The first time I went to an SDB meeting as a new PhD student was in 2016. This year at the annual meeting in Las Vegas, I couldn’t believe that it had been 10 years since I first went. I can still remember my first meeting, I knew very little about developmental biology (having never even taken a developmental biology course), and I definitely didn’t know many people either. I just knew my mentor Robb and a few folks from Stowers. There was one familiar face from there, who I really tried to just follow and have coffee with, who I know thought, gosh, why can’t this person leave me alone? We became friends over time and now this is something we just laugh about.

As a first-timer, I was in awe of all the science that is being done and being done on all the different organisms. Even more fascinating was how people just seem to know each other. I also kept hearing “embryo such-and-such-year” and had absolutely no clue what that was. What I particularly remember from my first year though is the feeling of being welcomed into a group. Everyone seemed busy (and now I know that it is because they are catching up with friends), but if you reached out and spoke to them you could see the nice human behind the great scientist. That first meeting, I got pictures with people who write developmental biology textbooks, I got invited to a dinner and met some amazing folks. I don’t think they even remember, but they introduced me to a whole new world. I saw how passionate these developmental biologists were, how much history and depth this field had, and I saw how happy everyone was in just being at the meeting.

Since then, the venue of the conference has constantly changed, and I have liked some places more than others, but the joy of being a part of this Society for Developmental Biology has never faded. I have over the years, on instances felt more people can be included for giving talks because, honestly, sometimes it has felt like the same folks are giving talks every time. This SDB meeting though, I was particularly excited to see the variety in the different types of talks and in the great number of different labs that were represented. Also, to me personally, it is usually amazing watching trajectories for how some organisms become great research systems and in hearing career stories about different scientific paths, especially through award lectures. This year, it was especially delightful listening to the presidential and award lecture talks, each one having you hooked and wanting to know more. My new favorite plant now is the flowering Arabidopsis in a little eppendorf tube. I also got to learn about a new species, work on which started when the pandemic shutdown hit, showing me signs of both scientific resilience and human curiosity at its finest.

I heard a lot of short talks. Some from established scientists with their beautiful stories that motivate me to get to that point someday. Some talks from trainees, and I could see the proud mentors, mentors who just a few years ago were giving their own faculty talks as they went on the job market. Throughout the meeting, I was inspired by the art and science merger in so many different forms; the art show with its variety of pieces, the collection of organism chips (and the subsequent drawing on your own chip), and even in the the becoming of art yourself (the sheer living ephemeral beauty of such a venture). I saw graduate students shyly reaching out to people for potential future postdocs (I would encourage trainees to reach out to people during or before even to show your poster. I saw postdocs networking as they begin job searches. I witnessed the happy adventure story sharing of everyone who has been to the MBL (Marine Biological laboratory). This for folks who don’t know is also where the echo of “embryo” comes from, which year you took the embryology course is you being embryo of that year. Having been at MBL for a year and getting to meeting so many friends was already special, but I got to capture everyone present at the gathering through the vantage point of a spiral staircase. I also captured, through my camera lens, the SDB presidents past, present, and future, and got to interact with such a neat group of people that brings the community such a beautiful meeting and continues to bring such amazing resources for trainees at all levels. I have seen, and also through firsthand experience gained from, the many neat programs the society brings to the community. At the annual SDB meeting, all the cohorts from these different programs get to have get-togethers and experience the joy of being in one space, in the happy bubble of development et al. There are the little ones who are just starting out (Choose Development Fellows), the postdocs needing to venture on their own (GetHired), the new faculty trying not get lost (New Faculty Bootcamp), and all the folks who want to learn from experts on making scientific exchange accessible to more (Science communication internship).

Being in Robb’s lab introduced me to this fascinating world of developmental biology and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The SDB meeting over the years has taught me so much as I continue this journey. I have attended a session with expert panelists talking about publishing, seen theatrical enactments of current issues in the field, and also had a chance once to give a chalk talk after doing the GetHired program. I still have the encouraging post-it notes from that time, and watching others give their chalk talks was something I really missed this year. Then there is the beauty that tops it all, in all the amazing science that one gets to hear. I tell myself every year that I will just sit in one session and listen to all the talks there. In an ideal world I’d like to listen to all the talks, but that clearly doesn’t happen. The night before, as I look through the schedule, I always realize there are some “I must attend” talks, some “I really would like to attend” talks, and some “ahh if there were three of me, I would just go to each concurrent session” talks. This conundrum, then inadvertently has me always bouncing between sessions, and as I migrate from session to session, I see that I am not alone. A lot of us become geeky birds flocking to one neat session after another, rushing to make sure we don’t miss a talk, jotting notes and questions, scanning the schedule to make sure we have the correct room for the next one, and smiling in the hallways as we pass or follow each other.

This year was special for me in multiple ways, but particularly in two ways. One was my eye lens watching the scientific beauty on screen, listening, learning new concepts and advancements in science, and jotting down all my questions. Some that I got to ask, and some that I think I might just email to ask. The other personal joy in the meeting was through another lens – my camera lens which had me pausing to appreciate the buzz going on around me. I went around taking pictures of friends, previous years it has been with selfies and this year it was through capturing some friendships in time. At some points, I felt I was being paparazzi to some science gurus. Some other of my lens captures were the little exchanges of “I loved your talk and I have a question”, of snapping the different physical memoirs of model organism that people showcased through t-shirts, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, bag tags, etc, and then some captures were of the adorable “this is my first time and I am camera shy” or “let me grab a friend” and then we are game for a picture. For all who allowed my camera lens, I wanted to say that it was an honor to see and be a part of your beautiful smiles and scientific exchanges.

