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
Beyond morphogen signaling
Posted by Holley Lab, 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 shruti.vemaraju, 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 …Collaboration: All the things we cannot see (alone).
Posted by miriamirosenberg, on 3 June 2019
By Miriam Rosenberg and Suparna Ray Most of what we know about axial patterning in insects comes from decades of careful, beautiful work done in flies. Thanks to the genetic …Notch awakens: transitioning to the first differentiation step
Posted by Sergio Menchero, on 3 May 2019
The story behind our recent paper in eLife. In the mid-1900s, Conrad Hal Waddington introduced the idea of development as a series of branching decisions taken under the control …Forces maintain order between cells
Posted by boudaoud, on 30 April 2019
Written by Antoine Fruleux and Arezki Boudaoud As Lewis Wolpert put it (Wolpert, PLoS Biology 2010), if you extend your two arms, you will likely find that they match in …Hot fish and the energetics of early development
Posted by Jonathan Rodenfels, on 10 April 2019
The story behind our recent paper “Heat Oscillations Driven by the Embryonic Cell Cycle Reveal the Energetic Costs of Signaling” Developmental Cell, 48(5), pp.646–658.e6. At the end of 2014, a …The pattern of research
Posted by aaron_savage, on 2 April 2019
The correct patterning of embryonic tissues is essential for normal development. Aberrant patterning can lead to developmental abnormalities and pathogenic defects. Therefore, studying developmental patterning is important to better understand …Making Multiciliated Cells: The Guardians of Our Airways
Posted by Sudipto, on 1 April 2019
With air pollution on the rise, our respiratory system is continually abused by a barrage of harmful substances that we breathe in with each inhalation. Fortunately, we are equipped with …
“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.
Writing tips and ideas
Check out our page for writing tips for Node bloggers. We also have a mailing list for occasional writing ideas — simply update your email preferences once you’ve registered an account with us.
Our full archive going back to 2010 is filterable by category, tag and date.