Hero image 1
The community site for and by
developmental and stem cell biologists
  1. Home

April in preprints

Posted by , on 6 May 2024

We’ve trawled through bioRxiv and arXiv for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints uploaded in April.

Use these links below to get to the section you want:

Developmental biology

Cell Biology

Modelling

Tools & Resources

Research practice and education

Developmental biology

| Patterning & signalling

Contributions of the Dachsous intracellular domain to Dachsous-Fat signaling

Bipin Kumar Tripathi, Kenneth D. Irvine

Unravelling differential Hes1 dynamics during axis elongation of mouse embryos through single-cell tracking

Yasmine el Azhar, Pascal Schulthess, Marek J. van Oostrom, Wilke H.M. Meijer, Wouter M. Thomas, Marianne Bauer, Katharina F. Sonnen

The Drosophila EcR-Hippo component Taiman promotes epithelial cell fitness by control of the Dally-like glypican and Wg gradient

Colby K. Schweibenz, Victoria C. Placentra, Kenneth H. Moberg

Lateral cell polarization drives organization of epithelia in sea anemone embryos and embryonic cell aggregates

Tavus Atajanova, Emily Minju Kang, Anna Postnikova, Alivia Lee Price, Sophia Doerr, Michael Du, Alicia Ugenti, Katerina Ragkousi

Postsynaptic BMP signaling regulates myonuclear properties in Drosophila larval muscles

Victoria E. von Saucken, Stefanie E. Windner, Mary K. Baylies

Optogenetic control of Nodal signaling patterns

Harold M. McNamara, Bill Z. Jia, Alison Guyer, Vicente J. Parot, Caleb Dobbs, Alexander F. Schier, Adam E. Cohen, Nathan D. Lord

Scaling between cell cycle duration and wing growth is regulated by Fat-Dachsous signaling in Drosophila

Andrew Liu, Jessica O’Connell, Farley Wall, Richard W. Carthew

Morphogen gradients are regulated by porous media characteristics of the developing tissue

Justina Stark, Rohit Krishnan Harish, Ivo F. Sbalzarini, Michael Brand

From Stark et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Identification of Pappa and Sall3 as Gli3 direct target genes acting downstream of cilia signalling in corticogenesis

Shinjini Basu, Lena Mautner, Kae Whiting, Kerstin Hasenpusch-Theil, Malgorzata Borkowska, Thomas Theil

Non-canonical nuclear function of glutaminase cooperates with Wnt signaling to drive EMT during neural crest development

Nioosha Nekooie Marnany, Alwyn Dady, Frédéric Relaix, Roberto Motterlini, Roberta Foresti, Sylvie Dufour, Jean-Loup Duband

In vitro modelling of anterior primitive streak patterning with human pluripotent stem cells identifies the path to notochord progenitors

M. Robles-Garcia, C. Thimonier, K. Angoura, E. Ozga, H. MacPherson, G. Blin

Caspar determines primordial germ cell identity in Drosophila melanogaster

Subhradip Das, Sushmitha Hegde, Neel Wagh, Jyothish Sudhakaran, Adheena Elsa Roy, Girish Deshpande, Girish S Ratnaparkhi

The Wnt/β-catenin/TCF/Sp5/Zic4 gene network that regulates head organizer activity in Hydra is differentially regulated in epidermis and gastrodermis

Laura Iglesias Olle, Chrystelle Perruchoud, Paul Gerald Layague Sanchez, Matthias Christian Vogg, Brigitte Galliot

Cell wall-mediated maternal control of apical-basal patterning of the kelp Undaria pinnatifida

Eloise Dries, Yannick Meyers, Daniel Liesner, Floriele Gonzaga, Jakob Becker, Eliane E Zakka, Tom Beeckman, Susana M Coelho, Olivier De Clerck, Kenny A Bogaert

From Dries et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Dries et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Dries et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Back to top

| Morphogenesis & mechanics

Mechanical forces pattern endocardial Notch activation via mTORC2-PKC pathway

Yunfei Mu, Shijia Hu, Xiangyang Liu, Xin Tang, Hongjun Shi

Spinal Cord Elongation Enables Proportional Regulation of the Zebrafish Posterior Body

Dillan Saunders, Carlos Camacho, Benjamin Steventon

From Saunders et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Saunders et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Saunders et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Stored Elastic Bending Tension as a Mediator of Embryonic Body Folding

Mira Zaher, Ronit Yelin, Alaa A. Arraf, Julian Jadon, Manar Abboud Asleh, Sivan Goltzman, Lihi Shaulov, Dieter P. Reinhardt, Thomas M. Schultheiss

Application of tissue-scale tension to avian epithelia in vivo to study multiscale mechanical properties and inter-germ layer coupling

Panagiotis Oikonomou, Lisa Calvary, Helena C. Cirne, Andreas E. Welch, John F. Durel, Olivia Powell, Nandan L. Nerurkar

Topology changes of the regenerating Hydra define actin nematic defects as mechanical organizers of morphogenesis.

Yamini Ravichandran, Matthias Vogg, Karsten Kruse, Daniel Pearce, Aurelien Roux

Mechanical stress through growth on stiffer substrates impacts animal health and longevity in C. elegans

Maria Oorloff, Adam Hruby, Maxim Averbukh, Athena Alcala, Naibedya Dutta, Toni Castro Torres, Darius Moaddeli, Matthew Vega, Juri Kim, Andrew Bong, Aeowynn J. Coakley, Daniel Hicks, Jing Wang, Tiffany Wang, Sally Hoang, Kevin M. Tharp, Gilberto Garcia, Ryo Higuchi-Sanabria

Hemodynamics regulate spatiotemporal artery muscularization in the developing circle of Willis

Siyuan Cheng, Ivan Fan Xia, Renate Wanner, Javier Abello, Amber N. Stratman, Stefania Nicoli

From tension to buckling – a mechanical transition underlies the puzzle-shape morphogenesis of histoblasts in the Drosophila epidermis

Annafrancesca Rigato, Huicheng Meng, Claire Chardes, Adam Runions, Faris Abouakil, Richard S Smith, Loïc LeGoff

Mechanotransductive feedback control of endothelial cell motility and vascular morphogenesis

Devon E. Mason, Paula Camacho, Megan E. Goeckel, Brendan R. Tobin, Sebastián L. Vega, Pei-Hsun Wu, Dymonn Johnson, Su-Jin Heo, Denis Wirtz, Jason A. Burdick, Levi Wood, Brian Y. Chow, Amber N. Stratman, Joel D. Boerckel

Mechanical Strategies Supporting Growth and Size Diversity in Filamentous Fungi

Louis Chevalier, Flora Klingelschmitt, Ludovic Mousseron, Nicolas Minc

Zebrafish arterial valve development occurs through direct differentiation of second heart field progenitors

Christopher J. Derrick, Lorraine Eley, Ahlam Alqahtani, Deborah J. Henderson, Bill Chaudhry

Regenerative clustering of Enteroblasts in the Drosophila midgut revealed by a morphometric analysis

Fionna Zhu, Michael J. Murray

Gestational exposure to high heat-humidity conditions impairs mouse embryonic development

Avinchal Manhas, Amritesh Sarkar, Srimonta Gayen

Differences in Cellular mechanics and ECM dynamics shape differential development of wing and haltere in Drosophila

C Dilsha, Salima Shiju, Neel Ajay Shah, Mandar M Inamdar, L S Shashidhara

Cell rearrangement progression along the apical-basal axis is linked with 3D epithelial tissue structure

Erika M Kusaka, Sassan Ostvar, Xun Wang, Xiaoyun Liu, Karen E Kasza

Tissue-level integration overrides gradations of differentiating cell identity in beetle extraembryonic tissue

Katie E. Mann, Kristen A. Panfilio

From Mann et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
From Mann et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
From Mann et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Back to top

| Genes & genomes

Regulatory Functional Landscape of the HMX1 Gene for Normal Ear Development

Xiaopeng Xu, Qi Chen, Qingpei Huang, Timothy C. Cox, Hao Zhu, Jintian Hu, Xi Han, Ziqiu Meng, Bingqing Wang, Zhiying Liao, Wenxin Xu, Baichuan Xiao, Ruirui Lang, Jiqiang Liu, Qiang Li, Qingguo Zhang, Stylianos E. Antonarakis, Jiao Zhang, Xiaoying Fan, Huisheng Liu, Yong-Biao Zhang

ARID1A-BAF coordinates ZIC2 genomic occupancy for epithelial to mesenchymal transition in cranial neural crest lineage commitment

Samantha M. Barnada, Aida Giner de Gracia, Cruz Morenilla-Palao, María Teresa López-Cascales, Chiara Scopa, Francis J. Waltrich Jr., Harald M.M. Mikkers, Maria Elena Cicardi, Jonathan Karlin, Davide Trotti, Kevin A. Peterson, Samantha A. Brugmann, Gijs W. E. Santen, Steven B. McMahon, Eloísa Herrera, Marco Trizzino

XOL-1 regulates developmental timing by modulating the H3K9 landscape in C. elegans early embryos

Eshna Jash, Anati Alyaa Azhar, Hector Mendoza, Zoey M. Tan, Halle Nicole Escher, Dalia S. Kaufman, Györgyi Csankovszki

Expansion of a neural crest gene signature following ectopic MYCN expression in sympathoadrenal lineage cells in vivo

Rodrigo Ibarra-García-Padilla, Annika Nambiar, Thomas A. Hamre, Eileen W. Singleton, Rosa A. Uribe

Rapid response of fly populations to gene dosage across development and generations

Xueying C. Li, Lautaro Gandara, Måns Ekelöf, Kerstin Richter, Theodore Alexandrov, Justin Crocker

