Leonora Martínez Nuñez has a background in microbiology and fungal cell biology. She is now a scientific visualization specialist at UMass Chan Medical School. Find out more about Leonora’s artistic influences and her path to a career in scientific illustration.
Can you tell us about your background and what you work on now? I grew up in Mexico, where I studied Biology and later obtained a PhD in Microbiology. I immigrated to the U.S. in 2017 to train as a postdoctoral researcher studying membrane trafficking and exocytosis in different organisms. However, I’ve always been an artist at heart. In 2020, I decided to pursue a career in Scientific Illustration and started carving a path for myself in the field. I don’t have formal training as an artist, and I learned new skills through tutorials and workshops. In 2023, I left the bench and started working full-time in science communication and outreach, where I had the chance to do creative work as a scientific visualization specialist in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology Department at UMass Chan Medical School.
Portrait of a tRNA synthetase from crystallographic coordinates using PDB 1EUY. 3D digital illustration.
Were you always going to be a scientist? Officially, yes. Growing up, I was interested in viruses, insects, and chemistry. I remember myself, as a kid, telling people I wanted to be a chemist or biologist and find the cure for HIV. I laugh about that nowadays because I didn’t go into virology or immunology; instead, I studied fungi for several years of my training.
FUNGIble tokens (Art & Biology winner. VizBi 2022). 3D model and digital illustration.
And what about art – have you always enjoyed it? I was always pursuing some artistic or creative endeavors on the side, like contemporary dance, folkloric dance, theater, clay modeling and sculpture, building scale wood boats, painting, or drawing. My hometown, Xalapa in México, is such a cultural hub that it was impossible not to be drawn to these activities.
Ode to the melanin molecule. 3D digital illustration.
What or who are your most important artistic influences? I’d say that my favorite artists are Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. I want to portray such magic in my work, but that is a work in progress. In my current style, I think I was significantly influenced by Dr. Verena Resch (Luminous Lab) since I learned a lot from her tutorials. I also admire the work of Olena Shmahalo (Nature in theory). I want to add that Dr. Matteo Farinella significantly influenced me and encouraged me to pursue science illustration as a career.
Inside a chloroplast. 3D model and digital illustration.
How do you make your art? I use a computer and a free program for 3D modeling called Blender. I use a lot of Molecular Nodes (a tool fro Blender created by Dr. Brady Johnston). I mix it up with basic programs for vector and pixel-based design. I extensively use the 3D coordinates deposited in the Protein Data Base (PDB) and chemical formulas in ChemSpider and Chempub. I like to doodle ideas with pen and paper, which I then translate onto the 3D space. So far, I’m mostly doing 3D images (ultimately 2D with 3D elements), short animations, and vector graphics. My first step is always to read the science and do my research. I want to be as scientifically accurate as possible. I read a lot about different fields, and the best part is that I’m learning so much from this job.
Nucleic acid. 3D model and digital illustration.
Does your art influence your science at all, or are they separate worlds? While working at a research bench, my art helped me understand my science better. The extensive research done to translate it into a visual with the most accuracy possible makes you question everything. It also helped me present my science in a better light. My whole world is a mix of science and art, so I’d say that science influenced my art and vice versa.
Watermills in Long Nineteenth Century Ontario. Illustration in Science for the People magazine. 3D model and digital illustration.Animal cooperation. Illustration in Science for the People magazine. 3D model and digital illustration.
What are you thinking of working on next? I have many projects in the works, but I want to focus mainly on helping other scientists tell their stories visually. I’m part of a research core at UMass Chan, where I manage the Science Visualization Services, so I can help researchers translate their scientific discoveries into striking visuals. We are open for commissions! Additionally, I want to put more of my energy into community outreach. I want to encourage younger audiences to think about science and art as converging worlds, so I’ll also be working on that.
James Zwierzynski is currently a first-year PhD student at Stanford University, investigating vascular morphogenesis and growth in the placenta. With a background in humanities, James aims to combine his interests in philosophy and science to write about topics in reproductive biology and philosophy of science. We caught up with James to find out more about his career and his plans as a Node correspondent.
