the experiment anyway. She infected the CS17 trunk slices with LARRY barcodes and cultured them for 7 days, collecting and profiling the cells in the same way as for the chick experiment. She found that dI4 and dI5 dominated over other neurons in terms of abundance, as she saw in the chick. There were very few shared clones between ventral neural cell types; this fits with the fact that neurogenesis occurs earlier in this compartment. Some clones were shared in the dorsal neural tube, but only between other neurons of the same type. The only exception was the dI4 and dI5 neurons, which still shared the vast majority of barcodes, meaning that at the time of infection, the decision to become dI4 or dI5 had not yet been made. This appears to be the latest lineage decision of any neuron in the spinal cord. Why might this be important? Giulia speculates that their proliferation as progenitors might help to ensure that the final ratio of dI4:dI5 is balanced, since there are diseases that can arise from an imbalance between these two neurons.  

Giulia’s hypothesis is that there are two different groups of progenitors in the dorsal spinal cord, one that gives rise to dI4 neurons and one that maintains progenitors with bi-fated potential. The temporal sequence is still unclear; Giulia speculates that the different groups of progenitors may mature into neurons at different rates, or begin maturing at different times, eventually resulting in an approximate 1:1 ratio. At the moment, there is no data to show what happens between the dI4-dominant stage 28 and the restoration of balance at stage 31, so it is not possible to prove when or how this change happens. Giulia is currently working on fitting a model to her data in order to test this hypothesis as well as complementing her sequencing data with live imaging to fill the temporal gaps.

Stay tuned for more poster interviews coming soon!

References:
Holguera, I., Desplan, C., 2018. Neuronal specification in space and time. Science 362, 176–180. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aas9435
Lai, H.C., Seal, R.P., Johnson, J.E., 2016. Making sense out of spinal cord somatosensory development. Development 143, 3434–3448. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.139592
Le Dréau, G., Martí, E., 2012. Dorsal-ventral patterning of the neural tube: a tale of three signals. Dev Neurobiol 72, 1471–1481. https://doi.org/10.1002/dneu.22015
Leber, S., Breedlove, S., Sanes, J., 1990. Lineage, arrangement, and death of clonally related motoneurons in chick spinal cord. J Neurosci 10, 2451–2462. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.10-07-02451.1990
Leber, S.M., Sanes, J.R., 1991. Lineage analysis with a recombinant retrovirus: application to chick spinal motor neurons. Adv Neurol 56, 27–36.
Sagner, A., Briscoe, J., 2019. Establishing neuronal diversity in the spinal cord: a time and a place. Development 146, dev182154. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.182154
Weinreb, C., Rodriguez-Fraticelli, A., Camargo, F.D., Klein, A.M., 2020. Lineage tracing on transcriptional landscapes links state to fate during differentiation. Science 367, eaaw3381. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw3381

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Pleasantine Mill is awarded the 2025 British Society for Development Biology (BSDB) Wolpert Medal, which recognises an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the teaching and communication of developmental biology.

Pleasantine is a group leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the Institute for Genetics and Cancer at the University of Edinburgh, UK. We caught up with her to talk about her research, her work with the cilia and rare disease communities, and why it’s important, now more than ever, for scientists to engage in community work.

Congratulations on winning the 2025 BSDB Wolpert medal! What does this mean to you?

It’s a really great honour. Lewis Wolpert was such an amazing figure in terms of his contributions to science and his ability to communicate science effectively to different audiences. Receiving a medal named in his honour is huge, particularly at this point in time, when science is under threat, when there is a heightened urgency of getting all parties to engage with the importance of research, basic science and discovery. This threat expedites a need to bring together communities and stakeholders to champion science. To be recognised for it means so much to me personally.

A few years ago, you were awarded the Woman in Cell Biology Early Career Award from the British Society for Cell Biology – you’ve managed to receive awards from both British societies!

It’s a lovely reflection of where we sit in terms of our research focus. What my team do is very cell biology, because we’re interested in centrioles and cilia, but leverage genetics and genomics to understand the molecular mechanisms at play in development and how they go wrong in disease. So really what we do is cell biology on an organismal scale, looking at how different cell types, developmental stages or disease states are dependent on cilia. So it’s very nice to be recognised by both societies!

Can you briefly talk about your career so far and what your research interests are?