Detailed phenotyping of Tbr1-2A-CreER knock-in mice demonstrates significant impacts on TBR1 protein levels and axon development

Marissa Co, Grace K. O’Brien, Kevin M. Wright, Brian J. O’Roak

The miR-144/Hmgn2 regulatory axis orchestrates chromatin organization during erythropoiesis

Dmitry A. Kretov, Leighton Folkes, Alexandra Mora-Martin, Noreen Syedah, Isha A. Walawalkar, Kim Vanyustel, Simon Moxon, George J. Murphy, Daniel Cifuentes

Automated live-cell single-molecule tracking in enteroid monolayers reveals transcription factor dynamics probing lineage-determining function

Nike Walther, Sathvik Anantakrishnan, Gina M. Dailey, Robert Tjian, Xavier Darzacq

Compromised actin dynamics underlie the orofacial cleft in Baraitser-Winter Cerebrofrontofacial Syndrome with a variant in ACTB

Takayuki Tsujimoto, Yushi Ou, Makoto Suzuki, Yuka Murata, Toshihiro Inubushi, Miho Nagata, Yasuki Ishihara, Ayumi Yonei, Yohei Miyashita, Yoshihiro Asano, Norio Sakai, Hajime Ogino, Yasushi Sakata, Takashi Yamashiro, Hiroshi Kurosaka

Condensin IDC, H4K20me1, and perinuclear tethering maintain X chromosome repression in C. elegans

Jessica Trombley, Audry I Rakozy, Eshna Jash, Gyorgyi Csankovszki

SRSF2 is a key player in orchestrating the directional migration and differentiation of MyoD progenitors during skeletal muscle development

Rula Sha, Ruochen Guo, Huimin Duan, Qian Peng, Ningyang Yuan, Zhenzhen Wang, Zhigang Li, Zhiqin Xie, Xue You, Ying Feng

Testis- and ovary-expressed polo transcripts and gene duplications affect male fertility when expressed in the germline

Paola Najera, Olivia A Dratler, Alexander B Mai, Miguel Elizarraras, Rahul Vanchinathan, Christopher A. Gonzales, Richard P. Meisel

A dual enhancer-silencer element ensures transient Cdx2 expression during posterior body formation

Irène Amblard, Damir Baranasic, Benjamin Moyon, Boris Lenhard, Vicki Metzis

From Amblard et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Amblard et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Amblard et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

The DNA Methyltransferase DMAP1 is Required for Tissue Maintenance and Planarian Regeneration

Salvador Rojas, Paul G. Barghouth, Peter Karabinis, Néstor J. Oviedo

ScRNA-seq and scATAC-seq reveal that sertoli cell mediate spermatogenesis disorders through stage-specific communications in non-obstructive azoospermia

Shimin Wang, Hongxian Wang, Bicheng Jin, Hongli Yan, Qingliang Zheng, Dong Zhao

The cis-regulatory logic integrating spatial and temporal patterning in the vertebrate neural tube

Isabel Zhang, Giulia LM Boezio, Jake Cornwall-Scoones, Thomas Frith, Ming Jiang, Michael Howell, Robin Lovell-Badge, Andreas Sagner, James Briscoe, M Joaquina Delás

Does transcriptome of freshly hatched fish larvae describe past or predict future developmental trajectory?

Rossella Debernardis, Katarzyna Palińska-Żarska, Sylwia Judycka, Abhipsa Panda, Sylwia Jarmołowicz, Jan P. Jastrzębski, Tainá Rocha de Almeida, Maciej Błażejewski, Piotr Hliwa, Sławomir Krejszeff, Daniel Żarski

Dzip1 is dynamically expressed in the vertebrate germline and regulates the development of Xenopus primordial germ cells

Aurora Turgeon, Jia Fu, Divyanshi, Meng Ma, Zhigang Jin, Hyojeong Hwang, Meining Li, Huanyu Qiao, Wenyan Mei, Jing Yang

Defining the cellular origin of seminoma by transcriptional and epigenetic mapping to the normal human germline

Keren Cheng, Yasunari Seita, Eoin C. Whelan, Ryo Yokomizo, Young Sun Hwang, Antonia Rotolo, Ian D. Krantz, Maninder Kaur, Jill P. Ginsberg, Priti Lal, Xunda Luo, Phillip M. Pierorazio, Rebecca L. Linn, Sandra Ryeom, Kotaro Sasaki

Paralog-dependent Specialization of Paf1C subunit, Ctr9, for Sex Chromosome Gene Regulation and Male Germline Differentiation in Drosophila

Toshie Kai, Jinglan Zheng, Taichiro Iki

Sperm derived H2AK119ub1 is required for embryonic development in Xenopus Laevis

Jerome Jullien, Valentin Francois-Campion, Florian Berger, Maissa Goumeidane, Mami Oikawa, Romain Gibeaux

Genetic gradual reduction of OGT activity unveils the essential role of O-GlcNAc in the mouse embryov

Sara Formichetti, Agnieszka Sadowska, Michela Ascolani, Julia Hansen, Kerstin Ganter, Christophe Lancrin, Neil Humphreys, Matthieu Boulard

Maternal obesity may disrupt offspring metabolism by inducing oocyte genome hyper-methylation via increased DNMTs

Shuo Chao, Jun Lu, Li-Jun Li, Hong-Yan Guo, Kui-Peng Xu, Ning Wang, Shu-Xian Zhao, Xiao-Wen Jin, Shao-Ge Wang, Shen Yin, Wei Shen, Ming-Hui Zhao, Gui-An Huang, Qing-Yuan Sun, Zhao-Jia Ge

Developmental defects in ectodermal appendages caused by missense mutation in edaradd gene in the nfr mangrove killifish, Kryptolebias marmoratus

Hussein A. Saud, Paul A. O’Neill, Brian C. Ring, Tetsuhiro Kudoh

From Saud et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Saud et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Saud et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Myelin regulatory factor (Myrf) is a critical early regulator of retinal pigment epithelial development.

Michelle L Brinkmeier, Su Qing Wang, Hannah Pittman, Leonard Y Cheung, Lev Prasov

Heat tolerance, oxidative stress response tuning, and robust gene activation in early-stage Drosophila melanogaster embryos

Emily E. Mikucki, Thomas S. O’Leary, Brent L. Lockwood

Back to top

| Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling

Ascorbate depletion increases quiescence and self-renewal potential in hematopoietic stem cells and multipotent progenitors

Stefano Comazzetto, Daniel L. Cassidy, Andrew W. DeVilbiss, Elise C. Jeffery, Bethany R. Ottesen, Amanda R. Reyes, Sarah Muh, Thomas P. Mathews, Brandon Chen, Zhiyu Zhao, Sean J. Morrison

Circadian control of kidney regeneration via Lima1-mediated regulation of EMT

Xian He, Ziming Wang, Linxi Cheng, Han Wang, Yuhua Sun

Human receptive endometrial organoid for deciphering the implantation window

Yu Zhang, Rusong Zhao, Chaoyan Yang, Jinzhu Song, Peishu Liu, Yan Li, Boyang Liu, Tao Li, Changjian Yin, Minghui Lu, Zhenzhen Hou, Chuanxin Zhang, Zi-Jiang Chen, Keliang Wu, Han Zhao

Zebrafish Foxl2l suppresses stemness of germline progenitors and directs feminization

Chen-wei Hsu, Hao Ho, Ching-Hsin Yang, Yan-wei Wang, Ker-Chau Li, Bon-chu Chung

The transient formation of collaterals contributes to the restoration of the arterial tree during cardiac regeneration in neonatal mice

Rachel Sturny, Lucie Boulgakoff, Robert G Kelly, Lucile Miquerol

An Lgr5-independent developmental lineage is involved in mouse intestinal regeneration

Maryam Marefati, Valeria Fernandez-Vallone, Morgane Leprovots, Gabriella Vasile, Frédérick Libert, Anne Lefort, Gilles Dinsart, Achim Weber, Jasna Jetzer, Marie-Isabelle Garcia, Gilbert Vassart

Modelling Amoebic Brain Infection Caused by Balamuthia mandrillaris Using a Human Cerebral Organoid

Nongnat Tongkrajang, Phorntida Kobpornchai, Pratima Dubey, Nitirat Panadsako, Urai Chaisri, Kasem Kulkeaw

Transdifferentiation is uncoupled from progenitor pool expansion during hair cell regeneration in the zebrafish inner ear

Marielle O. Beaulieu, Eric D. Thomas, David W. Raible

Single-cell roadmap of cardiac differentiation identifies roles for ZNF711 and retinoic acid in balanced epicardial and cardiomyocyte lineage commitment

Rebecca R. Snabel, Carla Cofiño-Fabrés, Marijke Baltissen, Verena Schwach, Robert Passier, Gert Jan C. Veenstra

Sox9 marks limbal stem cells and is required for asymmetric cell fate switch in the corneal epithelium

Gabriella Rice, Olivia Farrelly, Sixia Huang, Paola Kuri, Ezra Curtis, Lisa Ohman, Ning Li, Christopher Lengner, Vivian Lee, Panteleimon Rompolas

Humanized in vivo bone marrow models orchestrate multi-lineage human hematopoietic cell development

Laurent Renou, Wenjie Sun, Chloe Friedrich, Klaudia Galant, Cecile Conrad, Evelia Plantier, Katharina Schallmoser, Linda Krisch, Vilma Barroca, Saryami Devanand, Nathalie Déchamp, Andreas Reinisch, Jelena Martinovic, Alessandra Magnani, Lionel Faivre, Julien Calvo, Leila Perie, Olivier Kosmider, Françoise Pflumio

Isogenic hiPSC models of Turner syndrome development reveal shared roles of inactive X and Y in the human cranial neural crest network

Darcy T. Ahern, Prakhar Bansal, Isaac V. Faustino, Heather R. Glatt-Deeley, Rachael Massey, Yuvabharath Kondaveeti, Erin C. Banda, Stefan F. Pinter

“Poly (A) Binding Protein 2 is critical for stem-progenitor differentiation during regeneration in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea.”