You’ve been selected as one of our new correspondents, congrats! What made you decide to apply?
Development is one of my favourite journals to read and I’m just a giant science nerd. Reading Development meant I very quickly ended up discovering the Node and FocalPlane. I love this broader community of developmental biologists who are really interested in the same things that I am. I also have to admit that I am a huge fangirl for John Wallingford. He’s a PI in Texas and one of the things his lab works on is Shroom3, a gene that my old lab was very interested in. I got introduced to him through his papers and I was like, “Oh my gosh, we’re working on the same gene that nobody works on!” I very quickly discovered that he writes about developmental biology for not only scientists but also for the wider community. His #DevBiolWriteClub posts on the Node advocate that to become a good scientist, you need to build your skills in reading and writing. When I saw the call for new Node Correspondents, I thought this would be a good opportunity to improve my skills in thinking, writing, and communicating about science.
Have you done much science writing or other forms of science communication before?
I think that like so many scientists, I’ve mostly done writing while preparing manuscripts, but I haven’t done writing where I pick a topic and write a long form post. I think that is something I’d like to build on because it’s a skill that will not only help me become better at communicating more broadly but make me a more well-rounded scientist.
This quarter I’m teaching in a course for undergrads called ‘bioBUDS: Building Up Developing Scientists’. It’s a student- and community-oriented course, focused on helping students from underrepresented backgrounds in science thrive through workshops, skills, and resources. I’m giving a lecture later this quarter that I’ve titled ‘Meta-Science’. It’s about what can, should (or even shouldn’t!) science tell us. I plan to go through why the scientific thought process is the way it is. We often think of the scientific method as generating a hypothesis, gathering data, and then reporting your results. But when you look back at the intellectual history of science, there are cultural and political events that have shaped the way that we think about science. Especially in the Interwar period, when logical positivism sought to unite science and philosophy, and proofs and direct observation as “truth” in science. I would argue that maybe we don’t have to think about science in this way – it actually has tough ramifications for the public’s view of science as purely “objective”. I will also explain how science relies upon both revision but also reduction. On the grand scale it’s all just hypotheses; you are never really going to prove anything for sure. That lecture is one of the ways I’m trying to do more science communication and I’d like to do more through other channels too, depending on how busy I am throughout the quarter.
What is your background and what are you currently researching on?
Most of my research experience was at Indiana University School of Medicine; I was there for about two and a half years after I graduated from the University of Notre Dame. I worked on heart development, and the pathways altered in structural heart defects, specifically focusing on non-canonical Wnt signalling. I fell in love with research and decided I was going to apply for a PhD. Now I’m at Stanford and joined Kristy Red-Horse’s lab. I pivoted a little bit from a cardiac lab to a vascular biology lab. I’m specifically interested in vascular morphogenesis and growth in my favourite organ, which is the woefully understudied placenta. There are so many mysteries about it. I’m really excited about finding out more.
What ideas do you have for the Node?
One of my ideas relates to my current research. I consider myself a developmental biologist who’s concerned with vascular biology but also reproduction. I plan to write about reproductive biology, which I think is a really understudied field.
I would also like to delve into the ideas in philosophy of science. One of the things that really inspired me as a scientist is my background in the humanities and my training as a philosopher. I’d like to explore the assumptions behind the way that we do science, and the implications of some scientific work that we don’t often think about. A wonderful example of this that I read recently was the book, Embryos Under the Microscope: The Diverging Meanings of Life, by Jane Maienschein. She traces the history of microscopy and embryology alongside advances in technologies, such as cloning and IVF. She argues that the embryo in many forms has influenced the way in which we culturally and politically think about science itself. Now, her book is approaching a decade old, yet the ideas she presents are perhaps more relevant than ever. I would really love to write about the ways in which the cutting edge of developmental and stem cell biology are still important, even though we’re not cloning Dolly the Sheep. There was controversy this past year over the recent stem cell embryo models; we had research that got picked up by the media and brought into the public realm outside of the scientific community. I think that writing about these things in a really thoughtful way is important. I would like to write about what is developmental biology doing today, what does that mean for the world and how we’re thinking about science.