I did my undergrad in Immunology and Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal because it seemed an exciting time to be doing immunology, but in practice, I found the coursework was a lot less engaging. I started to wander a bit and stumbled onto Genetic Engineering. I went to the University of Toronto Medical and Molecular Genetics Department for my PhD, which was a rotation-based system, and fell into by my first and lasting love with developmental biology. I joined the lab of Chi-chung Hui, a mouse developmental geneticist studying Hedgehog signalling and the role of the GLI transcription factors. Here, we had all these cool genetic tools and techniques, with which we could generate and study all these amazing ‘shock and awe’ phenotypes! I was hooked with genetics. When I left CC’s lab after my PhD, I wanted to try something really new and undertook a forward genetic screen in mice, so as not to make any assumptions about the system I was studying, in this case neural crest development. That was when I stumbled into the wonderful world of cilia. Almost all the genes we pulled out were involved in cilia structure or function, which were ironically also all involved in Hedgehog signalling. From there, the jump to human disease was easy as cilia play major roles in rare disease genetics – it was an easy segue for my independent research focus. Like our genetic screens, the unusual phenotypes in rare disease patients are sometimes the ones that are the most informative in terms of understanding how a gene works in complex processes. That’s the space that we’ve stayed in since then.

You’re currently the guest editor of Journal of Cell Science’s Special Issue – Cilia and Flagella. What are you most excited about in this special issue and in the field?

Thrilled to be guest editing it with Lotte Pedersen. We’re still accepting papers until 31 March 2025 and I’m excited about what is taking shape for this Special Issue! For example, we have commissioned both established experts and up-and-coming talent on everything from cilia disassembly, to deep dives into different ciliary compartments and we are even wading into the hot debate around condensates and their role in motile ciliogenesis. We’ve even got a perspective piece from our rare disease patient community about how to form effective partnerships and patient-centric research too.

For the field in general, I think there’s a lot of interesting work that’s going on in terms of how we understand the differences between different cilia types. There are exciting technology and tools to capture organelle-level changes in content during disease, developmental time, or even with the cell cycle, then tying this to how these change cellular signalling outputs and contribute to phenotypes. Real biology across scales! There is still a tendency to think of cilia from a cell biology aspect, as being in a dish and pointing up in the media. But in fact, as we know from being developmental biologists, cilia are often involved in much more complex interactions in the 3D space, often interacting with cellular structures or even other cilia. Live imaging, light-sheet and volumetric EM techniques- we now are really pushing our ability to look at these inter-organelle or contacts in situ, discovering new cilia synapses. Testing what they mean functionally will be our field’s next big frontier!

You are part of the team leading the UK Cilia Network. How did you get involved initially, and how’s your experience been?

Almost ten years old, the UK Cilia Network aimed to join up the existing regional cilia-focused groups across the country. It planned to hold national yearly meetings that would rotate around the country, to highlight expertise and to facilitate collaboration and exchanges. I got asked to be on the leadership team, because they were looking for more junior people to help shape the vision going forward. And then COVID hit, and the UK Cilia Network turned into something very different partly as a result of the e-symposia series. It is great – the network has now more of an online presence, with the website as an international landing page to help individuals raise their profile and build their networks. It’s got such a strong brand now. We’re discussing whether we have outgrown the UK and whether there’s an opportunity to help create a truly international ‘society’ for cilia, which the UK Cilia Network would be part. So that’s an exciting next chapter for me. We’ve already had some early meetings with leaders across Europe, North America and Asia. On an international scale, it would be a way to raise the profile of individuals, whether you have a national network or not in your country. We would look to facilitate collaborations, highlight opportunities, as well as minimise conflicts between meetings internationally and the competition for limited resources. Importantly too, it would be looking to connect ciliopathy patients and their organizations internationally and nationally too.  

Another thing we’ve done recently is to formally extend our network to the centrosome community. The centrosome (and centrioles) are also very closely associated with cilia, but not in the name, and as a result some people feel excluded. There are also a group of rare diseases, the centrosomopathies, for which the patient groups and clinical teams could benefit from closer ties to researchers, as the ciliopathy community has benefited from. So, we are in the process of rebranding as the UK Cilia and Centrosome Network.

You started organizing the UK Cilia Network e-symposia during the early 2020 lockdowns and since then it has been running strong. What motivated you to start the symposia?

