This month on the Node and beyond

November turned out to be  a bumper month on the Node with posts on research (current and historical), meetings and new resources, as well as interviews and a meeting report. Plus some beautiful science-inspired art. Here are some of our highlights, as well as our pick of the best of the web this month.

Research, resources, and advocacy

We heard about recent research on what a pluripotency transcription factor does during mitosis, how sea stars build their nervous systems, and how fruit flies make blood.

We heard about the 3D atlas of human development, a resource that includes histology sections and interactive 3D PDFs of the stages of human development,  and the team behind the eMouse Atlas told us about their new eLearning resource. We also continued our monthly rounds up of preprints of interest to developmental biology.

Andreas Prokop wrote about why advocacy is crucial for the survival of developmental biology, and why all of us should have our elevator pitch ready. He is keen to hear thoughts on ideas on this issue!

People and places

We got to know a whole bunch of developmental biologists this month, in Development interviews with Paola Arlotta, Kathryn Anderson and David McClay, and in our People Behind the Papers series featuring James Nichols on craniofacial development in zebrafish, and Kristian Franze, Amelia Joy Thompson and Sarah Foster on how the mechanical environment influences axon pathfinding in brain development.

Our latest in the ‘Day in the Life…’ series came from Yuuri Yasuoka in Okinawa, who gave us an insight into working with coral.

We also got to hear an account (by me) of the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology’s annual meeting in beautiful Girona, and about another trip by one of the Company of Biologists’ Travelling fellows, Alessandro Donada, from Paris to Cambridge.

Art and history

We heard from two scientist-cum-artists, Mia Buehr and Beata Edyta Mierzwa, about how cell and developmental biology influenced their art.

Our latest post in the Forgotten Classics series featured two papers from Rosa Beddington, with insights from two people who worked with her, Patrick Tam and Virginia Papaioannou.

Beyond the Node: some internet highlights

• Nipam Patel promoted his beautiful video on squid development, compiled from a decade of Woods Hole Embryology Courses
• In the week of the official opening of The Crick, James Briscoe gave an inside perspective on their hiring policy
• Alfonso Martinez-Arias wrote about the promise of preprints in biomedical sciences, and about what stem and developmental biologists have in common with engineers.
• Brooke Morriswood gave a short guide to writing scientific manuscripts
• A set of papers reported failure to replicate the NgAgo gene-editing method
• An event at the Harvard Law School brought together scientists and ethicists to discuss the 14 day rule for human embryo research
• In the ASCB Newsletter, Peter Walter and Dyche Mullins talkes about the problem with commercial publishing
• Following Theresa May’s announcement of £2billion/year investment in research and development, the RCUK welcomed the news,  and Scienceogram took a look at the numbers
• Ewa Paluch of the MRC LMCB at UCL has been announced as the winner of the BSCB Hooke Medal 2017
• Fredrik Lanner of the Karolinska Institute was named a Wallenberg Academy Fellow
• The FASEB BioArt competition winners were announced, and included some beautiful developmental biology!
• The Allen Institute for Cell Science announced the release of five publically available tagged cell lines
• Over on PLoS Biologue, Jamy Pang gave the story behind his recent work on small non-coding RNAs and fertility
• Paul Knoepfler interviewed Michael Werner about the 21st Century Cures Act
• Oh, and there was an election.

The best tweets

First cell divisions of a C. elegans embryo. Stack rotation in post-processing. His-GFP & Gtub-GFP #lightsheet #celegans pic.twitter.com/TAqeOaTzUv

— Loïc A. Royer 💻🔬⚗️ (@loicaroyer) November 28, 2016

Two color adaptive lightsheet timelapse #adaptive #lightsheet https://t.co/gKleMSDP6w

— Loïc A. Royer 💻🔬⚗️ (@loicaroyer) October 31, 2016

Happy Thanksgiving! Yes, we CT scanned our turkey, and like any good dinosaur biologist, prepared and accessioned the skeleton (OUVC 10789). pic.twitter.com/V2YbF6mF22

— WitmerLab (@WitmerLab) November 24, 2016

Happy Birthday Alfred Henry Sturtevant! From 1913-1928, he determined linear arrangement of Drosophila genes. https://t.co/WwoEvqWHYi pic.twitter.com/Sm73LOZXg3

— A. Sánchez Alvarado (@Planaria1) November 22, 2016

The first issue of @Nature was printed today in 1869. In opening article Huxley writes on obsolescence of theories but permanence of poetry. pic.twitter.com/rNXy5mbyAD

— A. Sánchez Alvarado (@Planaria1) November 4, 2016

~30,000 people are now an author on a bioRxiv preprint :-) #preprintsworking

— Richard Sever (@cshperspectives) November 3, 2016

https://twitter.com/Alexis_Verger/status/803543211146964992

This is one of the simplest and most eloquent quotes about science anywhere…. We'll miss you, @Sue_Lindquist pic.twitter.com/A3qDOmIVzr

— Hunt Willard (@hwillardX) November 1, 2016

We're open! Today @TheCrick opens its doors to the public. Come along and see us opposite St Pancras #insidetheCrick #howdowelook pic.twitter.com/GAb5YfCeuc

— The Crick (@TheCrick) November 2, 2016

We're all aglow about this wonderful infographic by @eleanor_lutz on #bioluminescent creatures: https://t.co/PUWOr8BB9M via @compoundchem pic.twitter.com/z8u7Vcgrsu

— Max Planck Society (@maxplanckpress) November 23, 2016

If Andy Warhol did Zebrafish…. pic.twitter.com/bkrqKNGNPJ

— Cardiff Bioimaging Hub (@CUBioimagingHub) November 21, 2016

ZF skin is beautiful pic.twitter.com/G0TUYobJHt

— MadScientist (@MadS100tist) November 27, 2016

#NHLBI-funded study in zebrafish shows that color-coded stem cells can help shed light on blood disorders, cancer: https://t.co/viCg2EoO34 pic.twitter.com/eylYSUyVEA

— NIH NHLBI (@nih_nhlbi) November 23, 2016

Impressions from a long weekend: the Church of Haeckel. pic.twitter.com/2RlVLwwfZB

— Yogi Jaeger 💙 @yoginho@spore.social (@yoginho) November 1, 2016

Making prizes for the #sciPoet meeting. Seeing some old friends. pic.twitter.com/6NOQVYNvU5

— Adam P. Summers (@Fishguy_FHL) November 13, 2016

https://twitter.com/albertcardona/status/798817679159083009

Just one of the rather brilliant designs from @The_Big_Draw – behold our time-lapse video of the Big Cell being made https://t.co/MIgeMWdw4S pic.twitter.com/aShLsGTA5d

— The Royal Society (@royalsociety) November 9, 2016

(2 votes)

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