What do you hope to gain from the experience of being a Node correspondent?
My ultimate goal is to inspire people to read something that I’ve written and be excited about it. I hope other people would be excited about science and science-adjacent topics, specifically related to development because that’s the thing that I love.
My secondary goal, thinking about my own growth, is to grow my skills in writing, take ideas from my head and put them on paper in a cohesive way. I think that it will not only help me to be a better communicator in different ways, but I would argue that would make me a better scientist too.
Is there anything that people might find surprising about you?
Some people are surprised that I studied philosophy for a while. I had kind of an odd path to my PhD. Another surprising fact is that I am a twin, and my oldest brothers are also twins. It’s a little bit weird to have so many twins in the family, but I’m special in that I’m the only scientist!
Outside of the lab, what do you like to do in your spare time?
In my spare time, I spoil my cat and a dog. I read through tonnes of books, and I have an ever-expanding book collection. I also make a lot of pottery – the most recent things I’ve been working on are a series of weird fruits with anthropomorphic facial features on them. I’d like to make science-inspired pottery too; as somebody who is obsessed with the placenta, I think it’s the perfect coaster shape. Kristy, my PI, much of her career on collateral artery development in the heart. I think a heart cross-section would be a great coaster as well. I would also like to make little espresso cups for the espresso machine in the lab and carve something science-related on the side of the cups, like the different stages of embryo development. I have all these ideas, but I just need to take the time to go to the studio, it ends up being really analogous to my work in the lab. I have a whole list on my computer of things to do in the ceramic studio right next to the list of things to do in the lab.
Weird fruits that James made in the ceramics studio.
A fully finished sponge holder that James made for his mom.
“I want to show children that mathematics is not boring!”
Growing up, Luisma Escudero has always been fascinated by geometry and how patterns are created in nature.That fascination led Luisma to do biology in his undergraduate degree, followed by a PhD in developmental biology, studying the peripheral nervous system development in Drosophila. As a postdoc, his research focussed on morphogenesis. Now, he is a professor and researcher at the University of Seville and Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBiS). His lab combines developmental biology, computational biology, biophysics, and mathematics to understand how tissues are organised in development and disease contexts.
In 2018, his group discovered a geometric shape in epithelial cells that had not been described before — the scutoid. The work attracted a lot of attention from the media. Eventually an editor from a publisher approached Luisma. “They propose that I could write a serious book about how mathematicians, physicists and biologists got together to make the discovery.” recounted Luisma over a Zoom call. “I was very happy about this, but after a while I realised that I was quickly going to get bored writing that book!” Instead, he proposed to the publisher about writing a book with a lot of illustrations, because those scientific concepts need to be visualised for people to understand. But it was out the publisher’s budget to find an illustrator.
In the end, Luisma contacted an illustrator, Raquel Gu, who has experience drawing scientific and mathematical concepts. The two of them started searching for a publisher. Most were not interested, but eventually they found one, who suggested they should focus on writing for children. “We decided that the book will feature me and my children — it was going to be a family book. I was so happy about that decision!”
Fast forward to February 2023, the illustrated book “Papá ¿cómo se enroscan las caracolas?” was published in Spain. In the book, Luisma and his family (three curious children and a sarcastic cat that represents Valentina, Luisma’s wife) go on a walk to discover the scutoid shape and other beautiful geometries hidden in nature.
Cover of the book “Papá ¿cómo se enroscan las caracolas?”
“The book starts off with my children making jokes about my research and me explaining how my research is like a hobby to me,” said Luisma while flipping through the book, which he had right beside his office desk. “Then we go on a walk looking for different geometries in nature. There are 15 chapters. 3 of them are about scutoids. We talked about the more traditional patterns like honeycomb and zebra stripes.” The book goes on to explain more complicated concepts such as the shape of eggs and butterfly wings patterns.
Illustrating scientific concepts
Explaining 3D shapes and patterns in 2D must be challenging, but Luisma said it was all credits to Raquel, the illustrator. “Everything we explain in the book is supported by the drawings. The illustrator used a lot of imagination. For example, she managed to show that scutoids have different neighbours apically and basally in an illustration. I think Raquel hated me when she had to draw all the lava rocks and the tiny fractal cones in the Romanesco broccoli!”
