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
Precision by design: Setting boundaries in patterning
Posted by Edgar Herrera Delgado, on 1 March 2021
Developmental patterning is an essential process for multicellular development, as it drives the cell-fate decisions that determine an organism’s body plan. One of the aspects that has fascinated me is …Pairing of segmentation clock genes results in robust pattern formation
Posted by Ertugrul Ozbudak, on 4 February 2021
Oriana Zinani, Kemal Keseroğlu, Ahmet Ay and Ertuğrul Özbudak on how gene pairing promotes oscillations in segmentation4D Morphological Atlas of C. elegans Embryogenesis
Posted by Guoye Guan, on 2 February 2021
A joint research team co-led by Prof. Chao Tang (Peking University, PKU), Prof. Zhongying Zhao (Hong Kong Baptist University, HKBU) and Prof. Hong Yan (City University of Hong Kong, CityU) …A facial birth defect is caused by perturbation of extreme long-range enhancers
Posted by Hannah Long, on 25 January 2021
Hannah Long tells the story of how she uncovered the genetic basis of a developmental disorderEngineering morphogenesis using self-organized embodiment
Posted by SDuranNebreda, on 20 January 2021
During their journey from zygote to adult, embryos experience several symmetry breaking processes. Structures which are not isotropic (equal in all directions) are formed, creating the inside-out axis, forward-backwards axis, …Establishing connections
Posted by Bert De Rybel, on 16 December 2020
Jos Wendrich, Yvan Saeys and Bert De Rybel take us on a single cell journey through the Arabidopsis rootActin and microtubules link to form a tube within a single cell
Posted by Sofia Araújo, on 14 December 2020
In the Genetics of Cell Behaviour in Development laboratory, at the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics at the University of Barcelona, we work with the terminal cells (TCs) of …Looking to crustaceans to understand insect wing evolution
Posted by Courtney Clark-Hachtel, on 19 October 2020
The wings of vertebrates, like birds and bats, emerged relatively recently, and we understand that these wings evolved from forelimbs. Even for the mythological dragon there seems to be a …“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.