Taking pictures at the meeting taught me that I am maybe sometimes a little impatient (sorry if anyone felt annoyed at my picture-taking interruption), that I can be very quick at capturing and recognizing moments (hoping this also translates into my science lab adventures), and that there is just so much beauty in how we scientifically inclined humans interact. We continue to nurture, share, and guide each other, and I really hope that this always stays at the core of the community that SDB has built. I am so thankful to Richard and Marsha for allowing me this opportunity to be the official photographer at the meeting, and so thankful to all the many folks for the coffee, lunch, and dinner happy times during the meeting. You all made my meeting a constant happy buzz that my brain enjoyed and will gleefully remember. The bright flashing lights of Vegas definitely are pale in comparison to the bright happy exchanges I had with you all at the meeting. I got to enjoy the meeting through two lenses this year and it couldn’t have become more special.
Thank you thank you!!

Signed
Developing developmental biologist
and SDB 2026’s official photographer

To browse through some of the meeting fun, here are some pictures: SDB 2026 pictures

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How Parhyale hawaiensis went from mundane beach critter to lab celebrity across biology, chemistry and even physics. 

Pop down to the beach, pick up a handful of seaweed and you’re likely to be greeted by dozens of little crustaceans exploding out from underneath, frantically trying hop away for the nearest bit of cover. You probably never gave them much attention because you were busy hunting for crabs or just hoping to fling some seaweed at a sibling. And that’s completely fair as they’re far from the most attractive critters on the shore. 

But if you’d looked a little closer, you’d find that those little crustaceans were beach hoppers, also know as sand fleas, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t help win them any additional popularity. These beach hoppers are a group of crustaceans we call amphipods. And one in particular, Parhyale hawaiensis, inadvertently became a bit of a biology celeb. 

Coming in at under 2 cm, Parhyale lives in intertidal rubble and rotting leaf litter around warm coastlines. For those who decided to keep these little critters, it became apparent they breed every two or three weeks, all year-round, from the comfort of standard plastic tray filled with artificial seawater. Oh and they’ll happily eat a slice of carrot. 

Rather mundane to warrant the title ‘celeb’, you might say, but its academic CV is nonetheless impressive. Over twenty-five years this animal has turned up in developmental biology, evolutionary theory, regeneration research, soft-matter physics, neuroanatomy, the study of biological clocks, immunology, pollution monitoring, biofuel enzymology and aquaculture. So, not too shabby for something you’d shake out of your beach towel without a second thought. Without any more rambling from me, here’s how that all happened. 

It began with an egg

Not a transparent one, as you might expect of an animal we chose specifically for watching. The Parhyale egg is about half a millimetre wide and looks like a dense ball of white(ish) yolk, which you can’t see into it at all. What you can see is the surface, where a bunch of large cells sit, each identifiable by position, and all visible through under an ordinary microscope. So far so good. 

In 2002 researchers dyed the cells of the egg, which we’ll correctly call and embryo from here on out, at a point when the whole thing was made of just eight cells. Four smaller ones on top, and four larger ones beneath. These eight cells of the very early embryo were followed, with studious researchers carefully mapping out where each one ended up, and found the whole future animal was already neatly parcelled out between them (1): three would build skin and nervous system, three the muscle and other internal tissues, one the gut lining, and one the germ line (the cells that make things like gametes for reproduction). These identities, or fates, were settled before there’s anything you’d call an animal. Locking in fates itself was interesting because this tends to happen much later in most other animals. Importantly, it opened the door for lots of intriguing questions around how these predestined cells related to each other. 

The obvious step was to see what happens if we removed one of those early cells. Do neighbours pick up the slack and chip in to build our little beach hopper, or is it destined to be without a particular type of tissues, such as muscle, and end up distinctly more beach ‘crawler’ than hopper? Well, it tuns out if you remove one of the three internal-tissue founders, the neighbours do indeed cover for it, but nothing crosses between lineages (2), i.e. a muscle precursor removed meant only muscle neighbours helped compensate. Lose the germ-line founder and the embryo carries on building itself, but reaches the end of embryogenesis with no germ cells to be found, and nothing else steps in to supply them (3), and they still hatch! (4)

Surprisingly, if you strip out the little patch of cell goop (officially called the cytoplasm) that carries the germ-line instructions in the one-cell embryo, you get no germ cells as expected, but the embryo also never makes it as far as an early but important stage of development called gastrulation (the point at which the ball of cells starts folding itself into something with an inside and an outside). Those two points turn out to be unrelated, because an embryo that loses its germ-line cell three divisions later, at the eight-cell stage, gastrulates perfectly happily (5). This suggests the germ plasm is doing something quite separate from just specifying germ cells, which is cool and intriguing. What’s super weird is that the Patel lab reports, though not yet in print, that some animals go on to rebuild a germ line from non-germ line tissue and reach maturity fully fertile. “Nature, erm, finds a way.”

Sorting all this out required tools, and a shared staging system was the logical starting point (1). Transgenics and then CRISPR leapt in to answer more detailed questions (6), and then then a genome of roughly 3.6 billion letters, which is a little bigger than ours, came along to help link things together (7). Each new step was developed to answer another question about development and each new step handed the animal and knowledge to someone else.

Where insect wings came from

As a crustacean, Parhyale isn’t an insect (obviously), but it is an arthropod and you’d be forgiven for noting the similarities. Like insects, crustaceans have an impressive array of appendages; they come usually come equipped claws, gills, paddles, walking legs, jumping legs and mouthparts, all of which form from the same repeating segments. And once the genes that assign those jobs (the Hox genes) had been mapped (8) they could be switched off one at a time. With some clever molecular work, you can show all this with experiments where you get walking legs where an abdomen should be, or missing gills or an animal that gives up on specialisation altogether and builds the same generic limb over and over.

But back to insects and an argument running since the nineteenth century about where insect wings came from: a fresh outgrowth on the back, or a bit of ancestral leg carried upward as the body wall swallowed the leg’s base? Unanswerable in insects, who absorbed the relevant leg segments long ago and conveniently destroyed the evidence.