The scientist-illustrator partnership worked well for Luisma and Raquel right from the beginning. They first designed the characters, assigning different colours to every person’s (and the cat’s) speech bubble. For every chapter they met up to discuss all the details, including where the speech bubbles would be and how many times each character speaks. “Raquel also does humour comic strips so she would put jokes in the illustrations. It has been like a lot of fun doing this with her and now we are very good friends. She loves the children, and the children love her. It’s been a very nice collaboration.”
When asked about how they manage to find the balance of communicating the essence of science while making it simple enough for kids to understand and find interesting, Luisma acknowledged that it was a challenge. “We had to keep the story short and make it into a dialogue. I would test my ideas with my eldest child Margarita. I would ask her questions to see what the answer was and what follow up questions she would ask. I had to simplify the explanations a lot in the story, but the scientific rigor is still there. I cannot invent something to make it easier.”
Chapter titles of the book
“It has been an adventure!”
To Luisma, publishing the book has been a fun process. “I was really emotional. I never thought I was going to publish a book, nonetheless a children’s book about what I like! Even though I was writing the book while there were a lot of other things going on at work, I was always ahead of the deadline, because for me it was like a hobby.”
Since the book’s publication, Luisma has given talks and attended book signings at book fairs around Spain — Granada, Seville, and the biggest one in Madrid. He also gave presentations at schools and libraries about the book. “The presentations at the library have been a lot of fun because I did a small performance with my children. We prepared a detailed script together and acted out some scenes from the book. My youngest one was only 3 years old when we started doing this.”
To accompany the book, Luisma designed a cut-out activity to give to children at book fairs and library events.
Luisma has always been an avid science communicator. Now, he is taking advantage of the popularity of the sctutoid to continue this path. A textbook publisher even asked to feature Luisma and the scutoid discovery in their primary school material. “For me it’s crazy that a paper we published five years ago is now being taught in schools!”
Since the book, Luisma has been working on a few other projects, but he admitted that it has not been as easy as the first book. He has to put more effort to be motivated. He has recently been asked to write and deliver a 5-minute standup comedy script for secondary school students about geometry and other topics like artificial intelligence.
“I feel like when scientists do science communication, they can really make a change and get more children and adults interested in science. When I was in the UK, I felt that the importance of science is more valued. There are research charities, lots of TV programmes about science and private institutions that fund research. Here in Spain, it’s not the same. One of my wishes when I came back to Spain 14 years ago was to get people more into science.”
Translating the book to other languages
Luisma is actively trying to find a publisher in the UK. “A lot of people asked me if the book is in English. That’s why I’m trying to get the interest of some UK publishers. Nothing in the book is very local to Spain and it’s about nature so it shouldn’t be too difficult to translate.”
Wouldn’t it be great for kids from non-Spanish speaking backgrounds to enjoy Luisma’s book and learn to appreciate the hidden geometries in nature too?
“In developmental biology people say that epithelial cells are the building blocks of an organism. I also have more or less 100 kilos of construction blocks — they are the Spanish version of Lego, called Tente. I played with Tente as a child to the point of almost becoming a professional!”
It’s now been 4 months since I started as a Junior Group Leader at the ZMBP in Tübingen, Germany. And I love it. But while I quickly found the literal fertilizer, there are many things I am still learning or that I am not even aware of yet. I came in expecting to learn a lot in my first few months, but my biggest surprise has been how it feels like I have accomplished very little. I’ve been making progress but there are so many things going on that each individual task feels like it’s barely moving.
Every week I talk to my family and initially I struggle to say what I did that week. But then I start remembering and it turns out that while things do move slowly, a lot of things are moving. So here is me (1) complaining about the things I didn’t manage to do, (2) realizing all the things I did do, and (3) concluding that I need to adjust my expectations and all will be alright.
