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
How we learned to build a gliding mammal
Posted by Jorge Moreno, on 2 September 2024
Read the story behind the paper “Emx2 underlies the development and evolution of marsupial gliding membranes” from first author Jorge Moreno.When a medical doctor steps into a developmental biology lab to study the mechanics of human embryo development
Posted by Jean-Léon Maître, on 29 August 2024
Read the story behind the paper “Mechanics of human embryo compaction” from Jean-Léon Maître and Julie Firmin.Behind the paper: Rarely seen development of a viviparous shark – emergence of the hammerhead.
Posted by Gareth Fraser, on 12 August 2024
In this Developmental Dynamics paper, Steven Byrum, Gareth Fraser and colleagues present the first comprehensive embryonic staging series for the Bonnethead, a viviparous hammerhead shark. In this post, Gareth and …Behind the paper story: From a tiny primordium to a fully developed gynoecium
Posted by Andrea Gomez, on 5 July 2024
In this post, I invite you to join me on the journey through our recent article titled “Two Orthogonal Differentiation Gradients Locally Coordinate Fruit Morphogenesis.” This story started when I …How we found a switch from genitalia to limbs
Posted by Anastasiia Lozovska, on 28 June 2024
While the vertebrate body consists of diverse structures formed during embryogenesis, there is a limited number of genetic regulatory modules that are repurposed in different developmental contexts. For example, the …Ascidian embryonic cells offer clues to the evolutionary origin of vertebrate neural crest cells and neuromesodermal progenitors
Posted by Tasuku Ishida, on 11 June 2024
Read the story behind the paper “Ascidian embryonic cells with properties of neural-crest cells and neuromesodermal progenitors of vertebrates”.Ancient origin of the vertebrate sympathetic nervous system
Posted by BEdens, on 1 June 2024
A recent paper “Neural crest origin of sympathetic neurons at the dawn of vertebrates” challenges the prevailing dogma that the sympathetic ganglia arose only in jawed vertebrates. Instead, based on …How do jellyfish regenerate their tentacles?
Posted by Yuichiro Nakajima, on 27 May 2024
Read the story behind the paper “Distinct stem-like cell populations facilitate functional regeneration of the Cladonema medusa tentacle”.
“If you notice something unusual in your experiments, don’t just throw it away!”
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.