But Parhyale never absorbed them. In 2020 two groups attacked this from opposite ends and published back to back (9, 10). One knocked out leg-patterning genes and compared the wreckage to insects, while the other went looking for the genetic signature of a wing in crustacean tissue. They came to different conclusions about the route (one that the wing descends from an outgrowth on that ancestral leg segment, the other that it is a merger of two tissues, back and leg) but they agree an insect’s flank corresponds to a crustacean’s topmost leg segment, and that the wing is built partly from what used to be leg. Later work chased the same ancient tissue across to a very distant crustacean cousin, where it turns up as the shell of the water flea (11).

Neither settled it and the argument grinds on, with Paleozoic fossils now thrown in. But a question fought over for a century mostly by staring at insects, who had destroyed the evidence, finally had an animal you could do genetics in.

Legs that come back

We all like legs. They’re great for getting to and from places, I always find. Losing one is therefore somewhat of a bother. Unless you happen to be our favourite beach hopper of course, in which case if you lose a leg, you can regrow it in about a week (12). We know this because the limb’s shell is stiff and clear, so you can glue it to a microscope coverslip and film the whole thing in an awake animal, using the exoskeleton as splint and window at once (13). Turns out the new tissue comes from cells already committed to a fate rather than some reserve of blank ones, so, muscle from muscle lineages, skin from skin. And the muscle is rebuilt by satellite-like cells, which are a back-up group of cells lying dormant, wedged between the muscle fibre and its surrounding membrane, until there’s some damage. Up until this work, satellite cells had only ever been found in chordates, and if they really are the same cell type, the machinery was already there in the common ancestor of pretty much every animal with a front and a back! The skin, however, isn’t lucky enough to have these standby cells, and instead ordinary cells near the cut just divide, work out where they now are, and get on with it.

Compare what an embryo does when building a leg with what an adult does regrowing one and the two schedules simply refuse to line up (14). Yet when you take a look at the regrown leg properly, its sensory hairs, whether they work, what cell types it contains, and you’d never be able tell it from one that was never cut off, other than being a little on the small size (15).

Squares

Cells in a sheet normally pack into hexagons, or close enough, like bubbles or honeycomb. Parhyale embryos use tidy rows of squares (16), and since rows of those squares become the segments of the adult, this is likely more than just for show and could be tied to cell identifies and the movements needed for development. But right now it’s a bit of an open question. It does however form a nice bridge between a biology problem and a physics one, because dividing cells should really mess up any tidy arrangement. Filming whole embryos, however, showed it’s the divisions themselves keeping things tidy: waves of oriented division sweep through, and faults get swept out to the edge (17, 18), maintaining a tidy, ‘global’ pattern across the embryo. And so now, Parhyale has a whole new audience in physics journals, which nobody planned.

A brain and some rubbish eyes

You probably don’t immediately think of a brain when you think of tiny crustaceans, hopping around the beach. But it’s there, in a way, mostly in the form of a concentrated nervous system and that nervous system went undescribed for a slightly awkwardly long time (especially in considering how much attention invertebrate neurobiology has had over the year!). Thankfully, it eventually got the recognition it deserved, and it now has a proper brain atlas (19) and even some rather splendid maps of its signalling molecules (20). The eyes are cool part, each with about fifty facets, five light-sensitive cells apiece rather than the usual eight, wired into the brain differently from related animals (21). Okay, that’s the cool part, but the reality is they’re a little bit rubbish: fine for working out roughly where you are, but not for seeing anything. But hey, it’s good to know and have genetic access to understand them, especially since nearly everything we know about arthropod eyes comes from one fly.

Two clocks

I keep an eye on the tides because they’re going to influence whether I can escape my office and get out for a surf. I imagine if was tiny beach hopper, living between the tidemarks, I probably keep a closer eye on them since whether I ate or starved, lived or died, may depended on it. But tide times move, so you need to track the tides as well as the day, and tides run on a 12.4-hour cycle that drifts against the 24-hour one. Everyone knew intertidal animals anticipate tides, but nobody could find the machinery, because there simply weren’t tidal animal that could be genetically manipulated to poke around for answers.

Parhyale to the rescue. It’s a tenacious little swimmer and can swim in impressive 12.4-hour bursts that persist without tides; you can train them to swim to ‘fake’ tides in the lab and they keep to their hardcore timed swimming sessions even when temperatures shift. With some genetic jiggery pokery, you find that if you knock out a gene called, Bmal1, you knock out the ordinary daily clock (the circadian one) and their sense of tidal rhythm (the circatidal one), too. This is first hard evidence the two clocks share parts (22). Later work also found separate clusters of clock cells in the brain, some following light, others sticking to the tides regardless (23), and very recent research suggest the remaining clock genes matter for both rhythms (24). If you give the animals irregular tides, some abandon tidal time for daylight altogether, which may be how one species colonised coastlines with wildly different tides.

Everything else, quickly

It doesn’t even stop there! But since I’m sure you have more to do with your day than read a mini-thesis about beach fleas, I’m going to whizz through some of additional, but not less important, topics since they cover an impressive range of subjects!

Pollution

Tropical marine ecotoxicology has always badly needed a standard test model organism since most protocols were built for temperate species. A Brazilian group supplied one in 2017 in the form of, you guess it, Parhyale hawaiensis, complete with a ‘how to look after your very own beach hopper In the lab’ guide and a short toxicity test in 96-well plates (25). Since then, the ecotox world has cottoned on to how useful Parhyale might be and now we have DNA damage assays, reproduction and growth protocols to look at chronic toxicity (26), the finding that males and females respond to the same contaminants differently and evidence that hydrocarbons and microplastics wreck feeding, mating and moulting well below lethal doses (27). Some studies now use limb regeneration itself as the readout.