I didn’t write the outline for my final postdoc paper, plan experiments for that postdoc paper, start our new lab’s big EMS screen, finish optimizing tissue culture techniques, characterize or even genotype all the mutant lines I received, or generate any transgenic lines. All of those feel big and like I should have done at least several of them. They each live rent free in my head. But on the other hand, nothing has spectacularly failed (yet) and there is plenty of time.
The things I did do feel smaller even though some are objectively bigger:
– I recruited 2 PhD students and 2 BSc students. While only one of those has started so far, by April 1st we’ll have 6 people in the lab (including me and Steffi, our lab’s technician). In the process of recruiting, I learned a lot about interviewing and hiring, but also about how our institute and the DFG are organized.
– I decorated my office. It needed some plants and it is a great place to work now.
My office. A variety of office plants that are surviving this far and some of mine and my friends’ prints on the walls.
– I gave talks for BSc students Nanoscience, MSc students Plant Biology, an online symposium (pre-recorded), our entire institute, and the DFG (German Research Foundation). On one hand they were all around the same topic, on the other hand they all had different the time slots (12 – 90 minutes), audience, and effects on my nerves.
– I got a grant! The DFG interview for the Emmy Noether went well and 2 days after I got an informal phone call indicating the committee had recommended my grant for funding. We officially started Feb 1st. With this grant we can expand our lab with 2 PhD students and a Postdoc and do the expensive experiments I proposed.
– I learned a lot of German. This is maybe more a personal than professional achievement, but I will count it for both. While I don’t have to teach in German and everyone at the ZMBP speaks English I feel that it’ll make my life a lot easier. My speaking is still hesitant, but I can understand most in a one on one conversation.
– Steffi and I set up plasmid and seed stocks from the materials I brought and have started cloning in preparation for the new students joining. The first destination vectors are on their way!
The first rounds of plants for setting up our seed collection and for bulking plant lines for future experiments.
Overall, my distorted feeling of not getting anything done comes from how I used to organize my time and attention during my PhD and postdoc. I had gotten really used to the workflow I had as a postdoc: managing a few projects in parallel but having enough time and flexibility to really push one forward when I want to.
Right now I still spend quite some time in the lab because a) I like it, b) we are still small, c) I have the skills to get stuff done and train people. But because my time is fragmented, things don’t feel like they move very fast. And I don’t think that is going to get a lot better any time soon. While right now every week is different and surprising, soon I will hopefully have more of a routine and things should start to feel more manageable. This is of course all relative…
In addition, I’ll try to change my mindset, instead of regularly feeling down because things seem to move slowly, I should take some time to recognize the progress we’re making. While I never really got into the “Gratitude Journal” lifestyle, maybe parts of that can help me feel more positive. Not that I am overall feeling negative! I just need to re-contextualize and re-set my expectations. Right now, I keep enjoying learning on the job and developing our research. All while making some mistakes but progressing slowly but surely. Fingers crossed!
Winter in Tübingen. We had some cold and snow in December but since then it has been relatively mild and sunny. (5 votes) Loading...
To continue our efforts in tackling difficult aspects of the academic work environment, we organized another seminar at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (TU Dresden) to discuss the issue of “Power Abuse in Academia” with Professor Daniel Leising from the TU Dresden Faculty of Psychology. Leising specializes in research into the psychology of judgements. Through his work as member of the Network against Abuse of Power in Science (https://www.netzwerk-mawi.de/en/), chairing the DGPs-Commission on Incentive structure, power abuse and scientific misconduct (since 2022) and detailed analyses of cases from outside academia, he strives to bring the topic of “Power Abuse” into the light and under scrutiny.
Power abuse by few can lead to effects felt by many
Prof. Leising began the seminar with a preface noting that this topic is not only of crucial importance but also highly sensitive. In order to facilitate a constructive discussion, it is important to stress that many in the position of power in academia are respectful, decent people with every intention to put public money to good use for the best of society. The issues discussed in the seminar relate to the few who take advantage of the system mostly for their own personal gain, why the current system is so susceptible to these types of abuses, and ultimately, how far-reaching the repercussions of the abuse by those few often are.