In 2020, I was organising the in-person UK Cilia Network Spring meeting right after the UK Microtubule Meeting in Edinburgh that early April. We’d already done tonnes of organising when everything shut down. Having just come through my own promotion and tenure process within the University, I immediately recognised how important it was for people to be invited to speak at key meetings. There were going to be damaging lapses in people’s CVs as a result of lockdowns, unless we created a forum where they could be invited to and speak. We could keep people connected and focused on the future by sharing great science. The real push for the e-symposia was making sure that we could showcase these amazing junior people even in a shutdown and create something that people could count on when everything seemed uncertain. Like real life meetings, the e-symposia also allowed people to find collaborations and build new networks. Indeed, there have been papers from collaborations that formed from the first few symposia during COVID have now been published. Amazing! We have now nearly 1500 people registered for the symposia from all over the world. We’re still hitting about 250 people with another 150 watching the recording. Even though the pandemic’s gone, the community stayed.

Apart from engaging with the research community, have you been involved in policy and public outreach activities?

On the policy side, I’ve done some advising and written whitepapers on genome editing technologies, rare diseases and expediting genetic diagnoses. We’ve worked closely with philanthropic funders for their rare disease and patient partnerships space to decide priorities and evaluate subsequent funding calls. I sit on several scientific advisory boards for various charities. Patient engagement and involvement within the rare disease space internationally is something I have been very involved with. We’ve run workshops, outreach activities and more.

When I initially started as a postdoc years ago, a bunch of us piloted an Edinburgh Science Fringe Festival that ran in parallel with the Edinburgh International Science Festival, aimed at engaging hard-to-reach groups from different backgrounds with cool science and innovating technology. We ran a series of ‘disruptive’ events on the science of beatboxing, big wave surfing and sci-art collaborations. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work!

Any memorable/proudest moments when participating in these research-adjacent activities?

There are a lot of highs – I would struggle to find that just one! Last October, we helped PCD Research organise and run our Rare Disease Industry Accelerator Day: Getting Cilia Moving at the Crick. We attracted over 120 attendees from industry, investors, clinicians, policy makers and patient groups – from basic research through to rare disease clinical trials for the conditions I study for our research in the lab. It was a hugely successful event to join up some of the dots within this rare disease space for the benefit of patients.

Have you ever received any pushback from say, reviewers or funding bodies, about the time you spend on community work instead of ‘actual research’?

No, not yet. But your best response to any criticism like this is by evidence of the papers you publish and the funding you get. You demonstrate it by continuing to do excellent research and engage multiple stakeholders. It’s easy to get caught into these disputes with people who feel that what you’re doing is not important and question the value it brings, but you can lead by example. All the community work is incredibly important, more so than ever. We all need to do it!

How do you approach teaching and mentoring?

At the moment, I am fortunate not to have to do lot of teaching. I do a bit of graduate level teaching, usually on topics that I feel passionate about, such as ciliopathies and genome engineering. I do lots of supervision for my team, with a lab of two-three PhD students and multiple postdocs. It’s not just about science and research progress, but it’s about thinking about their career development and their next career steps, acting a lot like ‘talent management’, which needs adapting as everyone is different.

Outside my own team, I do a lot of mentoring too. I think you can be a more effective mentor if you’re not also in the role of supervising. Mentoring for me has been about helping people transition through various points, from postdoc to PI, or new PI onto tenure. Practically it means helping with writing applications, mock interviews and practice pitches, but also in terms of acting as a sponsor, putting them forward for talk invites and other ways of promoting their careers. I’m very happy to do that because I was helped very much by other people along my own career.

Any advice to early career researchers who are keen to be involved in more in these research-adjacent work?

Scientific societies and charities are always really keen to have people get involved. Whether it is being the representative of a society, writing articles, organizing events, or helping with lay summaries for websites- it’ll be time well spent. You’ll build your CV, help you with your next steps wherever you go, and hopefully make you feel more connected to the community too, outside your own project. For postdocs, most universities have these ten Professional Development Concordat days per year pro rata, which guarantee time for your own career development. This could be working with an open access publisher, a society, or a patient group too. I think in most cases as long as it doesn’t cut too much into your science, your supervisor would generally encourage it. I think everybody benefits down the way when you allow your students or postdocs to be able to take these things on.

How do you balance the time and effort required for your research and community work?