Immunity

Parhyale’s blood cells were finally described in 2023 and the come in three types, all of which will happily eat E. coli in a dish (28). Since farmed prawns and shrimp are close relatives with worsening disease problems, an immune system we can actually study in detail is worth having. Proof that no research ever evades immunology forever!

Wood

Bet you didn’t expect to see anything about wood in a marine crustacean article? Well, weirdly, the Parhyale genome carries a full set of enzymes for breaking down plant fibre, as do those of related crustaceans (7). I don’t think they’ll be any competition for beavers – no one’s watched one digest a log… yet – but what the data turned up was the genetic capacity in a group where wood-eating was thought to be a ‘niche speciality’, shall we say.

Heat

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been rather hot of late, so having more ways to understand how heat affects marine life is always going to be important. Folk have now grown Parhyale at 20, 23, 26 and 29^oC to work out what suits them, albeit mostly with an eye on aquaculture (29). Growth peaks when warm, survival peaks when slightly cooler and once you dip below about 26^oC they take so long to breed that a generation didn’t finish inside the study. It’s worth pointing out that this is aquaculture data, not climate data, but a hardy tropical intertidal animal with a genome, a brain atlas, a whole molecular toolkit and a known thermal preference is an obvious candidate for asking what warming seas do to the things living in them. That work is mostly still to come.

What actually did it for Parhyale?

It’s tempting to say the animal is special but, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not. Amphipods are among the most species-rich groups in Crustacea and most are much of a muchness. As for suitability in the lab, that happened by accident, truth be told; just researchers happening to stumble across them doing very well in an aquarium. So rather than uniqueness, the thing that did it for Parhyale really comes down to legibility: you have a few dozen big cells on the outside of a yolk ball, each one east to spot, each one nameable and each one watchable for days, and that was a very useful position to start from.

And from there, every piece of the toolkit turned out to be good for something other than its original purpose. Reporter lines built to trace lineages were what was needed to light up photoreceptors, long-term filming built for embryology was what a physicist needed, gene editing built to test how segments get their identity was what a chronobiologist needed to break a clock. Each new tool, each new piece of understanding, passed to the next scientist asking a new question. And none of the answers were visible from the beach, where there’s just a small, rather boring-looking crustacean under a pile of old seaweed, keeping time with the tides.

References

1. M. Gerberding, W. E. Browne, N. H. Patel, Cell lineage analysis of the amphipod crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis reveals an early restriction of cell fates. Development 129, 5789–5801 (2002).

2. A. L. Price, M. S. Modrell, R. L. Hannibal, N. H. Patel, Mesoderm and ectoderm lineages in the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis display intra-germ layer compensation. Dev. Biol. 341, 256–266 (2010).

3. C. G. Extavour, The fate of isolated blastomeres with respect to germ cell formation in the amphipod crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. Dev. Biol. 277, 387–402 (2005).

4. A. R. Nast, C. G. Extavour, Ablation of a Single Cell From Eight-cell Embryos of the Amphipod Crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. J. Vis. Exp., 51073 (2014).

5. T. Gupta, C. G. Extavour, Identification of a putative germ plasm in the amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis. EvoDevo 4, 34 (2013).

6. A. Martin, J. M. Serano, E. Jarvis, H. S. Bruce, J. Wang, S. Ray, C. A. Barker, L. C. O’Connell, N. H. Patel, CRISPR/Cas9 Mutagenesis Reveals Versatile Roles of Hox Genes in Crustacean Limb Specification and Evolution. Curr. Biol. 26, 14–26 (2016).

7. D. Kao, A. G. Lai, E. Stamataki, S. Rosic, N. Konstantinides, E. Jarvis, A. D. Donfrancesco, N. Pouchkina-Stancheva, M. Sémon, M. Grillo, H. Bruce, S. Kumar, I. Siwanowicz, A. Le, A. Lemire, M. B. Eisen, C. Extavour, W. E. Browne, C. Wolff, M. Averof, N. H. Patel, P. Sarkies, A. Pavlopoulos, A. Aboobaker, The genome of the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis, a model for animal development, regeneration, immunity and lignocellulose digestion. eLife 5, e20062 (2016).

8. J. M. Serano, A. Martin, D. M. Liubicich, E. Jarvis, H. S. Bruce, K. La, W. E. Browne, J. Grimwood, N. H. Patel, Comprehensive analysis of Hox gene expression in the amphipod crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. Dev. Biol. 409, 297–309 (2016).

9. H. S. Bruce, N. H. Patel, Knockout of crustacean leg patterning genes suggests that insect wings and body walls evolved from ancient leg segments. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 4, 1703–1712 (2020).

10. C. M. Clark-Hachtel, Y. Tomoyasu, Two sets of candidate crustacean wing homologues and their implication for the origin of insect wings. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 4, 1694–1702 (2020).

11. H. S. Bruce, N. H. Patel, The Daphnia carapace and other novel structures evolved via the cryptic persistence of serial homologs. Curr. Biol. 32, 3792-3799.e3 (2022).

12. N. Konstantinides, M. Averof, A Common Cellular Basis for Muscle Regeneration in Arthropods and Vertebrates. Science 343, 788–791 (2014).

13. F. Alwes, C. Enjolras, M. Averof, Live imaging reveals the progenitors and cell dynamics of limb regeneration. eLife 5, e19766 (2016).

14. C. Sinigaglia, A. Almazán, M. Lebel, M. Sémon, B. Gillet, S. Hughes, E. Edsinger, M. Averof, M. Paris, Distinct gene expression dynamics in developing and regenerating crustacean limbs. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 119, e2119297119 (2022).

15. A. Almazán, Ç. Çevrim, J. M. Musser, M. Averof, M. Paris, Crustacean leg regeneration restores complex microanatomy and cell diversity. Sci. Adv. 8, eabn9823 (2022).