In order to abuse power, one must have power – defined as the “ability to exercise one’s will over others even if they resist or oppose” (Max Weber). Power differentials have a clear function in a work environment with the purpose of streamlining the achievement of shared goals. In science, these goals are:
Providing high-quality research for the benefit of society
Providing high-quality teaching of students
Providing high-quality training and mentoring for Early Career Researchers (ECRs)
Responsible and efficient use of public resources in working towards these goals
Abuse of Power takes place when power is illegitimately exercised to achieve personal goals (or goals of a group that a person belongs to) at the expense of others, and the severity of that abuse hinges on how long-lasting the likely effects are and the extent of the difference between the net benefits of the person in power and those of other affected parties. Prof. Leising displayed this via a series of informative graphs showing different types of scenarios (Fig. 1) and the respective net benefits for each form of power abuse, which can include: misappropriation of resources, exploitation, bullying, sexual harassment, and different forms of scientific misconduct.
Figure 1: Net benefits in different scenarios of power abuse. Green dot: positive, red dot: negative. Reproduced with permission of Prof. Leising.
Susceptibility of academia to power abuse
In the next part of the seminar Prof. Leising discussed the main causes for occurrences of Power Abuse specifically in the German Academic System. He began by introducing the Toxic Triangle model (Padilla et al, 2007) which highlights the roles of Destructive Leaders, Susceptible Followers and Conducive Environments in bringing about unethical conduct in organizations. He then addressed each arm of the triangle separately to yield a composite view of what specifically about (German) academia contributes to the issue.
Our current academic system selects its leaders on the base of two major qualifications: the ability to produce impactful science as rated by the number of publications in reputable journals, and the ability to present yourself as capable of conducting said impactful research via the acquisition of funding (grants, scholarships etc). Dishonesty in research, which can contribute to those qualifications, is unfortunately likely to be rewarded because the metrics are easily manipulated (e.g., authorships), quality control is tightly linked to the occasionally faulty peer review process, and sanctions are rare and inadequate. Additionally, the selection process only secondarily focuses on interpersonal skills, teaching qualifications, and experience or predispositions to leading or supervising other people. Therefore, this selection pressure may work in favor of people with personality dispositions like narcissism, low honesty-humility and even psychopathy. Once a person with those traits is in a position of power they can have a negative impact on their colleagues, their departments and organizations, which disproportionally outweighs their relatively small numbers.
Within the second arm of the toxic triangle (Susceptible Followers) are the Conformers and Colluders of the power abuse. Conformers can be people who are aware of the toxic behaviors but feel unable to stand up to a bully due to their low maturity or perceived hopelessness. Colluders, on the other hand, may just have a similar world-view as a problematic leader, high personal ambitions or bad values and thus actively promote the agenda of a power abuser.
Finally, there is the Conducive Environment where there is a high degree of positional power combined with low levels of institutional oversight, restraint and consequences. This is the case in academia, where Professors and Group Leaders hold a large amount of power in a variety of areas (Table 1) and, as mentioned before, dishonesty and antisocial behaviour can be beneficial to those individuals in light of insufficient control and sanctioning.
Recommendations for systemic and local structural changes
Towards the end of the seminar Prof. Leising focused on the recommended structural changes that could help to prevent instances of Power Abuse in Academia. Many of those were far-reaching and difficult-to-attain systemic changes for example in the publishing sphere (e.g., not for profit-publishing, open and citeable peer review, limiting the number of authorships per researcher), or within large organizations (external oversight, establishing effective complaints procedures). Others were simpler, locally-implementable measures (Table 1). Of key importance here would be the more equal redistribution of power such that dependencies and loyalties among individuals in professional relationships can be avoided.
Although it may sometimes be difficult to discuss the topic of power abuse in a well-balanced and objective manner, it is crucial to continue talking about potential ways for improvement, even if by small increments. The most practical recommendations suggested in the seminar were something that all members of scientific institutions could discuss together and potentially implement to make even small strides towards bettering our scientific community.
Table 1: List of selected powers of Group Leaders and Professors and potential measures to distribute them more evenly, to reduce the potential for abuse
References:
Padilla, A., Hogan, R., Kaiser, R.B. (2007) The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly. 18 (3): 176-194
We are delighted to be partnering with the British Society for Developmental Biology and the International Society for Regenerative Biology to deliver a one-day international meeting tackling the biggest questions in tissue development and regeneration through interdisciplinary collaborations.