Because time is elastic, isn’t it? [laughs] When you prioritise things that you really enjoy doing, they don’t seem like much work. You can kind of create time for it. Science has a lot of ups and downs, so those community-based connections can actually help create a buffer when the lows hit.

How do you navigate the academic career alongside having a family?

Having a family is one of those things that gives people more resilience, because you have something outside of work to ground yourself with at the end of the day. Whatever that may be, it is important but doesn’t have to be family. I do think it is generally more complicated for women starting out, because at the times we’re expected to be the most productive in terms of career, we’re also the most reproductive. But being in places that support you really help and leadership that recognise that these are just short-term gaps in research outputs for key rising talent. There is also more acceptance and policies in place, such as childcare awards and ‘roving’ maternity technical cover to minimize disruption. But for every step forward, there is a shadow when we look across the pond to the US, there’s pushback on feminism, women in science and what this would mean for a generation of working moms. I think we really can’t take any of this for granted. It’s important here in the UK that we talk about it, showcase up-and-coming scientists with kids and give them the opportunities to excel.

Any final thoughts about doing community work as part of being a scientist?

I try to lead by example that community work is absolutely imperative to what we do – it makes our research more effective and hopefully sustainable in the long run. I encourage my team to be involved in whatever they’re passionate about, and that will be different for everyone. I have a senior scientist who’s extremely driven to improving research culture. She’s one of the eLife ambassadors and plays key roles locally in helping our institute shape its own research culture piece. Other members are very passionate about improving in equality, diversity and inclusion.

I think science is becoming increasingly political right now, so it’s important to take stock and fight for what we want when it’s under threat. We need to be scientists who advocate for science and do it in demonstratable ways, so that everyone understands what’s going on in this space. The more we talk about science, the more people – up to government and down to average Joe on the street – value science, and we minimize this threat. It is so important, at this particular point in time, that every scientist continue to develop these key skill sets.

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Do you know that behind the Node is a real person, with the job title ‘Community Manager’, managing the site, commissioning content, and providing feedback to people’s drafts?

2025 is the 100^th anniversary of our publisher, The Company of Biologists, and coincidentally, it’s the Node’s 15^th birthday. To mark the occasion, the past and present Community Managers got together over a video call to chat about what it’s like working at the Node and how this job has influenced their subsequent careers.

Who are we?

Eva Amsen: I started in January 2010 when the Node didn’t exist yet. We launched the Node in April 2010, at the BSDB meeting. I left in 2013 to find a job in London, because I couldn’t get used to living in Cambridge. I then spent several years working on similar things as I did at the Node, such as managing blogs, talking to researchers, and writing about what they work on for different employers. But I’m now a freelance science journalist so I write a lot more now.

Cat Vicente: I was at the Node from 2013 till 2016, carrying on from Eva’s excellent work. We refurbished the website. The Company had a complete rebrand and moved into a new building. Then, because of personal reasons, I moved to Oxford. Since then, I’ve done a variety of jobs around communications and public engagement, working closely with scientists. In 2020 I decided to change tack completely. My job now is called Head of Scientific Strategy and Projects at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. I still do a lot of writing.

Aidan Maartens: I took over from Cat in 2016 and stayed until 2021. Like Eva, I wanted to do a bit more writing. I’m working now as a scientific writer at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. It’s very varied. I edit grant proposals, papers and reviews, but I also do quite a bit of writing. I feel more engaged with the practice of science now, in a place where I interact with scientists day by day rather than remotely.

Helen Zenner: I took over from Aidan in 2021, although we didn’t overlap. I joined when everything was still remote. Then, after a year, I decided to move across to FocalPlane, the microscopy community site, still at The Company of Biologists. My research background is more in microscopy than developmental biology so I’m enjoying getting back to that. 

Joyce Yu: And I’m the current Community Manager of the Node!

What motivated us to join the Node? Was the Node our first job out of academia?

Eva: I finished my PhD about a year before I started at the Node, but I was still teaching at the University of Toronto while I searched for science communication jobs in different countries. I actually applied to the Reviews Editor role at The Company of Biologists, but when they saw my CV and my experience as a science blogger they instead invited me to apply for the Online Editor job. The Node didn’t exist yet, so they couldn’t tell me much until the interview itself, where they explained the plan to set up a community blog. I remember being asked how I would do that and I know that I had lots of ideas to make it a community rather than just a website, but I don’t remember which of these actually made it on the site!