16. B. L. Steinert, L. Blondel, C. Kuyyamudi, E. Stamataki, A. Pavlopoulos, C. G. Extavour, Lineage domains and cytoskeletal cables organize a cellular square grid in a crustacean. bioRxiv, 2025.08.31.673345 (2026).

17. C. Wolff, J.-Y. Tinevez, T. Pietzsch, E. Stamataki, B. Harich, L. Guignard, S. Preibisch, S. Shorte, P. J. Keller, P. Tomancak, A. Pavlopoulos, Multi-view light-sheet imaging and tracking with the MaMuT software reveals the cell lineage of a direct developing arthropod limb. eLife 7, e34410 (2018).

18. D. J. Cislo, F. Yang, H. Qin, A. Pavlopoulos, M. J. Bowick, S. J. Streichan, Active cell divisions generate fourfold orientationally ordered phase in living tissue. Nat. Phys. 19, 1201–1210 (2023).

19. C. Wittfoth, S. Harzsch, C. Wolff, A. Sombke, The “amphi”-brains of amphipods: new insights from the neuroanatomy of Parhyale hawaiensis (Dana, 1853). Front. Zool. 16, 30 (2019).

20. S. Raspe, K. Kümmerlen, S. Harzsch, Immunolocalization of SIFamide-like neuropeptides in the adult and developing central nervous system of the amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis (Malacostraca, Peracarida, Amphipoda). Arthropod Struct. Dev. 77, 101309 (2023).

21. A. P. Ramos, O. Gustafsson, N. Labert, I. Salecker, D.-E. Nilsson, M. Averof, Analysis of the genetically tractable crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis reveals the organisation of a sensory system for low-resolution vision. BMC Biol. 17, 67 (2019).

22. E. R. Kwiatkowski, Y. Schnytzer, J. J. C. Rosenthal, P. Emery, Behavioral circatidal rhythms require Bmal1 in Parhyale hawaiensis. Curr. Biol. 33, 1867-1882.e5 (2023).

23. A. Oliphant, C. Y. Sia, C. P. Kyriacou, D. C. Wilcockson, M. H. Hastings, Expression of clock genes tracks daily and tidal time in brains of intertidal crustaceans Eurydice pulchra and Parhyale hawaiensis. Curr. Biol. 35, 2802-2815.e5 (2025).

24. V. Louis, Z. Bellido, A. Helfenbein, J. J. C. Rosenthal, P. Emery, Core circadian clock genes control molecular and behavioral circatidal rhythms in Parhyale hawaiensis. bioRxiv, 2026.02.27.708297 (2026).

25. M. C. Artal, A. dos Santos, T. B. Henry, G. de A. Umbuzeiro, Development of an acute toxicity test with the tropical marine amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis. Ecotoxicology 27, 103–108 (2018).

26. A. dos Santos, G. de A. Umbuzeiro, Proposal of a chronic toxicity test using the tropical epibenthic amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 194, 115375 (2023).

27. A. dos Santos, M. T. Botelho, M. Vannuci-Silva, M. C. Artal, F. I. Vacchi, G. R. Magalhães, V. Gomes, T. B. Henry, G. de A. Umbuzeiro, The amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis as a promising model in ecotoxicology. Chemosphere 307, 135959 (2022).

28. A. dos Santos, M. T. Botelho, W. R. Joviano, V. Gomes, J. R. M. C. da Silva, G. de A. Umbuzeiro, Characterization of hemocytes from the marine amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis (Dana 1853): Setting the basis for immunotoxicological studies. Invertebr. Biol. 142 (2023).

29. S. Laramore, E. Albright, Influence of temperature on production of the amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis. BMC Zool.10, 6 (2025).

Featured image by Longhua Guo from the Embryology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Imaged on a Zeiss LSM 780.

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With most first-year PhD students starting graduate programs this month, it seemed like a good time to address the most important dilemma faced by many incoming PhD students—how to choose rotation labs. Although perhaps obvious to those of us with some experience, many of the key factors are often overlooked by early career scientists. This article on helpimascientist.com is my attempt at a thorough and clear-eyed view of what you should consider in making this decision.

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By: The FlyPower Team

From July 27–28, 2026, the Institute of Biosciences at the University of São Paulo (IB-USP) hosted the FlyPower Meeting 2026, held as an official satellite event of the XXIII Congress of the Brazilian Society for Cell Biology (SBBC).

Figure 1: FlyPower Meeting attendees at the Universidade de São Paulo.

Bringing together research groups from institutions across Brazil, including USP, USP-RP, UNESP-Araraquara, UNIFESP, PUC-Campinas, UNICAMP, UFTS, UFRJ, and UFAL, the meeting hosted approximately 60 attendees. The meeting served as a vibrant stage to demonstrate how Drosophila melanogaster—alongside other insect systems—continues to push the boundaries of biomedical science, bridging fundamental discovery (“bench”) to translational application (“bedside”). It was thought to enhance scientific network and friendship among the Brazilian community of drosophilist, who foster the model organism to understand basic science all the way to complex diseases. 

Broad Science: From Cancer to Neurobiology

Over two days, the scientific program showcased the remarkable versatility of the fly model across three primary thematic pillars: Cancer Biology, exploring tumor growth, microenvironment interactions, and oncogenic signaling using Drosophila models. Molecular Tools & DIY Innovation, demonstrating cutting-edge genetic manipulation techniques and accessible open-source hardware. This discussion was enhanced by the talk of André Chagas (Promethea / Prisma Science) with an insightful session on DIY devices for Drosophila research, demonstrating how open-source hardware can democratize experimental setups and expand lab capabilities. His company is up and running in Campinas, Brazil and can be accessed via their website (https://www.prismascience.net/en). Finally, Neurobiology & Neurodegeneration, where the researchers showcased their work on complex neural circuits, neurodegenerative disease models, and behavior.