Development is a breathtaking process whereby a single cell gives rise to all of the body’s specialised tissues. How would you reverse engineer parts of this process to re-create tissue if it’s lost or damaged? This meeting will bring together leading developmental and regenerative biologists to discuss the latest research and identify future scientific directions for innovation and collaboration.
Please find a poster for the event with more details attached – we have an excellent programme of exciting international speakers, including a keynote address by Professor Ashley Seifert from the University of Kentucky. The day will feature plenty of coffee breaks, a conference lunch, and a networking drinks reception.
There will also be an opportunity for early career researchers to present posters and short oral presentations.
The deadline for poster abstract submission is 11 March 2024 5pm.
Early bird registration closes on 1 April 2024 – don’t miss out!
In the first webinar of 2024, Development’s Deputy Editor, Steve Wilson (UCL), hosted three early career researchers studying signalling and early embryogenesis.
We are delighted to announce three new Node correspondents — please join us to welcome Alex Neaverson, James Zwierzynski and Shreyasi Mukherjee. We look forward to working with them over the coming year to produce a wide range of content on the Node!
Alex Neaverson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Cambridge, studying regeneration of the Hensen’s Node in chick embryos. Alex is a keen artist and has recently got into scientific illustration while doing an internship at a research charity. As a Node correspondent, she plans to use her artistic skills to create illustrated career timelines of developmental biologists and draw graphical summaries to highlight research conducted by different teams around the world. Read our interview with Alex.
James Zwierzynski is currently a first-year PhD student at Stanford University, investigating vascular morphogenesis and growth in the placenta. With a background in humanities, James aims to combine his interests in philosophy and science to write about topics in reproductive biology and philosophy of science. Read our interview with James.
Shreyasi Mukherjee is a postdoc at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, using stem cell-derived embryo models to study how epigenetic complexes regulate tissue organization and cell fate decisions during very early embryonic development. Shreyasi is keen to write about the fast-evolving field of stem cell-based embryo models. Having experienced working in India, the UK and the US, she also plans to highlight the scientists and research from the Global South countries. Read our interview with Shreyasi.
Our sister community site, FocalPlane, has also announced their new correspondents. Head over to their website to find out more about the new FocalPlane correspondents.
What is the set of instructions that directs cells as they form a tissue, and how did this set of instructions evolve throughout species evolution? In a new study, we generated organoids from a variety of species that can be utilized to answer these questions and more.
Rabbit mammary gland organoid
Organoids are miniature versions of an organ, grown in a 3D tissue culture. To understand the process of development and regeneration, our lab uses organoids. Our lab uses organoids that are generated from single cells and develop into architecturally and cellularly complex tissues. This model offers a valuable window into the developmental process.
Our model organ is the mammary gland, one of the most uniquely regenerative tissues and a hallmark of all mammals. This remarkable organ develops and regenerates mostly postnatally. During the embryonic period, a rudimentary network of epithelial ducts is established and remains dormant until puberty, when it expands and forms a ductal-lobular network. After the pubertal expansion, the mammary gland is capable of further maturation and expansion upon pregnancy and lactation, when it will mature to its full capacity as a milk-producing organ.
Unlike other organs that consistently regenerate, like the skin and intestinal epithelia, the mammary gland undergoes cycles of regeneration and degeneration but those are not pre-determined or necessarily continuous, they depend on specific hormonal cues and can be many years apart. As such, the mammary gland exists in a state of readiness to fulfill its full developmental capacity.
Remarkably, despite years of research, we are still unclear about the identity of the cells that regenerate the mammary gland, and how exactly they do it. Organoids offer the opportunity to observe mammary tissue formation from single cells in an experimental setting under controlled conditions.
Mammary organoid technology was originally developed for human breast tissue, where it aims to be an alternative to in-vivo experiments that we can’t do in humans. But if organoids can be an alternative to human tissue, perhaps they can also be an alternative to the many other mammals we cannot study.