Namita Mukundan, Nivedita Hariharan, Vidyanand Sasidharan, Vairavan Lakshmanan, Dasaradhi Palakodeti, Colin Jamora

foxg1a is required for hair cell development and regeneration in the zebrafish lateral line

Jon M Bell, Cole Biesemeyer, Emily M Turner, Maddie M Vanderbeck, Hillary F McGraw

Gill regeneration in the mayfly Cloeon uncovers new molecular pathways in insect regeneration

Carlos A. Martin-Blanco, Pablo Navarro, José Esteban-Collado, Florenci Serras, Isabel Almudi, Fernando Casares

From Martin-Blanco et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
From Martin-Blanco et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
From Martin-Blanco et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

A Multi-Tissue Comparison and Molecular Characterization of Canine Organoids

Christopher Zdyrski, Vojtech Gabriel, Oscar Ospina, Hannah Wickham, Dipak K. Sahoo, Kimberly Dao, Leeann S. Aguilar Meza, Abigail Ralston, Leila Bedos, William Bastian, Sydney Honold, Pablo Piñeyro, Eugene F. Douglass, Jonathan P. Mochel, Karin Allenspach

Braf-mutant Schwann cells divert to a repair phenotype to induce congenital demyelinating neuropathy

Elise Marechal, Patrice Quintana, Daniel Aldea, Grégoire Mondielli, Nathalie Bernard-Marissal, Mathias Moreno, Valérie Delague, Lauren A. Weiss, Anne Barlier, Heather C. Etchevers

Lgr5+ intestinal stem cells are required for organoid survival after genotoxic injury

Joseph Lee, Antoine Gleizes, Felipe Takaesu, Sarah F Webster, Taylor Hailstock, Nick Barker, Adam D Gracz

Stem cell models of TAFAZZIN deficiency reveal novel tissue-specific pathologies in Barth Syndrome

Olivia Sniezek Carney, Kodi William Harris, Yvonne Wohlfarter, Kyuna Lee, Grant Butschek, Arianna Anzmann, Steven M Claypool, Anne Hamacher-Brady, Markus Andreas Keller, Hilary J Vernon

Characterization of the mesendoderm progenitors in the gastrulating mouse embryo

V. Pragathi Masamsetti, Nazmus Salehin, Hani Jieun Kim, Nicole Santucci, Megan Weatherstone, Hilary Knowles, Jane Sun, Riley McMahon, Josh B Studdert, Nader Aryamanesh, Ran Wang, Naihe Jing, Pengyi Yang, Pierre Osteil, Patrick P.L Tam

Back to top

| Plant development

BZR1 promotes pluripotency acquisition and callus development through direct regulation of ARF7 and ARF19

E Ebstrup, T Ammitsøe, N Blanco-Touriñán, J Hansen, CS Hardtke, E Rodriguez, M Petersen

From Ammitsøe et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Ammitsøe et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Ammitsøe et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Age-associated growth control modifies leaf proximodistal symmetry and enables leaf shape diversification

Xin-Min Li, Hannah Jenke, Sören Strauss, Yi Wang, Neha Bhatia, Daniel Kierzkowski, Rena Lymbouridou, Peter Huijser, Richard S. Smith, Adam Runions, Miltos Tsiantis

Plant Growth analysis using computer. An auxiliary computational program. II

Tomás de Aquino Portes

Regulation of ROP GTPase cycling between active/inactive states is essential for vegetative organogenesis in Marchantia polymorpha

Yuuki Sakai, Aki Ueno, Hiroki Yonetsuka, Tatsuaki Goh, Hirotaka Kato, Yuki Kondo, Hidehiro Fukaki, Kimitsune Ishizaki

Sepal shape variability is robust to cell size heterogeneity in Arabidopsis

Duy-Chi Trinh, Claire Lionnet, Christophe Trehin, Olivier Hamant

Wax ester synthase overexpression affects stomatal development, water consumption and growth of poplars

Ashkan Amirkhosravi, Gerrit-Jan Strijkstra, Alisa Keyl, Felix Häffner, Ulrike Lipka, Cornelia Herrfurth, Ivo Feussner, Andrea Polle

A multiplexed transcriptomic analysis of a plant embryonic hourglass

Hao Wu, Ruqiang Zhang, Michael J. Scanlon

CONCERTED PLANT GROWTH AND DEFENSE THROUGH TARGETED PHYTOHORMONE CROSSTALK MODIFICATION

Grace A. Johnston, Hannah M. Berry, Mikiko Kojima, Hitoshi Sakakibara, Cristiana T. Argueso

A prion-like protein regulates the 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional growth transition in the moss Physcomitrium patens

Zoe Weeks, Gargi Chaturvedi, Emily Day, Steven Kelly, Laura A. Moody

Plasma membrane and cytoplasmic compartmentalization: a dynamic structural framework required for pollen tube tip growth

Carolin Fritz, Theresa Maria Reimann, Jeremy Adler, Johanna Knab, Sylwia Schulmeister, Choy Kriechbaum, Sabine Müller, Ingela Parmryd, Benedikt Kost

The Class III peroxidase OsPrx20 is a key regulator of stress response and growth in rice

Tao Shen, Qingwen Wang, Dan Chen, Huining Ju, Runjiao Yan, Fengjuan Xu, Donghuan Fu, Xiaona Bu, Huan Zhang, Jiexiong Hu, Zhengguang Zhang, Lan Ni, Mingyi Jiang

RGF1 controls PLT2 protein stability through ROS-dependent regulation of a cysteine residue in root meristem development

Yu-Chun Hsiao, Shiau-Yu Shiue, Ming-Ren Yen, Joon-Keat Lai, Masashi Yamada

Genome editing in almond: A CRISPR-based approach through hairy root transformation

Veronika Jedličková, Marie Štefková, Juan Francisco Sánchez López, Jérôme Grimplet, María José Rubio Cabetas, Hélène S. Robert

Remote sensing for estimating genetic parameters of biomass accumulation and modeling stability of growth curves in alfalfa

Ranjita Thapa, Karl H. Kunze, Julie Hansen, Christopher Pierce, Virginia Moore, Ian Ray, Liam Wickes-Do, Nicolas Morales, Felipe Sabadin, Nicholas Santantonio, Michael A Gore, Kelly Robbins

WHIRLY1 regulates aliphatic glucosinolate biosynthesis in early seedling development of Arabidopsis

Nguyen Thuy-Linh, Moutesidi Pinelopi, Glasneck Anike, Khosravi Solmaz, Abel Steffen, Hensel Götz, Krupinska Karin, Humbeck Klaus

Auxin-mediated stress relaxation in pericycle and endoderm remodelling drive lateral root initiation

João R. D. Ramos, Blanca Jazmin Reyes-Hernández, Karen Alim, Alexis Maizel

The Zea mays PeptideAtlas – a new maize community resource

Klaas J. van Wijk, Tami Leppert, Zhi Sun, Isabell Guzchenko, Erica Debley, Georgia Sauermann, Pratyush Routray, Luis Mendoza, Qi Sun, Eric W. Deutsch

Multiplexed in situ hybridization reveals distinct lineage identities for major and minor vein initiation during maize leaf development

Chiara Perico, Maricris Zaidem, Olga Sedelnikova, Samik Bhattacharya, Christian Korfhage, Jane A. Langdale

Genome-Wide Transcriptome Dynamics in Auxin Homeostasis During Fruit Development in Strawberry (F. x ananassa)

Yoon Jeong Jang, Taehoon Kim, Makou Lin, Jeongim Kim, Kevin Begcy, Zhongchi Liu, Seonghee Lee

Stem cell homeostasis in the root of Arabidopsis involves cell-type specific complex formation of key transcription factors

Vivien I Strotmann, Monica L Garcia-Gomez, Yvonne Stahl

Inositol pyrophosphate catabolism by three families of phosphatases controls plant growth and development

Florian Laurent, Simon Maria Bartsch, Anuj Shukla, Felix Edgardo Rico Resendiz, Daniel Couto, Christelle Fuchs, Joel Nicolet, Sylvain Loubery, Henning J Jessen, Dorothea Fiedler, Michael Hothorn

Back to top

| Evo-devo

Ridge and crossrib height of butterfly wing scales is a toolbox for structural color diversity

Cédric Finet, Yi Yang Bei, Vinod Saranathan, Qifeng Ruan, Antónia Monteiro

DO BIRDS SHOW UNIQUE MACROEVOLUTIONARY PATTERNS OF SEXUAL SIZE DIMORPHISM COMPARED TO OTHER AMNIOTES?

