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

Using hemimetabolous insects to investigate the origin of the tra-dsx axis

Posted by , on 24 September 2019

The story behind our recent paper in eLife.   Rapid turn over of sex determination mechanisms provides biologists with an elegant study system connecting sexual selection to molecular evolution. Striking …

Moving in concert: How lateral line primordium cells coordinate to migrate

Posted by , on 21 September 2019

Written by Tugba Colak-Champollion Story behind our recent paper in Current Biology “Cadherin-Mediated Cell Coupling Coordinates Chemokine Sensing across Collectively Migrating Cells” (Tugba Colak-Champollion, Ling Lan, Alisha R. Jadhav, Naoya …

Inflate your embryo

Posted by , on 17 September 2019

How would you create a hole between two sticky surfaces? Simply crack it! At a first glance, trying to pull apart the two surfaces seems to be a good idea, …

Discovering the Genetic Basis of Mimetic Color Diversity in Bumble Bees

Posted by , on 20 August 2019

As a first-year graduate student, I had the good fortune of accompanying Dr. Pierre Rasmont (U. Mons, Belgium) and his lab group on an expedition to collect bumble bees in …

How to “Run” embryonic development

Posted by , on 24 July 2019

The term “embryonic development” was originally proposed some 2,400 years ago by Aristotle, however, many aspects of how the genome regulates development remain unclear. One major challenge of the modern …

Embryonic hydraulics triumphs

Posted by , on 26 June 2019

In this article I share with you a more personal, chronological account of how our story unfolds (recently published in Nature), and highlight some key events and insights that help …

Beyond morphogen signaling

Posted by , on 25 June 2019

By Dörthe Jülich & Scott Holley   Organizers pattern surrounding tissues via secreted morphogens that specify different cell states as a function of concentration. Wolpert’s French Flag model is commonly …

Decoding light for developmental timing

Posted by , on 13 June 2019

Shruti Vemaraju¹ and Richard A. Lang¹-²  ¹Center for Chronobiology,¹The Visual Systems Group, Abrahamson Pediatric Eye Institute, Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology, ²Division of Developmental Biology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH …

“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 March 2024