the community site for and by developmental biologists
the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by Aidan Maartens on September 7th, 2020
Last October I had the great pleasure of interviewing Trudi Schüpbach for Development in Buenos Aires. We were at the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology meeting (check out the meeting report here), and over a pizza had a wide ranging discussion about her life in science, the place of genetics in developmental biology, and[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on August 26th, 2020
This interview, the 77th in our series, was published in Development earlier this year. During development, the establishment of directional left-right (L-R) asymmetry is crucial for the correct positioning of organs within the body. How symmetry is broken in the embryo is still incompletely understood at the molecular level, as is its evolutionary history. A new[…]
Posted by Annabel Nicholson on July 14th, 2020
Alistair McGregor’s group at Oxford Brookes University uses Drosophila and the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum to understand how different shapes and sizes of animals evolve. Back in 2016, two PhD students in Alistair’s lab shared a day in the life of a spider lab. Four years and one pandemic later, we caught up with[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on June 29th, 2020
Of the many virtual seminar series that have sprung up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, one in particular caught our eye – the New PIs in Cell and Developmental Biology Forum (you can follow updates and find information by following #NewPICellDev on Twitter). To find out more about the series we met Salah Elias,[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on May 27th, 2020
This interview, the 76th in our series, was published in Development earlier this year. Interneurons are crucial to cortical function and their dysregulation has been implicated in various neurological pathologies, yet how they are generated during development is still poorly understood. A new paper in Development investigates interneuron neurogenesis in the mouse embryo and its[…]
Posted by the Node on March 18th, 2020
BSDB/GenSoc 2020 had a fantastic planned line up of plenary speakers. Over the past three days we managed to sit down for a virtual chat with five of them – in these short videos, you’ll hear about their science, their connection to the BSDB, how the coronavirus has been affecting their labs, and more. […]
Posted by the Node Interviews on February 20th, 2020
This interview, the 75th in our series, was recently published in Development. Our understanding of lineage decisions in early human development has been greatly aided by embryonic stem cell lines, which avoid many of the practical and ethical difficulties of in vivo material. A new paper in Development exploits naïve human embryonic stem cells to generate in vitro models for the extra-embryonic[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on January 29th, 2020
This interview, the 74th in our series, was recently published in Development. Dysregulated activity of cell surface proteolytic enzymes has a wide range of developmental and pathological consequences, but the underlying mechanisms are often poorly understood. A new Development paper uses mice to model a severe inherited form of enteropathy and the role of the serine protease matriptase[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on January 13th, 2020
This interview, the 73rd in our series, was recently published in Development. Animal cytokinesis is driven by an actomyosin ring that assembles at the cell equator and constricts to physically separate the two daughters. Although myosin is known to be essential for cytokinesis in multiple systems, whether this requirement reflects its motor or actin crosslinking activities has[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on November 29th, 2019
This interview, the 72nd in our series, was recently published in Development. Heart development in mammals is a beautifully complex process. Patterning, proliferation and differentiation are all coordinated with cell movements and tissue morphogenesis (for instance elongation, fusion, folding, looping). However, our knowledge of the molecular regulators of heart development currently outstrips what we know about the[…]