Evan Thomas Saitta

Genomic signatures associated with the evolutionary loss of egg yolk in parasitoid wasps

Xianxin Zhao, Yuanyuan Liu, Yi Yang, Chun He, Kevin C. Chan, Haiwei Lin, Qi Fang, Gongyin Ye, Xinhai Ye

Stem cell transcriptional profiles from mouse subspecies reveal cis-regulatory evolution at translation genes

Noah M. Simon, Yujin Kim, Diana M. Bautista, James R. Dutton, Rachel B. Brem

Sperm competition favours intermediate sperm size in a hermaphrodite

Santhosh Santhosh, Dieter Ebert, Tim Janicke

Changes in wing morphology rather than wingbeat kinematics enabled evolutionary miniaturization of hoverflies

Camille Le Roy, Nina Tervelde, Thomas Engels, Florian T. Muijres

From Le Roy et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Le Roy et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Le Roy et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Somatic embryogenesis of grapevine (Vitis vinifera) expresses a transcriptomic hourglass

Sara Koska, Dunja Leljak-Levanić, Nenad Malenica, Kian Bigović Villi, Momir Futo, Nina Čorak, Mateja Jagić, Anja Tušar, Niko Kasalo, Mirjana Domazet-Lošo, Kristian Vlahoviček, Tomislav Domazet-Lošo

Microevolution toward loss of photosynthesis: Mutations promoting dark-heterotrophic growth and suppressing photosynthetic growth in cyanobacteria

Shintaro Hida, Marie Nishio, Kazuma Uesaka, Mari Banba, Nobuyuki Takatani, Shinichi Takaichi, Haruki Yamamoto, Kunio Ihara, Yuichi Fujita

Conserved and novel enhancers in the Aedes aegypti single-minded locus recapitulate embryonic ventral midline gene expression

Isabella Schember, William Reid, Geyenna Sterling-Lentsch, Marc S. Halfon

A maternal-effect toxin-antidote element causes larval arrest in C. elegans

Stefan Zdraljevic, Laura Walter-McNeill, Giancarlo Bruni, Joshua S. Bloom, Daniel H.W. Leighton, Heriberto Marquez, Leonid Kruglyak

Phylogenomic analysis of the Lake Kronotskoe species flock of Dolly Varden charr reveals genetic and developmental signatures of sympatric radiation

Katherine C Woronowicz, Evgeny V Esin, Grigorii N Markevich, Crisvely Soto Martinez, Sarah McMenamin, Jacob M Daane, Matthew P Harris, Fedor N Shkil

Development of Germline Progenitors in Larval Queen Honeybee ovaries

Georgia Cullen, Erin Delargy, Peter K. Dearden

Developmental origins and evolution of pallial cell types and structures in birds

Bastienne Zaremba, Amir Fallahshahroudi, Céline Schneider, Julia Schmidt, Ioannis Sarropoulos, Evgeny Leushkin, Bianka Berki, Enya Van Poucke, Per Jensen, Rodrigo Senovilla-Ganzo, Francisca Hervas-Sotomayor, Nils Trost, Francesco Lamanna, Mari Sepp, Fernando García-Moreno, Henrik Kaessmann

A Transcriptomic Hourglass In Brown Algae

Jaruwatana S. Lotharukpong, Min Zheng, Remy Luthringer, Hajk-Georg Drost, Susana M. Coelho

From Lotharukpong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Lotharukpong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Lotharukpong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Back to top

Cell Biology

Spatio-temporal requirements of Aurora kinase A in mouse oocytes meiotic spindle building

Cecilia S. Blengini, Michaela Vaskovicova, Jan Schier, David Drutovic, Karen Schindler

Flamingo participates in multiple models of cell competition

Pablo Sanchez Bosch, Bomsoo Cho, Jeffrey D. Axelrod

Functional septate junctions between cyst cells are required for survival of transit amplifying male germ cells expressing Bag of marbles

Cameron W. Berry, Margaret T. Fuller

Native molecular architectures of centrosomes in C. elegans embryos

Fergus Tollervey, Manolo U. Rios, Evgenia Zagoriy, Jeffrey B. Woodruff, Julia Mahamid

Nuclear deformability facilitates apical nuclear migration in the developing zebrafish retina

Mariana Maia-Gil, Maria Gorjão, Roman Belousov, Jaime A. Espina, João Coelho, Ana P. Ramos, Elias H. Barriga, Anna Erzberger, Caren Norden

The Rac1 homolog CED-10 is a component of the MES-1/SRC-1 pathway for asymmetric division of the C. elegans EMS blastomere

Helen Lamb, Malgorzata J Liro, Krista M Myles, Mckenzi Fernholz, Holly A Anderson, Lesilee S Rose

Dynamics of single-cell protein covariation during epithelial-mesenchymal transition

Saad Khan, Rachel Conover, Anand R. Asthagiri, Nikolai Slavov

The PR factor Hamlet controls heterotypic epithelial tissue assembly in Drosophila reproduction system

Huazhen Wang, Ludivine Bertonnier-Brouty, Isabella Artner, Jiayu Wen, Qi Dai

Microtubule networks in zebrafish hair cells facilitate presynapse transport and fusion during development

Saman Hussain, Katherine Pinter, Mara Uhl, Hiu-Tung Wong, Katie Kindt

The Proximal Centriole-Like Structure Anchors the Centriole to the Sperm Nucleus

Danielle B. Buglak, Kathleen H.M. Holmes, Brian J. Galletta, Nasser M. Rusan

A conserved germline-specific Dsn1 alternative splice isoform supports oocyte and embryo development

Jimmy Ly, Cecilia S. Blengini, Sarah L. Cady, Karen Schindler, Iain M. Cheeseman

Mechanisms of Meiotic Spindle Initiation in Caenorhabditis elegans Oocytes

Ting Gong, Karen L. McNally, Siri Konanoor, Alma Peraza, Cynthia Bailey, Stefanie Redemann, Francis J. McNally

From Gong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Gong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
From Gong et al. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

The fine-tuning of synapse development by oxidative stress and autophagy requires presynaptic ATM kinase

Matthew J. Taylor, Syed Azan Ahmed, Ellena G. Badenoch, David Bennett, Richard I. Tuxworth

Rudhira-mediated microtubule stability controls TGFβ signaling during mouse vascular development

Divyesh Joshi, Preeti Jindal, Ronak Shetty, Maneesha S. Inamdar

CENP-C-targeted PLK-1 regulates kinetochore function in C. elegans embryos

Laura Bel Borja, Samuel J.P. Taylor, Flavie Soubigou, Federico Pelisch

Comparative investigations of cellular dynamics in the development of medusae (Cnidaria: Medusozoa)

Matthew Kevin Travert, Kent Winata, Paulyn Cartwright

Back to top

Modelling

Effective population size of X chromosomes and haplodiploids under cyclical parthenogenesis

Thomas J. Hitchcock

Connecting Transcriptomics with Computational Modeling to Reveal Developmental Adaptations in the Human Pediatric Myocardium

Shatha Salameh, Devon Guerrelli, Jacob A. Miller, Manan Desai, Nicolae Moise, Can Yerebakan, Alisa Bruce, Pranava Sinha, Yves d’Udekem, Seth H. Weinberg, Nikki Gillum Posnack

Stable developmental patterns of gene expression without morphogen gradients

Maciej Majka, Nils B. Becker, Pieter Rein ten Wolde, Marcin Zagorski, Thomas R. Sokolowski

Nested Inheritance Dynamics

Bahman Moraffah

Does nematic order allow groups of elongated cells to sense electric fields better?

Kurmanbek Kaiyrbekov, Brian A. Camley

Quantifying cell cycle regulation by tissue crowding

Carles Falcó, Daniel J. Cohen, José A. Carrillo, Ruth E. Baker

Stochastic dynamics of two-compartment models with regulatory mechanisms for hematopoiesis

Ren-Yi Wang, Marek Kimmel, Guodong Pang

A computational scheme connecting gene regulatory network dynamics with heterogeneous stem cell regeneration

Yakun Li, Xiyin Liang, Jinzhi Lei

Back to top

Tools & Resources

Bellymount-Pulsed Tracking: A Novel Approach for Real-Time In vivo Imaging of Drosophila Oogenesis

Shruthi Balachandra, Amanda A. Amodeo

Three-dimensional reconstruction of fetal rhesus macaque kidneys at single-cell resolution reveals complex inter-relation of structures

Lucie Dequiedt, André Forjaz, Jamie O. Lo, Owen McCarty, Pei-Hsun. Wu, Avi Rosenberg, Denis Wirtz, Ashley Kiemen

Deep learning-based detection of murine congenital heart defects from µCT scans

Hoa Nguyen, Audrey Desgrange, Amaia Ochandorena-Saa, Vanessa Benhamo, Sigolène M. Meilhac, Christophe Zimmer

Resistance to Naïve and Formative Pluripotency Conversion in RSeT Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Kevin G. Chen, Kory R. Johnson, Kyeyoon Park, Dragan Maric, Forest Yang, Wen Fang Liu, Yang C. Fann, Barbara S. Mallon, Pamela G. Robey

A transcriptome atlas of zygotic and somatic embryogenesis in Norway spruce

Katja Stojkovič, Camilla Canovi, Kim-Cuong Le, Nicolas Delhomme, Ulrika Egertsdotter, Nathaniel R. Street

Single-embryo metabolomics reveals developmental metabolism in the early Drosophila embryo

J. Eduardo Pérez-Mojica, Zachary B. Madaj, Christine N. Isaguirre, Joe Roy, Kin H. Lau, Ryan D. Sheldon, Adelheid Lempradl

Development of the pulmonary vasculature in the gray short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) – 3D reconstruction by microcomputed tomography

Kirsten Ferner

From Ferner. This image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Effect of glucose concentration in culture medium on the human preimplantation embryo methylome

Daniel Brison, Mollie McGrane, Sue Kimber

High-resolution atlas of the developing human heart and the great vessels

Semih Bayraktar, James Cranley, Kazumasa Kanemaru, Vincent R Knight-Schrijver, Maria Colzani, Hongorzul Davaapil, Jonathan Chuo Min Lee, Krzysztof Polanski, Laura Richardson, Claudia Semprich, Rakeshlal Kapuge, Monika Dabrowska, Ilaria Mulas, Shani Perera, Mina Patel, Yen Ho, Xiaoling He, Richard Tyser, Laure Gambardella, Sarah Teichmann, Sanjay Sinha

