The community site for and by
developmental and stem cell biologists

Behind the paper stories

Behind the paper stories

Every paper has a story behind it, and we regularly commission scientists to tell theirs. In this collection you’ll discover the highs and the lows, the chance encounters and life changing discoveries from the breadth of developmental biology and stem cell research.

Recent posts

Squishing jellies!!

Posted by , on 4 June 2025

Behind the paper: “Topology changes of Hydra define actin orientation defects as organizers of morphogenesis”

Regulating mRNA translation at the start

Posted by , on 30 May 2025

Madalena M. Reimão Pinto (Schier lab, University of Basel, Switzerland) and Sebastian Castillo Hair (Seelig lab, Washington University, Seattle, USA) joined forces to understand how zebrafish embryos orchestrate protein synthesis …

Nano Injections, Big Discoveries: The Journey to Map Neural and Inner Ear Lineages

Posted by , on 8 May 2025

Co-authored by Sandra de Haan and Jingyan He In our recently published paper ‘Ectoderm barcoding reveals neural and cochlear compartmentalization‘, we utilized ultrasound-guided in utero nano injections to deliver heritable DNA barcodes …

When did our flexible and lubricated joints evolve?

Posted by , on 30 April 2025

[Behind the paper story of “Synovial joints were present in the common ancestor of jawed fish but lacking in jawless fish”.] Synovial joints are marvels of biological evolution where two …

Re-growing adult organs: mothers do it best

Posted by , on 30 April 2025

Tomotsune Ameku tells the story behind the paper “Growth of the maternal intestine during reproduction”

Postnatal neurodevelopment: Inside out or the reverse?

Posted by , on 12 March 2025

The people behind the papers – Juan Yang and Xuanmao Chen In mammalian embryos, brains develop from the inside out, with younger neurons moving to the outer layers in a …

Fish, Frogs, Friends, Lend me your Ears.

Posted by , on 6 March 2025

Humans and other tetrapods evolved from aquatic fish. In making this leap, tetrapods evolved lungs to breathe air and lost respiratory gills. It is tempting to intuit that lungs evolved …

“If you notice something unusual in your experiments, don’t just throw it away!”

Read Laura Pellegrini’s piece on choroid plexus organoids 

Do you have a story to tell? We can give comments on drafts and any level of editing you want, and we particularly encourage contributions from researchers for whom English is not their first language.

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Our full archive going back to 2010 is filterable by category, tag and date.

Updated on 21 August 2024