Questions like: how did the mammary gland emerge during evolution? What regeneration mechanism did the mammary gland develop throughout? What is the precursor gland that the mammary gland evolved from? If the mammary gland evolved from a coiled apocrine gland, as is currently thought, when and how did the branching of the gland appear during evolution? How did gradual genetic changes lead to the wide variety of phenotypes manifested across mammals today? These questions and more can be studied by exploring the mammary glands of mammalian groups that diverged early in mammalian evolution, such as monotremes and marsupials.
Monotremes, which diverged from eutherians about 190 million years ago, are mammals that lay eggs and then lactate the hatched offspring. Their mammary gland is primitive and is akin to a sweat gland associated with a hair follicle. Monotremes consist of only two species: the platypus and the echidna, both with restricted global spread and much fewer individuals compared to other mammalian groups. Marsupials, which diverged from eutherians about 166 million years ago, have more evolved mammary glands, but some still retain the hair association before pubertal development (it disappears in the adult gland).
The limited access to these species can be overcome by using organoid models. The ability to manipulate these organoids genetically also opens the potential to explore how genetic changes may affect the phenotype within and between species, effectively simulating mammalian evolution.
Other questions that can be answered by exploring mammary gland development, using organoids, relate to the regulation of milk production and milk composition. For example, the simultaneous secretion of different milk compositions in the Tammar wallaby indicates that milk composition can be regulated at the local tissue level, but it is unclear how [1-4]. Some species exhibit delayed involution, which is the degeneration of the gland when lactation stops, and the mechanisms behind this delay are not entirely understood [5-7]. It may assist in exploring questions related to breast cancer, as some mammals seem to be resistant to this type of cancer while others are highly susceptible [8].
To lay the foundations for exploring these questions, we sought to grow mammary gland organoids from single primary cells derived from 9 different species: 8 eutherian species (aka placental mammals), and one marsupial – the gray short-tailed opossum.
It took some trial and error (aka the “heuristic approach”) to reach culture conditions that support the growth of mammary organoids from all these species. In the process, we found that some but not all species organoids required inhibition of the ROCK protein to form branches in 3D culture. The mechanisms behind the involvement of ROCK proteins in branching are still unclear, but a model system of organoids from species that require the inhibitor and those that do not may help shed light on how ROCK proteins participate in branching morphogenesis.
In conclusion, our exploration of mammary gland development across various species using organoids offers a pioneering view into the evolution, development, and function of this unique organ. Mammary organoids stand as a versatile and powerful tool and will hopefully guide novel approaches to studying tissue regeneration, milk production regulation, and cancer resistance.
References
1. Green, B., K. Newgrain, and J. Merchant, Changes in milk composition during lactation in the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Australian Journal of Biological Sciences, 1980. 33(1): p. 35-42.
2. Nicholas, K.R., Asynchronous dual lactation in a marsupial, the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 1988. 154(2): p. 529-536.
3. Sharp, J.A., et al., The tammar wallaby: A marsupial model to examine the timed delivery and role of bioactives in milk. Gen Comp Endocrinol, 2017. 244: p. 164-177.
4. Wanyonyi, S.S., et al., The extracellular matrix locally regulates asynchronous concurrent lactation in tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Matrix Biology, 2013. 32(6): p. 342-351.
5. Sharp, J.A., et al., Fur seal adaptations to lactation: insights into mammary gland function. Current topics in developmental biology, 2006. 72: p. 275-308.
6. Sharp, J.A., et al., The fur seal-a model lactation phenotype to explore molecular factors involved in the initiation of apoptosis at involution. J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia, 2007. 12(1): p. 47-58.
7. Sharp, J.A., C. Lefevre, and K.R. Nicholas, Lack of functional alpha-lactalbumin prevents involution in Cape fur seals and identifies the protein as an apoptotic milk factor in mammary gland involution. BMC Biol, 2008. 6: p. 48.
8. Munson, L. and A. Moresco, Comparative pathology of mammary gland cancers in domestic and wild animals. Breast Dis, 2007. 28: p. 7-21.
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