Multiomic analysis reveals developmental dynamics of the human heart in health and disease

James Cranley, Kazumasa Kanemaru, Semih Bayraktar, Vincent Knight-Schrijver, Jan Patrick Pett, Krzysztof Polanski, Monika Dabrowska, Ilaria Mulas, Laura Richardson, Claudia Semprich, Rakeshlal Kapuge, Shani Perera, Xiaoling He, Siew Yen Ho, Nadav Yayon, Liz Tuck, Kenny Roberts, Jack Palmer, Hongorzul Davaapil, Laure Gambardella, Minal Patel, Richard Tyser, Sanjay Sinha, Sarah Teichmann

The gut contractile organoid: a novel model for studying the gut motility regulated by coordinating signals between interstitial cells of Cajal and smooth muscles

Rei Yagasaki, Ryo Nakamura, Yuuki Shikaya, Ryosuke Tadokoro, Ruolin Hao, Zhe Wang, Mototsugu Eiraku, Masafumi Inaba, Yoshiko Takahashi

SegmentAnything helps microscopy images based automatic and quantitative organoid detection and analysis

Xiaodan Xing, Chunling Tang, Yunzhe Guo, Nicholas Kurniawan, Guang Yang

Back to top

Research practice & education

Enabling preprint discovery, evaluation, and analysis with Europe PMC

Mariia Levchenko, Michael Parkin, Johanna McEntyre, Melissa Harrison

Finding the right words to evaluate research: An empirical appraisal of eLife’s assessment vocabulary

Tom E. Hardwicke, Sarah R Schiavone, Beth Clarke, Simine Vazire

Leading researchers in the leadership of leading research universities: meta-research analysis

John P.A. Ioannidis

Mapping the Brazilian Scientific Diaspora: Migration Patterns of PhDs in Global Mobility

Concepta McManus, Brenno A. D. Neto, Abilio Afonso Baeta Neves, Rafael Tavares Schleicher, Claudia Figueiredo

Back to top
Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags:
Categories: Highlights, Research

Navigate the archive

Here you can filter posts by date, category or popular tags.  You can also use the search box.

Search Posts

Filter by date

Filter by category

Filter by tag

Lab meeting with the Welshhans Lab

Posted by , on 1 May 2024

Where is the lab?

The Welshhans lab is located at the University of South Carolina, which is in Columbia, South Carolina, USA.

Research summary

The Welshhans Lab works on neural development. In particular, we are interested in the process by which neural connectivity is formed. This process is mediated by a highly dynamic sensory and motor structure located at the ends of developing axons, called the growth cone. Much of our work focuses on local translation, which is the process by which a subset of mRNAs is localized to and locally translated within growth cones to regulate axon guidance. We study how this molecular mechanism and others regulate typical development. Furthermore, we study how the dysregulation of various molecular mechanisms, including local translation and adhesion, contribute to the phenotypes of Down syndrome. We use mouse models and human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons and brain organoids to study these processes.

Can you give us a lab roll call?

  • Katelyn, PhD Candidate: My project examines the local translation of b-actin and how it regulates axon guidance through adhesion-based mechanisms during nervous system development.
  • Nikita Kirkise, PhD candidate: I am a 4th year PhD student in Kristy Welshhans’ lab. My project investigates the role of extracellular matrix proteins, specifically laminins, in regulating the local translation of mRNAs in growth cones of developing mouse cortical neurons.
  • Jordan Headen, PhD candidate: I am a second-year PhD student investigating the role of adhesion and the local translation of candidate mRNAs during the development of the nervous system. 
  • We also have three undergraduates in the lab who are studying how adhesion and local translation are altered in Down syndrome. For their research, they are using human fibroblasts as a model.

Favourite technique, and why?

Kristy: My favorite technique is anything involving microscopy and living cells. I find it fascinating to watch living cells under high magnification. It doesn’t matter whether we are using brightfield, fluorescent translation reporters, or some other fluorescent tagging method, I can stare at these movies for hours and always find something interesting!

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

Kristy: I am most excited about some recent advances that are improving the quality of life for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (including non-pharmacological, pharmacological, gene therapy, and stem cell-based treatments). Many disorders still have no treatment, but recent advances in some of these areas are opening new doors that I hope will continue to gain momentum.

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

Kristy: I am a pretty organized person and have a never-ending (but prioritized) to-do list, so that helps me stay on top of things. Every Friday, I time block my calendar with all the activities I need to accomplish in the week ahead. In addition, I meet one-on-one with everyone in the lab every week. Overall, the most important thing to me is the success of my lab members, which means something different for each individual. So, I prioritize that and then fit in everything else around it!

What is the best thing about where you work?  

  • Kristy: In our Department, there is a very supportive group of four faculty who all work on axon biology. This makes it an optimal environment not only for me but for my lab as well. I am also part of a larger group at the University, which is the Carolina Autism and Neurodevelopment (CAN) Research Center. This is a multidisciplinary group composed of faculty and their labs that study neurodevelopment and related disorders. We are composed of people from very diverse disciplines, including Biology, Psychology, Public Health, Computer Science, etc., which has allowed me to think and collaborate with others on my research in novel ways.
  • Katelyn: The supportive and collaborative environment of both the lab itself, and throughout the University. 
  • Nikita: The best thing about my work is the lab itself. We have such supportive and fun lab members (including our super supportive mentor) that it makes the PhD journey a little less daunting.
  • Jordan: I like the collaborative and supportive nature of the Welshhans Lab and the department as a whole. 

What’s there to do outside of the lab?

  • Kristy: I love that Columbia is only two hours from the beach and two hours from the mountains. I love to go mountain biking, hiking, and generally spend time outdoors with my family all year round. 
  • Katelyn: Columbia has many parks and lakes to enjoy and is not far from beautiful beaches and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Columbia also has great breweries to explore while enjoying the nice weather. 
  • Nikita: Columbia has many parks and trails, most of which are along the riverside, where you can catch the most beautiful sunsets. We also have a lot of restaurants to try around the University.
  • Jordan: The Riverwalk is nice for walking and biking throughout the whole year and tubing during the summer. Folly Beach is also enjoyable around the summer months for being in the water and trying the different restaurants near the beach. 
Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories: Lab Life

Development presents… winners of Development’s 2023 Outstanding Paper Prize

Posted by , on 29 April 2024

In May, we celebrate the winners of Development’s 2023 Outstanding Paper Prize, hearing from the authors of two papers describing the roles of the Frizzled receptor. Chaired by Development’s Executive Editor, Katherine Brown.

Tuesday 21 May – 15:00 BST

Ling Loh (The George Washington University)
Joe Hanly (The George Washington University and Duke University)
‘From Signaling to Patterning: Dissecting the roles of Frizzled receptors in butterfly wing development’

Megan Michalski (Van Andel Institute)
‘Successful therapeutic intervention in new mouse models of frizzled 2-associated congenital malformations’

Register to attend

At the speakers’ discretion, the webinar will be recorded for viewing on demand. To see the other webinars scheduled in our series, and to catch up on previous talks, please visit: thenode.biologists.com/devpres

Thumbs up (2 votes)
Loading...

Tags: , , , , ,
Categories: Development presents...

The shrimp Parhyale hawaiensis – a non-model organism research story with Dr. Michalis Averof

Posted by , on 28 April 2024

Picture of Dr Michalis Averof

Earlier this year, my co-correspondent for the Node Brent Foster and I published a pot pourri-style interview article asking biology researchers about their work with non-model organisms (NMOs). As they all had many fascinating details and insights to share about their work with their respective NMOs, we decided to publish the full interviews as well. Below is the interview with Dr Michalis Averof, whose lab works on the shrimp Parhyale hawaiensis at the Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon in France.

Could you give me a three sentence introduction to what you do?

In the lab we study almost exclusively regeneration using this small crustacean [Parhyale hawaiensis] as our model. Τhe origin of the lab is evo-devo. Ever since my PhD, I was interested in comparative developmental biology, in what different organisms can tell us about mechanisms of development and how those mechanisms evolve. This is how we started to work with crustaceans, which I have been working with since then. Then gradually regeneration, which was a side project, became our main focus.

Does Parhyale exclusively regenerate its limbs?

Yes, as far as we know it is the only structure that arthropods can regenerate, basically the appendages.

What are the benefits and the specific challenges of using crustaceans as an organism of study?

There are two reasons for starting to work on a new organism, let’s say on regeneration. The first one is the evolutionary interests. Regeneration is a process that is widespread in the animal kingdom. There are also many species that don’t regenerate. And it’s still an open question to what extent this is an ancient capacity that all animals inherited from their ancestors, which was lost here and there, or a capacity that has emerged during evolution multiple times. The evolutionary dynamics of this process are not well understood at all. Studying different groups of animals allows us to make comparisons and to see to what extent animals use similar mechanisms to achieve this. Hopefully, as we accumulate more information from different branches of the tree of life, a picture will emerge. I have to say, so far, no clear picture has emerged. It’s still not clear how regeneration has evolved and what the earliest origins were. But that’s one motivation for starting [on] a new model.