Alongside student presentations, the meeting featured specials talks from principal investigators who brought essential perspectives to the program: Ana Bossolani (Ana Bossolani’s lab) and Alison Júlio (Alison Júlio’s lab), who delivered dedicated talks in the neurobiology session, exploring complex neural mechanisms and disease models for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, showcasing the use of Drosophila for the personalized medicine. Together, their contributions provided valuable methodological frameworks and cutting-edge insights that enriched the scientific program.

Community & Connection

Beyond the rigorous scientific discussions, the meeting prioritized building a strong community. Networking was woven into the schedule with dedicated coffee breaks and shared lunches, allowing participants from various institutions to connect and exchange ideas. The event closed on a high note with “Flipa ou Reflipa?”, a vibrant trivia game that combined knowledge of Drosophila science with plenty of fun, reinforcing the friendly and collaborative spirit of the FlyPower network.

Empowering the Next Generation of Brazilian Researchers

A central pillar of the FlyPower group’s mission is capacity building and fostering young talent within the Brazilian scientific ecosystem. With the exception of the key invited talks mentioned above, all oral sessions and flash talks throughout the meeting were delivered entirely by trainees—undergraduates, master’s students, PhD candidates, and postdocs.

This deliberate structure gave young scientists direct experience communicating their research on an international-standard stage, equipping future Brazilian biomedical researchers with essential skills in model organism genetics. Prof. Maria Vibranovski and her team of students and postdocs were crucial in organizing the meeting alongside the FlyPower group. One of the seniors in the group, Prof. Ricardo Guelerman Pinheiro Ramos, who also supervised many of the current PI’s in the community shared his thoughts with us:

“This Drosophila community grows stronger every year. This is our third meeting, and we are maturing our organization. I never imagined this would happen one day. This event is highlighted by the outstanding presentations of the students who are performing at a very high level, dominating the genetic toolkit existent in this fly system.”

Impact Beyond the Satellite Event: FlyPower at SBBC 2026

The strong presence and high scientific standard of the FlyPower community carried seamlessly into the main XXIII Congress of the Brazilian Society for Cell Biology (SBBC). FlyPower trainees actively presented their work across poster sessions, showcasing the breadth of research powered by model organism genetics in Brazil.

Highlighting the exceptional quality of work produced by young FlyPower researchers, undergraduate student Renata Campelo (from Prof. Lucas Anhezini’s lab / LAVITOX, Universidade Federal de Alagoas – UFAL) received an Honorable Mention for Best Poster in the Undergraduate Category (Iniciação Científica). It is common sense to the FlyPower group that the quality of her world shall pave the way to a great scientific career as she wishes. This prestigious recognition underscores how early-career trainees in Brazil are performing world-class science using Drosophila.

Figure 2: Prof Lucas Anhezini from UFAL and the undergrad student Renata Campelo after receiving honorable mention at the SBBC congress.

Additionally, a major highlight of the main congress was Symposium 08: Paracrine Signalling Controlling Cell Fate Decisions, chaired by Prof. Guilherme Oliveira Barbosa (UNICAMP). The session featured high-impact talks linking local leadership with international collaboration:

• Prof. Helena Marcolla Araujo (UFRJ) presented “How Sog moves BMPs: extracellular transport strategies across insects”, exploring morphogen gradient regulation across species.
• Jean-Paul Vincent (The Francis Crick Institute, UK) shared insights on “GAGs and planar Wnt Transport”.
• Prof. Guilherme Oliveira Barbosa (UNICAMP) delivered a presentation titled “HS-Beyond: the intracellular role of heparan sulfate in paracrine signaling”.

Figure 3: Helena Araujo (UFRJ – BR), Guilherme O. Barbosa (UNICAMP – BR) e Jean-Paul Vincent (Francis Crick – UK)

This integration between the FlyPower satellite meeting and the main SBBC congress highlights how the Brazilian Drosophila community is both training top-tier award-winning students and actively shaping cutting-edge cell biology research alongside international leaders.

Looking Ahead

The FlyPower Meeting 2026 demonstrated that the Brazilian Drosophila community is thriving, highly collaborative, and deeply committed to training world-class scientists. By mastering sophisticated fly genetics, these trainees are well-positioned to drive future discoveries in cell biology, human disease modeling, and biotechnology.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the FEW Foundation for their generous financial support, facilitated by alumna Prof. Maria Vibranovski, who was the local organizer of the event, together with her amazing team. We also extend our sincere gratitude to the organizing committee—Prof. Marcos Túlio Oliveira, Prof. Carlos Couto, Prof. Lucas Anhezini, and Prof. Guilherme Oliveira Barbosa. All their dedication were instrumental in the success of the FlyPower Meeting 2026.

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Do you have an idea for a post on the Node that you have been postponing writing for a while? Or, perhaps, you have a draft that is waiting to receive your final touches before posting? Good news! This is your opportunity to publish your piece at last for a chance to win £200. For the upcoming month, we are hosting an exciting writing challenge to help battle procrastination and motivate you to share your piece with the Node’s community of developmental and stem cell biologists.

To take part in the challenge, simply post on the Node. The post can be related to current series and themes we have on the Node (or, perhaps, introducing some new exciting topic). All posts* between now and the deadline will automatically enter the pool. Register or log in to share your blog post with the community and enter. If you want to feel inspired, take a look at the amazing entries from our 2025 writing challenge.

The deadline for the challenge is 4 September, after which one winner will be randomly selected for a prize of £200 and an interview with the Node.

*Job or event announcement posts, or posts from the Node team, are not eligible.

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Job offer: PhD contract (4 years)

Cristian Cañestro’s lab offers a fully funded 4-year FPI PhD contract associated with our newly granted project PID2025-170547NB-I00, “Gene loss impact: evolution of cardioparaxial-neuromesodermal development and genome scrambling in Oikopleura dioica as a case study” (OikoLoss).