Cat: I joined the Node straight after my PhD. I went to a couple of postdoc interviews, and it became clear quickly that while I really liked science, I didn’t like any particular aspect of science enough to dedicate several years to it. I remember the day I made the decision to apply for the Node: I was at the ASCB meeting, and I didn’t go to a single talk related to my PhD. I went to random talks I was interested in.

Aidan: I was similar. I knew during my PhD that I wasn’t going to go down the academic career path, but liked lab work and decided to do a postdoc. I really enjoyed this too, but found myself more interested in the bigger picture of science. Then the Node job came up. I always liked writing, and loved writing my thesis, which is not the case for some PhD students. And I found the communication of science to be a very important and worthwhile thing, so I applied.

Helen: I really enjoyed doing research, but I was ready to do something different. The Node really appealed to me because I remained in touch with scientists, and in some ways, it felt like you were still in academia.

What actually is a Community Manager? 

Aidan: When I first saw the job advert, I didn’t know what a Community Manager was.

Eva: I actually told them to call the role ‘Community Manager’ because initially it was just called ‘Online Editor of Development’. But that’s not what the job is. If you look at other websites, the people who have similar jobs are called Community Managers.

Joyce: When I joined the Node, I discovered a whole community of Community Managers out there!

What was it like working at the Node and Development?

Cat: For me, working at the Node made the transition out of active research relatively easy, because at The Company of Biologists you’re working with many people who used to be scientists. If I’d gone from a PhD to the job I did after the Node, it would’ve been too big a jump. It was also very good training for writing, as you constantly receive feedback from trained editors. I was a cell biologist by training, so one of the things that I was positively surprised about going into developmental biology was the sense of community. The job also involved a lot of travelling, which at that point in my life I had time to do.

Aidan: I agree that this job allowed you to have a foot in both camps. I was still talking to scientists all the time and going to conferences. While the Node was a big part of the job, a lot of my time was doing things for Development, like writing Research Highlights. I also got involved in commissioning review articles and saw the publishing side of things. The variety of tasks helps you figure out what you want to do. What I realised, quite like Eva, is that I really like writing and editing.

Cat: That’s really interesting, because I like writing, but I don’t like it enough to do it all the time. So, I really liked the interactions with different people, running projects and trying new things. It’s such a varied job that it fits different personalities!

Helen: I would be more similar to Cat in that I enjoyed talking with people, and the variety of the job. No two days are the same, and I think that different CMs at the Node can prioritise different things.

How did the role of the Community Manager evolve over the years?

Joyce: Apparently when they set the initial budget, they were hoping that our job would no longer be needed after 3 years, and that the Node could run by itself!

Eva: We thought it would become easier, but because you constantly have new PhD students and postdocs, you keep having to draw people in. The people who were regularly writing 15 years ago are now doing other things.

Joyce: How about the community aspect of the site, such as getting people to actively comment and discuss on the Node?

Eva: Back in 2010 every site like the Node had a comments section. If we didn’t have it, people would have complained, even if they never planned to leave a comment. Twitter existed, but it wasn’t as popular yet, so people did have discussions in the comments once in a while. I’m actually surprised that you still have comments, but maybe with how social media is now, it’s a good thing to have the discussion on your own site.

Aidan: By the time I joined, a lot of the discussion was on Twitter, so for me, it wasn’t a big part of the job to try to cultivate the commenting culture. From 2016 to 2018, I was going to conferences and live tweeting. That was really fun, and you met a lot of people through it, as they’d recognise the Node from Twitter. It was good for networking and for promoting what we did.

Helen: You tweeting from conferences was fantastic, Aidan, but it’s so tiring and you set quite a high bar on live tweeting! 

Aidan: I think I ended up using it as a way of staying engaged, because if I had to write a tweet for each talk, I couldn’t have a nap.

Cat: I think an important thing to highlight is that the traveling was great – I loved it, but boy, was it hard work. You’d go to meetings with a list of people you wanted to talk to. You had to tweet from every talk and go to every networking opportunity. You never really turned off. I always felt like I had to explain this to people, because otherwise it looked like you were being flown around the world to have fun!

What did we take away from working at the Node?