The other motivation is that sometimes moving into a new system gives you new possibilities, new experimental opportunities. Our animal, for example, is a very bad system to pick if you wanted to do a genetic screen like you would do in C. elegans or in flies. But it turns out that it’s a very good system if you want to image what happens during regeneration. You can image the whole process [at] cellular resolution from beginning to end. So individual organisms, because of technical advantages mostly, offer new opportunities. In this case, the reason why we can image regeneration so well is that these animals as adults are transparent. They’re small enough that we can just image through their legs with a confocal microscope. We can make transgenics so we can label the cells; and we can immobilise them, which can be a big challenge [in other organisms]. With embryos, you can put an egg under a microscope, and it will mostly stay there, and you can do live imaging. With a regenerating adult, this is very difficult. You cannot anaesthetise a zebrafish for an entire week without killing it. In our system [though], what allows us to [image the entire process of regeneration], is the fact that arthropods are encased in a chitinous exoskeleton. We can use simple surgical glue to stick those animals on a cover slip. And they will stay there, they can’t go away until they molt. This is a small, technical thing that makes the system suitable for live imaging. And unless you have an animal that is surrounded by cuticle, it’s very difficult to find a way to do that.

It’s small features like that which make different model organisms valuable and provide new opportunities. The other thing to keep in mind is that regeneration is a process that is very poorly represented in the best models that we have. Mice, flies, C. elegans are very poor at regenerating. So in general, we don’t have great genetic models for regeneration. Zebrafish is the only exception to that.

Was that the motivation to move into the more regenerative aspect of studying Parhyale?

The motivation was simple curiosity. We had developed genetic tools, such as transgenics, we could overexpress genes, and we could label cells with GFP. We had developed these tools for other reasons; at the time, we were studying Hox genes and how they contribute to body plan evolution in the arthropods. That was the reason for generating those tools. But once we had them, it became possible to visualise what is happening. So it was a rather opportunistic thing. Often, you see something that is interesting, and you are drawn in that direction.

So getting into studying crustaceans, was there something that convinced you that they’re really special or as you say, was it more of a chance path?

I was convinced they’re special before, when I was studying evolution. Crustaceans are the closest relatives to the insects, but they have very different body plans, a different organisation of segments in their bodies. So it was an attractive group for studying body plan evolution, how segmental specialisations evolve, and whether the Hox genes might be driving those changes. So that was the reason for going into crustaceans, they were very attractive for that reason. Then, as I said, moving to regeneration was rather serendipitous, because of the tools we had already made and the fact they’re transparent.

How was the discovery made about limb regeneration? 

It’s been known for a long time that many crustaceans and other arthropods have the capacity to regenerate their legs. There were some classic studies in the 70s that were using cockroaches as models for studying regeneration.

In a similar vein, then, is there at the tip of your tongue a study in Parhyale that you think is really interesting, that you would recommend to someone if you wanted to get them interested in this model organism?

I’m not sure there is a big breakthrough that has been made in Parhyale yet. I think it’s exciting to be able to see the process of regeneration, that is quite unique. Usually you see snapshots, because it takes very long, it takes weeks or months in some organisms. Having the continuous process on time lapse, where you can see how individual cells are actually behaving and dividing is very exciting, even though in terms of understanding the process, it has not really yet revolutionised the way we see things. There is no paper where I would say, this is a big discovery we’ve made in Parhyale which was very unexpected, and it changed our views.

You have to realise it’s a very small community, there are maybe 20 or 30 people working on the animal. So there’s not so much history and so much that has been done on them. But it’s nice that you have different groups of people with different interests coming in. One of the latest papers to come out this year in Current Biology is [by] people who study biological rhythms, and have studied how Parhyale regulate their daily activities in relation to tides. Our animal is an intertidal species, and it seems it has an endogenous clock that runs with the tidal cycle rather than with a day-night cycle. Well, they have both, but somehow the two interact in a complex way.

Is this something that you can disrupt by removing them from their native tidal environment and putting them in a tank in a building?

Yes. When we keep them here in tanks, we don’t really give them an artificial tide. People who study circadian rhythm had noticed that there were two peaks of activity, one in the morning and one in the evening. And the intertidal cycle is a little bit longer than 12 hours. So that might reflect the fact that they have a 12-hour cycle rather than a 24-hour cycle. But of course, in nature, the tidal cycle comes slowly out of sync with the day-night cycle. And that is not observed in the lab.

It’s exciting that people are beginning to study phenomena that were not accessible before in the standard models, like tides and regeneration. There are new aspects of biology that become accessible once you have a new system.

Considering this community is so small, and considering that the genome of Parhyale might not be as familiar, maybe there’s not 15 different genome iterations like there are for the mouse, how does data analysis and data sharing between these labs work? And what are the interactions like?

You would imagine that small communities are very well interconnected. We are connected, but not very tightly. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that we are on different continents and we study different questions. We talk to each other and we share tools and genetic resources. For example the genome sequencing and assembly was a collective effort.

We all use the same population of Parhyale. It’s a population that has been kept in the lab for more than 20 years. There are a few people beginning to isolate new populations from the wild. The funny thing about the population we share is that it was picked up in an aquarium in Chicago, about 20-25 years ago, and we don’t know which part of the world it came from originally.

It was a pest in the Chicago aquarium. And since Parhyale hawaiensis has been described to be a tropical species that lives all around the world, from Hawaii, to Brazil, to India, we don’t actually know where that particular population came from. We all use it, the genome has been sequenced from, and all our transcriptomic work is based on, that population. Those are the kinds of genomic resources that we all share.

For transgenesis and CRISPR, we more or less use the same protocols. We don’t share transgenic lines so often, but that’s mostly because we have different interests, and each of us develops our own lines for the particular questions we’re asking. The other issue is, we haven’t yet figured out an easy way of sending these animals across the world without having problems with customs. That is a bit of a barrier.

On the other side, as there are so few people working on shrimp, I assume that there’s only one person per department per University per country. Is it difficult to engage with people working on other things? How useful do you find it?

It’s not difficult because each of us belongs to different scientific communities. It’s not that you have to work on the same species to engage with people. The regeneration community, for example, is very large. We talk to that community, we talk to the evolutionary biology community. Even though I have worked with crustaceans, I was always close to the Drosophila developmental biology community. The labs where I did my PhD and my postdoc were fly labs. We don’t feel lonely. We are more isolated in terms of technology, in the sense that for every project, we have to develop our own tools, there isn’t this big community behind you generating Gal4 drivers or Cre lines that are shared, like you have in other systems. When you start a project, you have to generate those tools by yourself. And that is a major limitation when working with our kind of peripheral models. The critical mass of the community is important for generating and sharing tools, and we don’t have that.

Would you say it takes a slightly more adventurous researcher to decide to go down that path?

Definitely, it takes a different kind of researcher. To work with these animals, you have to realise that research is going to move much forward more slowly, because you will have to start many things from scratch. The benefit, on the other side, is that in almost anything you study, you’re going to make new discoveries, because no one has studied that before. So you’re entering a virgin field. It takes a lot of effort to discover something, but whatever you discover is new knowledge. You have the opportunity to shape your research field to a larger extent.

Thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Perhaps I should tell you what my motivation behind all this is, besides the specific questions that we’re asking. Biology has focussed on model organisms for very good reasons, because model organisms give us the tools to go deeper and to study mechanisms. But, over the years, we have developed this idea that model organisms will reveal universal mechanisms, and that we can study most of biology through the model systems that we have chosen.

But I am convinced that there is an enormous amount of biology that we are missing, if we rely only on the established models. There are simply biological phenomena which are not represented in this handful of organisms. Regeneration is partly one such example. But there are other topics, like developmental plasticity, where you have different casts of animals that develop depending on the environment, there are no established genetic models for that kind of study. There are organisms that eliminate half of their genome in somatic cells, they break their chromosomes apart and shed half of the genome during development, and they only keep the full complement in the germline. There is a significant number of organisms, spread all around the tree of life, that do that. There is no way to access this kind of phenomenon and to understand its importance in established models. I see these like new continents of biology that are still unexplored. New model organisms will allow us to explore these. Of course, it’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take development of tools. But that’s for me the major motivation for going into different systems, because I think there’s biology that we haven’t discovered yet.

Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags: , , ,
Categories: Interview, Uncategorized

An interview with Marco Podobnik, GfE PhD award winner 2024

Posted by , on 25 April 2024

Photo credit: Gerard Hynes

The 2024 German Society for Developmental Biology (GfE) PhD award recipient was Marco Podobnik, who worked on pigment pattern diversification in Danio fish species at the Nüsslein-Volhard laboratory in Tübingen. We caught up with Marco to learn more about his background, his PhD work and his research interests as a postdoc at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.

First of all, congratulations on receiving the 2024 GfE PhD award! What does this award mean to you?

Thank you. I am only half-way joking when the first thing that comes to my mind is, hey, now I can fill out the line that asks for “prizes” in grant applications. Being recognized by the German Society for Developmental Biology is a huge honour. The fact that my work was so collaborative makes it important to draw the attention to my colleagues I worked with over the years. The Max Planck Society creates permissive environments for basic research we conducted, a privilege I am aware of. I wish these opportunities would be more accessible.

Let’s go back to the beginning. When did you first become interested in science?

I believe the way we construct stories of the scientific process is a symptom of the humane desire to tell good stories. This also applies to the story of people’s life history. When I was a kid, I always liked to be out in the forests, trying to identify birds by their sounds. Although I was never really excited about maths, I deliberately chose all science subjects in high school. I had an excellent chemistry teacher, Holger Mummert, who did his PhD in Tübingen. In my final year I joined his class on fossils which I found beautiful. I had to become a biologist, right?

How did you come to do a PhD at the Nüsslein-Volhard laboratory?