The PhD will be carried out within the Genetics Doctoral Programme at the University of Barcelona, in the Section of Genetics and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio).

THE CANDIDATES:

We welcome candidates interested in evolutionary developmental biology, genomics, bioinformatics and evolutionary and population genetics.

Applicants must hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees in a field related to Biological Sciences, such as Biology, Genetics or Bioinformatics

THE PROJECT:

OikoLoss investigates how gene loss can drive evolutionary innovation. Using the chordate Oikopleura dioica as a natural “evolutionary knockout” model, the project integrates EvoDevo, functional genomics, single-cell transcriptomics, population genomics and ecology through two complementary aims:

Aim 1. To determine how massive gene loss has reshaped heart, axial muscle and neuromesodermal development in chordates, using single-cell omics, gene-expression analyses and functional experiments.

Aim 2. To uncover how genome scrambling and chromosomal breakpoints generate gene-loss alleles, and to assess their potential adaptive impact to ocean environmental conditions.

THE TECHNIQUES:

The PhD will involve embryo culture and manipulation, microinjection, CRISPR-knockouts, interference-knockdowns, HCR whole-mount in situ hybridization, confocal microscopy, single-cell RNA sequencing, PacBio HiFi long-read genomic sequencing, comparative and population genomics, and bioinformatics.

TRAINING AND COLLABORATIONS:

The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary research environment and will enjoy opportunities to interact with international partners and undertake research stays, particularly with collaborators at OIST in Okinawa, IGFL in Lyon, SARS in Bergen and CRG in Barcelona.

FUNDING:

The position consists of a fully funded 4-year FPI predoctoral contract associated with the granted PID2025 project. Salary, doctoral fees, mobility support and social-security conditions will follow the official programme and University of Barcelona regulations.

DEADLINES:

Expressions of interest and pre-selection ARE NOW OPEN. Early contact is strongly recommended. The formal application procedure and incorporation date will follow the official FPI and UB timetable.

– The application process is expected to be open in September 2026

– Incorporation is expected at the end of 2026 or 2027.

CONTACT and SELECTION:

Interested candidates should email Cristian Cañestro at canestro@ub.edu, attaching a single PDF containing:

– A motivation letter explaining why they wish to join the laboratory and which project aims interest them most.

– A brief CV, including Bachelor’s and master’s academic transcripts, including average grades.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online interview. Selection will follow the UB’s responsible recruitment principles and will be based on academic record, relevant experience and motivation, without discrimination and with attention to gender balance.

Further information, related publications and updates:

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One limitation of comparative genomics and transcriptomics in understanding the origin of evolutionary novelties is that these approaches typically provide long (or short) lists of genes that differ among the species being compared, but they cannot distinguish causal mechanisms from subsequent adaptive outcomes. The former are most likely involved in the rewiring of gene regulatory networks (GRNs)—a process that does not necessarily require the evolution of new genes, but rather changes in regulatory interactions, including modifications of network connectivity, regulatory inputs, microRNA activity, epigenetic marks, or chromatin remodeling. By contrast, many of the latter changes, although biologically important, may simply reflect adaptation to new lifestyles, ecological conditions, or developmental modes that arose after the novelty itself had originated.

Because we have no direct access to the earliest stages in the evolution of new lineages, it is difficult to determine whether the gain or loss of particular genes played a causal role in the emergence of a novelty. Most extant animal groups diverged from their common ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago and have since experienced long and complex evolutionary histories. During these intervals, lineages presumably adapted to a succession of environments, many of which no longer exist. Such adaptive histories may have favored the expansion of particular gene families, thereby increasing organismal fitness under changing ecological conditions. Consequently, many genomic differences observed among living species may reflect long-term adaptive evolution rather than the mechanisms that originally generated evolutionary innovations.
This highlights an obvious but often overlooked point: we have no direct record of the evolutionary trajectories that produced extant lineages. As a result, it is challenging to identify which genomic changes were instrumental in generating a novelty and which merely contributed to its subsequent refinement and ecological success. Ultimately, only regulatory changes can be considered causal in the origin of developmental novelties, since morphological innovation necessarily arises through modifications in the regulation of development. Investigating regulatory genes, their interactions within GRNs, and the molecular mechanisms that modulate them therefore offers the best opportunity to uncover the causal processes underlying evolutionary innovation.

Once these primary regulatory changes are established, subsequent evolutionary refinements can occur through selection acting on downstream targets, including structural, metabolic, physiological, and additional regulatory genes. These later modifications fine-tune the phenotype and improve its performance in particular ecological contexts, but they should not be conflated with the original causal events that produced the novelty.

The central argument I wish to make, therefore, is that research on evolutionary novelties should place greater emphasis on identifying causal mechanisms by reconstructing how GRNs have been modified over evolutionary time. This requires refocusing our attention on the primary regulatory drivers rather than on the accumulation of downstream genomic differences. Moreover, integrating comparative genomics with evidence from the fossil record and with reconstructions of the ecological histories experienced by different lineages would provide a much richer framework for interpreting differences in gene complements. Such an approach would move comparative studies beyond sequence comparisons alone toward a functional understanding of regulatory genes and their evolutionary roles across the animal tree of life. Although this perspective is necessarily nuanced and difficult to implement, it offers a more promising route toward understanding how evolutionary novelties arise through causal developmental mechanisms.

Though the above doesn’t represent a particularly new idea, it is, in my view, a useful reminder of what we need to focus on in order to understand novelty.

Disclosure: ChatGPT was used solely to improve the language and style of the original text.

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The adventure of a brave ENGAGE-Bio post-bac scholar at the MBL who set up a new sea cucumber species in the Perillo lab.

Who are we?

Hi, we are a group of scientists who believe establishing new research systems is key to discover new biological features. We work at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole (MA, USA) in the Perillo lab. Talia (now a graduate student at the University of Virginia) was an ENGAGE BIO post-bac scholar who spent a year establishing the sea cucumber Leptosynapta tenuis as a new lab system. 