Eva: My job now involves interviewing a lot of scientists. How to ask questions about someone’s research, how to approach a Nobel Laureate at a conference – these are things I learned to do when I was working for the Node and Development, especially when I was asked to profile the presidents of different societies. It was really scary at the start, and I would prepare for hours. Now it has become a skill that I don’t even think about anymore. And last year, I got to write about developmental biology again! I wrote Biology: 100 Ideas in 100 Words for the Science Museum. It was fun to dig up some of the old knowledge that I learned.

Cat: I think the interviews are one of the things I remember most fondly. Eva, I don’t know if you felt the same, but I think it’s quite empowering to understand the power of being a non-specialist, and asking the question that isn’t the obvious one. I also want to highlight the power of networking when you’re in a position like the Community Manager. One of the people I interviewed when I first started at the Node was Maria Leptin, who was the head of EMBO at the time. I’ve since met her in my current job, and she remembered that I’d interviewed her all those years ago. This made the introduction much easier because we had a connection already. This demonstrates that even short interactions can help you build your career.

Aidan: I developed my writing and editing skills, plus got to work with an amazing group of people in The Company of Biologists, which does so much good across life sciences. And I came to appreciate the vital importance of community for science.

Finally, what are our memorable contributions while at the Node?

Cat: I started the series called A day in the life, where you follow the day in the life of working with different organisms. Those are my favorite posts (especially the one about sharks!). The variety of research organisms is a really interesting aspect of developmental biology. Another thing I’m proud of is persuading the Company that we needed Christmas decorations. So perhaps that’s my legacy – the office has a Christmas tree now!

Eva: I have two posts I commissioned that I thought were really interesting. One is an early post from September 2010 by Kim Cooper, who’s an amazing writer and has written many posts for the Node. In her first post she introduces the jerboa as a research organism. That post was popular, and I would use it as an example to show how you can write about your research in a casual and fun way. Another memorable post I commissioned is this ‘behind the paper’ story by Tohru Yano from Japan. We noticed that an article submitted to Development was from a lab affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. In the post, Tohru showed photos of the disheveled lab and microscopes on the floor. It was interesting to get the behind the scenes on how they dealt with the earthquake and how it affected their work.

Aidan: Towards the end of my time at the Node, I started ‘The people behind the papers’ interviews. These posts profile the first and last authors to find out what drives them, and to give context of the papers. That started in the Node and then went into Development – I think people really appreciated being featured. Another one is the Node Network, which is a global directory of developmental biologists for when you’re looking for a reviewer, speaker, or referee for a paper. You can filter by expertise and field, but also gender, ethnicity and other information.  This idea came about around 2018, when there were lots of discussions about who gets to do science and who gets to have their voices heard.

Helen: Talking about representation, we have a lot of readers and contributors from the UK, US and Europe, but we wanted to highlight people outside of these places as well. We started the Lab meetings series, which gives each lab an opportunity to introduce themselves. We make it easy for them to participate, and they can self-nominate too. 

Joyce: Those are all great examples. There’re so many amazing posts that are buried deep in the archives. When I joined, we finally improved the Node’s search functionality. You can now filter by things like author, year and category. Hopefully this makes it easier for people to revisit all the great content on the site.

A huge thank you to Eva, Cat, Aidan and Helen for building the Node community over the past 15 years!

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2025 is the 100^th birthday of The Company of Biologists, our not-for-profit publisher. Another birthday this year, albeit celebrating a much smaller number, is the Node’s 15th! If we take the time machine back to 2010, one of the events that happened in our little corner of the world was the launch of the Node. In June that year, Development and The Company of Biologists brought the first ever online developmental biology community site to life.

What did it take to build a community site from scratch? What even is a community site? Follow along to find out how the Node was born.

Step 1) Set the scope.

The idea of a ‘community blog’ started in late 2008, when Development surveyed members of the developmental biology community about the journal’s strengths and weaknesses. Although the survey did not explicitly ask about the journal’s website, many comments were along the lines of wanting ‘a more personal and interactive experience’ online. We called Development a community journal, and according to the survey, people wanted us to be just that: an online community for people to interact, gossip, share events and job openings, and write about research advances and all kinds of research-adjacent issues – somewhere that would be a one-stop-shop for developmental biologists.

While the community site would be hosted by Development, we didn’t want to limit the blog’s content to our journal, as we wanted to place ourselves as THE site for all developmental biologists – featuring research published in a wide range of journals and providing a forum for conference organisers, societies and other relevant organisations worldwide to reach out to the community. From the beginning, the idea was that anyone with an interest in developmental biology could post on and interact with the site.