I think this destination was the consequence of a random process paired with a developing passion. When I still studied biology at the University of Cologne, I had to find a lab for an internship. So I made a list with shiny labs working on topics I mostly never heard of and brought it to my mentor, Matthias Hammerschmidt. He had done his PhD with Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard in Tübingen. In the early 1990s, he participated in the genetic screens in zebrafish [1], a heroic effort approaching the Nobel Prize work in flies in the 1980s [2]. When I showed Matthias the list, he smiled and refused to send me anywhere. Instead, he offered me to take a look into his zebrafish lab. Seeing live zebrafish embryos under a stereomicroscope for the first time was quite a fascinating moment. After that he suggested me to go to the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen (now the MPI for Biology).The real deal was the weekly meetings in Janni’s small office, where everybody had to hunch shoulders to fit in. Tiny zebrafish summits regularly joined by Patrick Müller who led a group at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory next door.

Back in Cologne I obtained my undergraduate degree with Sigrun Korsching, who had been a junior group leader in Tübingen before she established her zebrafish lab in Cologne. At some point Uwe Irion offered me a PhD position in Janni’s lab. I had just come back from two expeditions with other students from the Cologne University on microbial communities in South America and in the North Atlantic Ocean. Biodiversity and development were (and still are) exciting to me, so I chose to work with Uwe on pigment patterning in other Danio species originally coming from Southeast Asia.

Can you summarise your PhD research?

Although Janni’s lab had always been interested in Danio species other than the zebrafish [3, 4], the pioneering work came from David Parichy and colleagues over the last two decades [5, 6]. A milestone was the release of a reliable phylogeny of the genus by Braedan McCluskey and John Postlethwait [7]. I found it fascinating that species most similar in their pigment patterns were not necessarily most closely related, and most closely related species often had most divergent patterns. Zebrafish develop a striking pattern of horizontal blue and golden stripes, while the sister species D. aesculapii conceals itself by forming dark vertical bars that are low in contrast. Given the knowledge about the genetic basis of stripe formation in zebrafish, maybe we could identify the genes that functionally diverged to contribute to patterning differences between species.

Fish species of the Danio genus and their pigment patterns. Phylogeny according to [7]. Scale bars, about 1 mm. Photos by Marco Podobnik and Uwe Irion
Fish species of the Danio genus and their pigment patterns. Phylogeny according to [7]. Scale bars, about 1 mm. Photos by Marco Podobnik and Uwe Irion
Fish species of the Danio genus and their pigment patterns. Phylogeny according to [7]. Scale bars, about 1 mm. Photos by Marco Podobnik and Uwe Irion

We decided to focus on genes that code for proteins mediating direct cell-cell contacts. Uwe had already generated mutants in a handful of these genes and acquired a number of Danio species; a collection I helped to make more comprehensive. We were inspired by the reciprocal hemizygosity test to identify diverged genes and we could meet the requirements to apply it, namely generating null mutants in species and hybrids between species [8]. Such an endeavour in non-model organisms was unthinkable without the CRISPR/Cas9 system, which the lab aims to improve since its adaptation for genetic engineering [9, 10]. Uwe and I started an extensive effort of making hybrids, pairing wild-type and the newly generated mutant species in various combinations. Four years later it all came together: While some genes remained functionally conserved, others diverged across the phylogeny [11].

In the case of the potassium channel gene kcnj13 we identified a repeated and independent functional divergence; this contributed to patterning differences between zebrafish and D. aesculapii [12]. We found that the black melanophores require the kcnj13 function to acquire certain cell shapes within their own population but they also instruct the two other pigment cell types, yellow/orange xanthophores and shiny/blue iridophores, to change their shapes according to their location in the skin. As the D. aesculapii allele is functionally different from the zebrafish one, we propose that divergence in kcnj13 caused changes in the way the pigment cells interact and change their shapes to contribute to the species-specific differences in colour and contrast of the patterns [13].

Your PhD research involves working with a wide range of techniques. Do you have a favourite?

I love genetics for its power to let us understand processes across different levels of biological organisation. During university I learnt about Muller’s classification of alleles [14]. It was beautiful to see how it could be used when we studied pattern development in hybrids between Danio species. The altered patterns in hemizygous hybrids between mutant zebrafish and wild-type D. aesculapii indicated that the kcnj13 allele from D. aesculapii behaves like a hypomorph as it could not compensate the CRISPR/Cas9-induced loss-of-function of the D. rerio allele. The patterns of hemizygous hybrids from the reciprocal cross are similar to the patterns of hybrids between wild-type species. Thus, the wild-type alleles from zebrafish and D. aesculapii cannot be functionally equivalent. Initially we thought that the D. aesculapii allele had lost its function completely but mutant D. aesculapii indicated that the gene function was still required for patterning. I love discovering obvious phenotypes in mutants, as it can be a rare but very profound experience. The suitability of zebrafish for fluorescence imaging in vivo makes it a fantastic model, as you can see cells behaving in real time, sometimes even with subcellular resolution. I can probably make the most meaningful contributions by applying a duet of genetics and in vivo imaging. Often the successful outcome of any experiment relied on the groundwork and expertise of my colleagues. I essentially understand science as teamwork.

Speaking of teamwork, how was your experience collaborating with people across the world for your PhD work?

As you can imagine pigment patterning is a relatively small field, although it hopefully becomes apparent how exciting it is. It’s great that people with expertise in genetics, sequencing methods, protein structure modelling and image analysis collaborate on this topic. I feel there aren’t really boundaries when it comes to common interests and curiosity, it’s just essential to bring passionate people together. It’s important to communicate effectively and to make it fair for the people involved. When it comes to generating ideas, bigger meetings might not always be effective. The most creative ideas emerged during our small lab and one-to-one meetings.

Were there any frustrating times during your PhD? And on the flip side, any particularly memorable moments?

My most exciting moments were the ones when we made discoveries in the lab. Sometimes it took a while to realize them. It requires one to think about observations over and over again. We were all working a lot, basically every day including most weekends, which is an intensity I have decided to reduce. I have fond memories of the garden parties in summer and the yearly Christmas cookie baking at Janni’s house.

You’ve recently moved across the globe to do a postdoc in Melbourne. How was the experience and what motivates your research today?

The Melbourne metropolitan area is a great place for personal life and research, although it can be depressing to think about the fate of the traditional owners of this country. The Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute cultivates broad interests in development, regeneration, evolution and medicine. Our lab headed by Peter Currie explores muscle biology using a spectacular diversity of fish models. It’s stimulating to be part of a bigger team. I find it exciting to help others with their projects, while I am defining my own long-term goals.

Finally, let’s go outside of the lab. What do you like to do in your spare time?

I play the saxophone in various settings for over 20 years now, which is tremendously important to me. I also love hiking. A very memorable trip was the Via Alpina in Switzerland and now very recently a trip to the Victorian Alps in Australia.

Photo credit: Viola Brand

Dr. Marco Podobnik
Research Fellow
Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University, Clayton 3800 VIC, Australia

X: @m_podobnik

Website: https://marcopodobnik.wordpress.com/

References

1.         Nusslein-Volhard, C. (2012). The zebrafish issue of Development. Development 139, 4099-4103.

2.         Wieschaus, E., and Nusslein-Volhard, C. (2016). The Heidelberg Screen for Pattern Mutants of Drosophila: A Personal Account. Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol 32, 1-46.

3.         Singh, A.P., and Nusslein-Volhard, C. (2015). Zebrafish stripes as a model for vertebrate colour pattern formation. Curr Biol 25, R81-R92.

4.         Irion, U., and Nusslein-Volhard, C. (2019). The identification of genes involved in the evolution of color patterns in fish. Curr Opin Genet Dev 57, 31-38.

5.         Parichy, D.M., and Johnson, S.L. (2001). Zebrafish hybrids suggest genetic mechanisms for pigment pattern diversification in Danio. Dev Genes Evol 211, 319-328.

6.         Patterson, L.B., and Parichy, D.M. (2019). Zebrafish Pigment Pattern Formation: Insights into the Development and Evolution of Adult Form. Annu Rev Genet 53, 505-530.

7.         McCluskey, B.M., and Postlethwait, J.H. (2015). Phylogeny of zebrafish, a “model species,” within Danio, a “model genus”. Mol Biol Evol 32, 635-652.

8.         Stern, D.L. (2014). Identification of loci that cause phenotypic variation in diverse species with the reciprocal hemizygosity test. Trends Genet 30, 547-554.

9.         Irion, U., Krauss, J., and Nusslein-Volhard, C. (2014). Precise and efficient genome editing in zebrafish using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Development 141, 4827-4830.

10.       Dorner, L., Stratmann, B., Bader, L., Podobnik, M., and Irion, U. (2024). Efficient genome editing using modified Cas9 proteins in zebrafish. Biol Open 13.

11.       Podobnik, M. (2023). On the Genetic Basis of Pigment Pattern Diversification in Danio Fish, (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen).

12.       Podobnik, M., Frohnhofer, H.G., Dooley, C.M., Eskova, A., Nusslein-Volhard, C., and Irion, U. (2020). Evolution of the potassium channel gene Kcnj13 underlies colour pattern diversification in Danio fish. Nat Commun 11, 6230.

13.       Podobnik, M., Singh, A.P., Fu, Z., Dooley, C.M., Frohnhofer, H.G., Firlej, M., Stednitz, S.J., Elhabashy, H., Weyand, S., Weir, J.R., et al. (2023). kcnj13 regulates pigment cell shapes in zebrafish and has diverged by cis-regulatory evolution between Danio species. Development 150.

14.       Muller, H. (1932). Further studies on the nature and causes of gene mutations. Jones DF, ed. In Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Genetics. pp. 213-255.

Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags: , , , , ,
Categories: Interview

Who was Rita Levi-Montalcini?

