News from Development (October 2024)

[This October newsletter was originally sent out to Development’s journal news mailing list. This edition features, amongst other items, news of our upcoming celebratory conference and an update from our Pathway to Independence programme.]

Biologists @ 100

2025 marks 100 years since the founding of our publisher, The Company of Biologists. To mark this occasion, we are excited to invite you to The Company of Biologists’ 100-year anniversary conference Biologists @ 100, which will take place 24-27 March 2025 in Liverpool, UK.

The conference will bring together a range of scientists in developmental biology, cell biology, comparative physiology and disease biology. It will incorporate the 2025 Spring Meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology, alongside other scientific strands, and plenary sessions that cover topics of importance to the whole biological community. The cell and developmental biology strand includes a list of outstanding speakers, including Development’s former Editor-in-Chief Olivier Pourquié.  

To find out more, read this Node post by Development’s Reviews Editor Alex Eve and visit the conference website, from where you can now register for the meeting. Our community site the Node is also looking for a meeting reporter for this exciting event. 

You’ll be hearing much more about how the Company has evolved over the past century, and our perspective for the future, throughout the course of next year.

Pathway to Independence programme

Last month, we were delighted to welcome our 2024 cohort of ‘Pathway to Independence’ (PI) fellows to our office in Cambridge for a three-day meeting – a key part of the support we’re providing them over the course of this year.

During this time, each fellow had the opportunity to present their ‘research vision’ to the rest of the group, as well as to some of last year’s PI fellows and the Development in-house team, and to gather feedback on how best to articulate their future research plans. This was followed by a two-day leadership training course run by hfp consulting, described by one of our fellows as “a very positive, enriching and informative experience that allowed me to learn tools and tricks I will be able to use in all spheres of my life”. We’re delighted to be supporting these talented postdocs as they apply for independent positions, and hope to grow this network of young leaders in the developmental biology field in coming years – look out for an announcement about the next call for applications later this year. 

Find out more about our PI fellows’ research interests and thoughts on the future of the field in this Perspective article.

Special issues

Our 2024 special issue, Uncovering Developmental Diversity, is now being finalised and will be complete by the end of this month. Featuring over 30 different species, and covering topics ranging from axis determination in kelp to body size plasticity in sea anemones, this issue showcases some of the cutting edge research now possible in non-classical experimental systems. 

Do also look out for the upcoming formal announcement of our 2025 special issue on ‘Lifelong Development: the Maintenance, Regeneration and Plasticity of Tissues’. 

The fascinating world of developmental biology

Over the past year, we have been working with the British Society for Developmental Biology and Cambridge Filmworks to produce a video showcasing the wonder and the importance of the developmental biology field.

Featuring Alice Roberts, Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Birmingham, and a host of researchers working across the spectrum of the developmental biology field, we hope this video will help to promote our field and inspire the next generation of developmental biologists. 

Available in both full-length and short versions, we invite you to watch, enjoy and – most importantly – share these movies. 

The Forest of Biologists 

By publishing in one of the journals of The Company of Biologists, you not only contribute to science, but you also directly contribute to the natural world. For each published Research or Review article, we plant a tree in The Forest of Biologists. And to acknowledge our peer reviewers, for each completed peer review we protect a tree in an ancient woodland. Since the launch of this project we have already planted over 2,000 new trees and protected 6,667 existing trees. Visit our virtual forest to check out your tree, or to read more about our forests.

The Company of Biologists’ Grants and Workshops: upcoming deadlines 

Scientific Meeting Grants and Sustainable Conferencing Grants: 8 November 2024

Travelling Fellowships: 25 October 2024

JCS-FocalPlane Training Grants (for attending a microscopy training course): 22 November 2024

Workshop: Modelling Plant Stem Cells: Evolution, Development and Regeneration (18 – 21 May 2025): 15 November 2024

Workshop: Mechanometabolism Unleashed: The Interface of Cell Mechanics and Metabolism (22 – 25 June 2025): 13 December 2024

Recent highlights from the journal

Heterotypic interaction promotes asymmetric division of human hematopoietic progenitors
Manuel Théry, Stéphane Brunet and colleagues
Use of microfabricated niches reveals that interactions between human hematopoietic progenitors and stromal cells promote asymmetric division of progenitors and boost siblings’ heterogeneity, thus contributing to the plasticity of the early steps of hematopoiesis.

Robust organ size in Arabidopsis is primarily governed by cell growth rather than cell division patterns
Adriene Roeder and colleagues
Robust sepal development is preserved despite changes in cell division and is characterized by spatiotemporal averaging of heterogeneity in cell growth rate and direction.

Unravelling differential Hes1 dynamics during axis elongation of mouse embryos through single-cell tracking
Katharina Sonnen and colleagues
Hes1 dynamics in the developing vertebrate embryonic tail reveal distinct oscillation patterns in different tissues: the presomitic mesoderm shows synchronized high amplitudes and the preneural tube shows variable low amplitudes.

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