What are sea cucumbers?

Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates with amazing abilities: these animals can undergo whole body regeneration, spit out their internal organs if threatened -and completely regenerate them! – change skin strength and elastic stiffness within a timescale of seconds and are rich in novel active bioactive compounds -just to cite a few. 

Almost all species of adult sea cucumbers have dark, thick skin and studying their organs in vivo is a challenge. Moreover, the most common species can only be studied close to their collection site, as these animals do not ship well. However, thanks to the knowledge of the Marine Resource Center at the MBL we have access to a local sea cucumber species that has transparent skin and that we found can be easily kept in any lab. These new species is the sea cucumber L. tenuis, a small and clear sea cucumber from the North Atlantic Ocean (Fig. 1A). They feed in the sand and use their tentacles to quickly dig and hide. Not much is known about the organism in terms of its characteristics and behaviors and we are excited to discover new aspects of their biology every day.  How do they navigate in space inside the sand? How is the nervous system controlling their behaviors? How do they reproduce? How does a hermaphrodite gonad work? How do their larvae develop? These are some of the questions we are investigating in the lab.

Talia worked on some of these questions and had a chance to present her work at the developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin and Other Marine Invertebrates (DBMUMI) conference (Fig. 2A). In 2026 Aly Rodger, new Research Assistant in the lab, took over the sea cucumber project.

Talia’s experience working with sea cucumbers

Due to the niche of this animal, I was interested in Margherita’s project to characterize its structures. When we received a collection for the month, we would dissect and image to understand different structures. We can conduct living imaging of their skin because it is transparent (Fig. 1B). Through this, we were able to observe structures on the skin that we could have seen if they had pigment, as most sea cucumbers do. I spent time staining phalloidin and tubulin to understand the morphology of the skin, intestine, tentacles, and the gonads. While imaging new structures, I was amazed by the amount of muscle and neurons that these small sea cucumbers had (Fig. 2B, Talia working). L. tenuis is a hermaphrodite species, how do they develop both testis and ovaries in the same tube? To understand their oocyte growth, I would image them monthly and measure their size to figure out their seasonal patterns and compare it to testis maturation. Being the first to see these structures through fluorescence microscopy only made me question their development more.   

A challenging part of working with these animals is that little is known about their development or their behaviors. Margherita and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting how to house them at the MBL and within our lab. We came up with a water bubbling system to cycle the sand for oxygen flow within their habitat and a sand collection system to ensure their environment has nutrients. Even though trying to understand how to maintain them is difficult, it is exciting to be able to lay the groundwork for a new model system in developmental biology.

Why do we need this for developmental biology? 

Sometimes in research, we cannot answer a question because we don’t have the tools or the right model. But the sea cucumber has the possibility to be used in different fields; it is worth investigating and conducting groundwork research for future research to answer larger questions with this organism. Similarly, groundbreaking science came from taking a chance and investing resources in what are now considered traditional research organisms, such as mice, flies, bacteria, and zebrafish. I believe that many research questions, such as neurodevelopment, axis elongation, and body plan development, could be answered by using L. tenuis.

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Comparative Developmental Biology Course at the MBL, October 2026

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Limb development as a model for regulation and evolution of vertebrate form:  Fellowship position to investigate dynamics of Shh regulation and function.

Mackem lab is recruiting for NIH-funded post-doc position in developmental morphogenesis to study the roles of Shh in vertebrate limb patterning (different digit types, numbers, adaptations) using molecular-genetic and genomic approaches.  Our long-term goal is understanding how regulatory networks instruct the formation of complex structures with distinct shapes, such as the varying bony segments and joint numbers in different digits, arising from the same tissues and not based in cell fate changes per se.  

Current work focuses on genome-wide approaches to identify key Shh relay signals and their relation to late signaling centers, comparative evolutionary analyses to reveal regulatory mechanisms underlying morphology-based adaptations and combined genetic/genomic strategies to explore the dynamic, robust nature of Shh-producing cells. We recently showed that Shh acts as a trigger, not morphogen, to initiate digit patterning, but the critical targets remain unknown.  We have discovered that the Shh-producing ZPA domain in the limb is not a static population but arises from progenitors at the limb border that contribute to ongoing ZPA renewal and plan to characterize progenitor pool regulation.  We have also found that the widespread phenomenon of autocrine non-responsiveness in Shh-producing cells is an intrinsic feature of these cells, not due to negative-feedback, and are examining its mechanistic basis.       

Applicants should have a strong background in developmental and/or evo-devo biology. Prior experience with cutting-edge genomic approaches is desirable.  For more information, please contact Susan Mackem (mackems@mail.nih.gov) directly.

Recent lab publications:

Huang et al. (2026) Nature Communications.   A pivotal Wnt antagonist role promoting digit joint specification by constraining Wnt activity.  In press May 2026.  doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73549-4

Patel and Mackem (2025) PNAS.  Dual Bmp-negative feedback loops modulate function of both AER and ZPA to buffer and constrain postaxial digit number.  122: e2427249122. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2427249122

Zhu et al. (2022) Dev Cell.  Sonic hedgehog is not a limb morphogen but acts as a trigger to specify all digits in mice. 57: 2048-62.

Trofka et al. (2021) Current Biology. Genetic basis for an evolutionary shift from ancestral preaxial to postaxial limb polarity in non-urodele vertebrates. 31: 4923-34.

Reviews/perspectives:

Huang et al. (2022) Dev. Dynamics. Rethinking positional information and digit identity: The role of late interdigit signaling.   251:1414–1422.

Zhu et al. (2017) Dev. Biology.  John Saunders’ ZPA, Sonic hedgehog and digit identity – How does it really all work?    429:391-400.

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