Posted by , on 22 April 2024

Rita-Levi Montalcini (1909-2012) was an Italian neurobiologist who lived an extraordinary life, and today (22nd April) would have been her 115th birthday. Click on each image to enlarge and read more about her…

Image credit:
“Premio Internazionale “Wendell Krieg Lifetime Achievement Award” a Rita Levi Montalcini – 30 settembre 2009” by unipavia is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sources:
Coutinho, L. and Teive, H.A.G. (2023) ‘Rita Levi-Montalcini: the neurologist who challenged fascism’, Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 81(1), pp. 95–98. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0043-1761426.

Hamburger, V. and Levi-Montalcini, R. (1949) ‘Proliferation, differentiation and degeneration in the spinal ganglia of the chick embryo under normal and experimental conditions’, Journal of Experimental Zoology, 111(3), pp. 457–501. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.1401110308.

Malerba, F. (2022) ‘Why Are We Scientists? Drawing Inspiration From Rita Levi-Montalcini’, Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 15, p. 741984. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fncel.2021.741984.

The Nobel Prize | Women who changed science | Rita Levi-Montalcini. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/rita-levi-montalcini (Accessed: 19 April 2024).

Thumbs up (6 votes)
Loading...

Tags: , , , ,
Categories: Education, Images, Science Art

Lab meeting with the Koltowska lab

Posted by , on 18 April 2024

Where is the lab?

You can find us in Uppsala, Sweden!

Lab website: https://koltowskalab.com/

Research summary

Here in the Koltowska lab, we are interested in all things lymphatic vessel-related. How lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) are specified, gain their identity, end up in the right place to form vessels, and how these vessels function.

Lab roll call

Hannah Arnold has been a postdoc in the lab for five years and is interested in lymphatic development, focusing on how LECs migrate and interact to navigate their environment.

Marleen Gloger has been a postdoc in the lab for five years as well and is interested in lymphatic vessel development, specifically LEC cell proliferation, and how these processes are altered in disease conditions such as cancer and metastasis formation.

Di Peng has done a PhD in the group and now continues as a postdoc. She is very fond of observing cellular events during development using different live imaging techniques. Her projects focus on regulation of lymphatic endothelial behaviours. 

Faidra Voukelatou has recently started her PhD in the group and is interested in cancer as well as lymphatic vessel research. She enjoys working with zebrafish as an animal model to investigate the dynamics of brain cancer invasion and vasculature.

Renae Skoczylas has been a research engineer in the lab for 6 years and enjoys all things zebrafish and lymphatics.  She is particularly happy generating new mutant lines for the lab using CRIPSR technology and being involved in and helping with any other lab members’ projects.

Favourite technique, and why?

Kaska Koltowska: Microscopy! There is something incredibly magical in looking down the microscope and observing life in high magnification. Using microscopy to look at zebrafish heartbeat and blood flowing through the vessels never stops to amaze me!

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

Kaska Koltowska: I think how gene expression is regulated and the steps coordinating cell specification is incredibly fascinating. The level of developmental reproducibility in every embryo is just mind-blowing. Biology gets it right almost every time, and if it does not, we can learn something very important.

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

Kaska Koltowska: I don’t think I use any specific managing tools. I dedicate time to discussing science with every member of the group regularly. This helps to keep the projects focused. When a project is coming up close to completion I dedicate more time for it. It helps a lot that the team is very efficient and group members can manage themselves very well so my input is minimal. For myself, I often make a weekly prioritisation plan of the most important tasks that need to be done that week and try to stick to it.

What is the best thing about where you work? 

We are positioned between two wider communities. That of Vascular Biology, where our lab is located and encompasses ten research groups, and the Uppsala Zebrafish community where our fish are housed alongside five other groups and one service platform.

What’s there to do outside of the lab?

Uppsala is a small but busy student city where you can enjoy restaurants and cafes for a ‘fika’ break. It is located close to nature giving us the opportunity to enjoy the forest for a walk or BBQ in the summer and snow sports in the winter. It also provides an excellent backdrop for walking the boss’ dog. On the other hand, Uppsala is a short train ride to Stockholm so it is easy to enjoy big city life on the weekends and go to museums, theatres or concerts.

Thumbs up (1 votes)
Loading...

Tags: , ,
Categories: Lab Life

Register to attend “SciCommConnect: Science communication, community connections”

Posted by , on 16 April 2024

Science communication is an integral part of being a researcher. Want to practice your science writing and presentation skills? Register to attend “SciCommConnect: Science communication, community connections“!

The three community sites supported by The Company of Biologists – the Node, preLights and FocalPlane – are hosting a free, online event on Monday 10 June 2024 from 13:00-18:00 BST, focusing on the different ways in which science can be communicated. We hope this event will present a unique opportunity for you to work on your science communication skills and connect with fellow biologists across the world in a friendly, informal environment.

Registration closes on Friday 7 June 2024.

Register now

Highlights of ‘SciCommConnect’

“Shareable science” by Jamie Gallagher 

Dr Jamie Gallagher is an award-winning science communicator, trainer and consultant. He will share tips and tricks on how to make science talks as interesting, engaging and memorable as possible.

Three minute research talk competition

Similar to the Three minute thesis competition format, this is a chance for you to practice communicating your research in a concise and engaging way.

Present your work for a chance to win a cash prize and to get feedback from Jamie, who is a previous Three Minute Thesis winner. To enter please provide us with short summary of your intended talk (think about how you would advertise your talk in a tweet!) Deadline for entering into the competition is Monday 20 May.

Entry into the competition is optional. Those who do not wish to give a talk will also benefit from listening to people’s talks and Jamie’s feedback. They will also be able to vote for their favourite talk.

#DevBiolWriteClub and themed writing sprints

Prof John B. Wallingford is a Professor at UT Austin. He is passionate about writing and has written on the Node regularly, including the popular #DevBiolWriteClub posts. He will share some excellent writing advice which can directly be applied during the themed writing sprints that will follow. 

For the writing sprints, you can pick which group to be in (the Node, preLights or FocalPlane). Each group will work together to brainstorm and draft a piece of writing on a pre-selected topic. Details of the writing briefs for each group will be provided closer to the event.

Register now
Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags: , ,
Categories: Events

Embryos in hungry mouse mums postpone development

Posted by , on 15 April 2024

A press release from Development

It’s challenging to sustain a pregnancy when food is short, or conditions are otherwise tough. That’s why many mammalian embryos can postpone their growth to get through periods of environmental stress and then re-enter development when conditions improve. This stalling of development is known as embryonic diapause, and understanding the mechanisms behind it might help improve infertility treatments, such as embryo freezing. Now, researchers at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, China, have discovered how nutrient depletion is sensed by embryos growing in hungry mouse mums to induce diapause. They publish their study in the journal Development on 11 April 2024.

A mouse embryo (blastocyst) that has paused its development due to nutrient depletion. Image credit: Jiajia Ye.

Lack of food is a known trigger of embryonic diapause, but it has not been clear how nutrient depletion in the mother’s diet is sensed by the embryo. “Seasonal starvation is one of the universal environmental stresses in nature,” explained Professor Qiang Sun, who led the study. “However, the regulatory process of diapause in early-stage embryos is not fully understood. So, we decided to examine whether nutrient deprivation induces embryonic diapause.”

By comparing hungry and well-fed pregnant mice, the team discovered that embryos in the hungry mice did not implant into the uterus and their growth paused at an early timepoint, when the embryo comprises a hollow ball of cells called the blastocyst. These embryos remained viable and could start developing again when transplanted into a well-fed mother.

To work out which nutrients were important to induce diapause, the researchers grew early-stage mouse embryos in dishes that contained different nutrients. They found that embryos grown in dishes lacking protein or carbohydrates paused their development, whereas the embryos exposed to normal nutrient levels did not stall and kept on developing. The scientists then went on to reveal that nutrient sensors in the embryo can detect drops in protein or carbohydrate levels, which triggers the entry into diapause.

The finding that embryos grown without protein or carbohydrates can pause their development means that they can survive longer in the lab. In the future, this finding might lead to improvements in fertility treatments, which currently include approaches such as embryo freezing. “We think our study can inspire the development of new methods for human embryo preservation,” said Professor Sun. “Embryo cryopreservation is a widely used approach, but there is still no consensus on when cryopreserved embryos can be thawed and transferred into the uterus. Many clinical studies have shown that traditional frozen embryo transfer can increase the risk of problems during pregnancy. Therefore, it is necessary to develop alternative methods to preserve embryos.”

Studies focusing on diapause may even have long-term implications for cancer treatments. “Dormant cancer cells which persist after chemotherapy resemble the diapaused embryos,” said Professor Sun. “Consequently, we hypothesize that delving into the mechanism of diapause may have positive implications for cancer treatment and decreasing the chances of relapse.”

Jiajia Ye, Yuting Xu, Qi Ren, Lu liu and Qiang Sun (2024). Nutrient deprivation induces mouse embryonic diapause mediated by Gator1 and Tsc2. Development, 151, dev202091 doi: 10.1242/dev.202091

Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Categories: Research

Transitions in development

Posted by , on 12 April 2024

Development has just published their 30th interview in the ‘Transitions in development‘ series.

This series of interviews features principal investigators (PIs) within the first five or so years of establishing their own research group. Through these conversations, Development aims to illustrate that there is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to securing an independent position and setting up a research programme. Discussing the challenges and difficulties new PIs have overcome and highlighting the best moments will hopefully offer encouragement to other ECRs and stimulate discussion around the career path of a developmental biologist.

Click on the pins to read the interviews:

Collage of all 30 interviewees in the ‘Transition in development’ series.
Thumbs up (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Tags: , ,
Categories: Interview

© 2024. The Company of Biologists Ltd | Registered Charity 277992
Registered in England and Wales | Company Limited by Guarantee No 514735
Registered office: Bidder Building, Station Road, Histon, Cambridge CB24 9LF, UK