Step 2) Set aside the budget and get the Board’s approval.

It wasn’t difficult to convince the Board to approve the proposal of setting up a community site. According to the Board meeting minutes, “it was unanimously agreed that Development should appoint an Online Editor to run their community website.” At its inception the Node was backed by a 3-year budget, which was a relatively long time for a digital ‘experiment’. The budget included the design work of the logo and the website, creation of webpages, and a lot of background coding work. Interestingly, the initial budget included ‘podcasts’, but that idea was quickly shelved.

Step 3) Pick a name for the site.

Do you know the Node could have been called ‘Out on a limb’? It is unclear how seriously this name was considered, but the name was mentioned in one of the brainstorming documents from 2009.

Eventually, ‘the Node’ came up in an email titled ‘Eureka!’ sent from Development’s then Executive Editor Jane Alfred to The Company of Biologists’ publisher Claire Moulton – two important people behind the inception of the Node – and the blog finally had a name!

“The Node felt like the perfect name for a community website that was aiming to be a hub of information and knowledge exchange for developmental biologists. It’s also a term that many development biologists will be very familiar with given that the node in developing embryos is a vitally important tissue that organises and orchestrates vertebrate development.” — Jane Alfred

Step 4) Hire a Community Manager.

Jane and Claire wanted to find someone with experience in blogging and online community building to help set up and run the site. In early 2010, Eva Amsen joined the Node as its first Community Manager.

In this conversation with the past and present Community Managers, Eva recounts how she applied to a different role within the Company but was then invited to apply to the Node position. Because Jane and Claire didn’t want to give away too much in the job advert, Eva wasn’t told what the job was really about until the interview!

Initially, we thought that once we got the momentum going, the Node would be able to run itself, without requiring the day-to-day management and commissioning of content from the Community Manager. But 15 years on, the fact that I (the current Community Manager) am writing this piece, suggests a more hands-on approach is required to keep the site running. As there’s a constant flow of new people coming into the field, it’s useful to have someone promoting the Node to new generations of developmental biologists.

Step 5) Design the homepage.

To be the one-stop-shop for the developmental biology community, and more than just a blog, it was important to include features like jobs board, events calendar and resources (listing related societies, databases, and journals).

A freelancer was hired to set up the website and some in-house resource was available to ensure the continued smooth running of the site. Over the years, the website became more professionalised when we formed a long-term partnership with a technology consultancy – something that has proved central to our ability to grow and develop the site.

Step 6) Write the policies and T&Cs.

A very important, but admittedly not as exciting piece of work was to set out the general guidelines, commenting policy, privacy policy and the Terms and Conditions. The team studied other similar science and journal blogs (there weren’t that many at that time) and came up with a set of guidelines to ensure the platform is inclusive and that discussions are carried out in an appropriate tone. One thing we worried a lot about was whether some of the topics we were likely to feature on the site might attract negative attention from, for example, anti-abortionists or creationists. While the Node is aimed at a scientific audience, we needed to have policies in place to ensure that we could handle controversial or inappropriate content should it arise. Fortunately, this hasn’t been an issue for us and in 15 years of the Node, we’ve only had to moderate its content on a handful of occasions.

Step 7) Populate the site with posts.

An empty community site would not feel very community-like. In order to make sure there was already something interesting for people to read when the Node was launched, Eva Amsen, the first Community Manager, was tasked with populating the site with content in the months leading up to the launch. That’s why even though the Node was officially launched in June, you can find posts dating back to April 2010. Curious to find out what the early posts were about? You can go down the memory lane using our (new-ish) improved search function by filtering according to the year and month.

Step 8) Organise a launch party!

After months of hard work, what better way to launch the Node than to have a party? The launch party was held at the Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, where people from the institute and developmental biologists in the area could have a browse around the Node and sign up an account on the spot.

15 years on, the (online) world has changed drastically, but the Node hopes to stick around, serving the developmental and stem cell biology community for years to come. Please continue to read and contribute to the Node – the Node wouldn’t have lasted for 15 years without your support!

Further reading

A conversation with the Node Community Managers, past and present

Vicente C, Maartens A, Brown K. The Node and beyond-using social media in cell and developmental biology. Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2017;70:90-97. doi:10.1016/j.semcdb.2017.05.009 – published as part of the special issue “Science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical research”

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