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

Behind the paper story: uncovering non-canonical functions of the Hippo pathway

Posted by , on 21 April 2023

Heya Zhao shares the story behind a recently published paper in Dev Cell where they reveal the non-canonical functions of the Hippo pathway in developmental cell fate decisions in the …

Behind the paper story: ‘How heterotypic cis/trans factors drive stomatal cell fate commitment’

Posted by , on 16 March 2023

Dr. Eun-Deok Kim and Professor Keiko Torii from The University of Texas at Austin, USA, have recently published an article in Nature Plants. The article discusses how heterotypic cis/trans factors …

Charting new territory: mapping the cell types in the octopus brain

Posted by , on 17 February 2023

Ruth Styfhals and Dr. Eve Seuntjens at the KU Leuven, Belgium, recently published a cell type atlas of a developing octopus brain in Nature Communications. The team behind the paper …

Conflict between neighbours: a perfect way of rebuilding a complete organ system

Posted by , on 16 November 2022

Mabel Mathew gives us some insights into the story behind their paper on the mechanism underlying de novo shoot regeneration.

Behind the paper: Characterising the spatiotemporal dynamics of microglia across the human lifespan

Posted by , on 17 October 2022

Dr David A. Menassa and Professor Diego Gomez-Nicola at the University of Southampton, UK recently published an article in Developmental Cell where they reveal how the microglial population colonises the human …

Behind the paper: Uncovering the dual origins of human cortical astrocytes

Posted by , on 18 August 2022

Behind the paper story from Denise Allen and Tomasz Nowakowski

An embryo-maternal dialogue in Arabidopsis

Posted by , on 20 July 2022

In our recent paper, we uncovered a WIP-mediated embryo-maternal communication in Arabidopsis, which specifically regulates embryonic root development (Fig. 1). WIP2, WIP4 and WIP5 expression in the embryonic root is …

Behind the Story: Immunity, Involution and Indefatigable Women

Posted by , on 19 July 2022

A behind the paper story from Christine Watson about the role of immune cells in mammary gland involution and the women who worked on the project.

“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.

Writing tips and ideas

Check out our page for writing tips for Node bloggers. We also have a mailing list for occasional writing ideas: sign up here.

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

Updated on 21 March 2024