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An afternoon in the museum with an exploded skull and a 3.5m python skeleton

Posted by , on 19 March 2024

The people and the research behind the exhibition ‘Growing a backbone’

Where can you find a Victorian era ‘exploded skull’ and a 3.5-meter Burmese Python skeleton with every single one of its vertebrae and ribs laid out in a straight line? The answer is the University Museum of Zoology (Cambridge, UK), which recently opened an exhibition ‘Growing a backbone: Rise of the vertebrates’. One Sunday afternoon I decided to pop into the museum to have a look around.

Instead of having a separate space for the exhibition, the exhibits are dotted around the display cases in the museum. Trying to spot the ‘Growing a backbone’ display cards around the museum is like a treasure hunt. From skulls, jaws, teeth, spines, to limbs, visitors are taken along a journey to discover the evolution of the key features in vertebrates that make them unique.

Behind this exhibition is active research being conducted at the University of Cambridge on understanding vertebrate axial skeleton evolution. I reached out to Jason Head, Andrew Gillis and Kate Criswell, researchers working on the project, to find out more about their research on vertebrate evolution and the curation of the exhibition.

Evolution of the vertebrate axial skeleton

The project started with a conversation between Jason, Andrew and Kate. Jason is Professor of Vertebrate Evolution and Ecology and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge, Jason and his colleague Dave Polly had quantitatively analyzed snake skeletal morphology and found that Hox regionalization is maintained in snakes. Then, Jason met Andrew and Kate, who had been working with the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) as a model system for vertebrate development. “We realize no one had looked in detail at axial skeletal evolution across jawed vertebrates,” said Jason, “and for a long time, people have paid little attention to the diversity of fishes.”

The three of them eventually obtained a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with the aim of integrating anatomical, developmental, and environmental data to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the vertebrate axial skeleton. The experimental aspect of the project was led by Kate, then a postdoc in Andrew’s lab, now Assistant Professor at Saint Francis University.

Kate looked at the different anatomical regions in vertebral columns of cartilaginous fishes (skates, sharks and stingrays) by studying skeletal anatomy and gene expression during development. “Fishes were thought to just have a trunk and a tail. I obtained CT scans of adult skates, created 3D models of each vertebra, and used morphometrics to quantify the shape change along the anterior-posterior axis.” She found that the skate do show some differences in shape in the vertebrae along the axial column, and the expression of certain Hox genes during development matches up with this adult pattern.

Looking beyond the little skate, the team investigated whether fish skeletons more broadly have axial regionalization, by looking at 90(!) fish species. Kate recounted, “a few times I got most of the way through segmenting or landmarking a vertebral column, only to find some defect in a vertebra (this happens a lot in fish!) and have to start from the beginning on another specimen of that same species.”

All the hard work was worth it eventually: the team discovered that the vertebral columns of many cartilaginous fishes have more regions than just a trunk and a tail. Kate said, “I started to get excited after running my analyses a few times on different fish, and consistently getting results suggesting that their vertebral columns were a lot more complicated than the textbooks had indicated. Fish are often treated as primitive or simple, but their anatomy can really surprise us when we look closely!”

Telling the story of vertebrate evolution

Evolutionary developmental biology is fascinating to many people, and creatures like skates and giant snakes often attract public attention. The ‘Growing a backbone’ exhibition in the museum is the perfect opportunity to showcase active research in vertebrate evolution.

Instead of creating the exhibition from scratch, Jason and his team made use of preexisting exhibits in the museum, by adding additional text about the development and evolution of different characteristics in vertebrates. The exhibition also included new specimens from the museum collection. One of Jason’s favorites is the Victorian era exploded human skulls, which were teaching utensils for medical students and zoologists in the mid to late 1800s. “The bones of the displayed skulls are pulled apart,” explained Jason. “The bones are on little armatures so that students could pull them back and forth to see the internal structure and the relationships of the bones.”

Another highlight for Jason is the Burmese Python skeleton. “The Python was completely disarticulated. Our conservator, Natalie Jones, and I re-articulated the skull, and then we laid out the vertebral column and ordinated the ribs in a straight line. We even have one of the pelvic bones still preserved in the specimen.”

But not everything Jason wanted to include in the exhibit ended up being displayed— such as the skull of a sperm whale. “We have a display case about body size, explaining why vertebrates are basically animal giants, in part because we have evolved features allowing us to elevate our metabolism to be very plastic and eat anything that moves. But the sperm whale skull is rather large, so we didn’t really have a place for it.”

Writing museum display texts

Even though Jason has been working in museums for a long time, he acknowledged that it’s sometimes tricky to communicate complex concepts using very simple terminology. “I think it’s very hard to get consensus on how you should be targeting an exhibit for an audience. I tend to increase the expectation of audience comprehension. I think that a good exhibit challenges but doesn’t frustrate — you can introduce new terms and concepts, without blowing people’s minds to the point they can’t understand what you’re talking about. There’s always tension between the people working on the exhibit and the people who did the research. Compromise is how I’d say it works.”

Embedding public outreach into the core of research

On the Sunday afternoon I visited the museum, the gallery was bustling with families and tourists. I was surprised to hear that the museum has not always been accessible by the public. Jason said that historically, the galleries were used for teaching Cambridge students. In recent years, the museum has made an effort to open up the galleries to the public, with temporary exhibitions such as ‘Growing a backbone’ to highlight findings from active research.

Jason thinks researchers should always try to incorporate outreach work as part of their grant proposal, which is what his team did in the NERC grant. “This is a great opportunity to educate the public, tell them the story of vertebrate evolution, and show them the homologies that they might not expect, for example, the fact that our teeth are basically modified scales!” said Jason. “It also gives funding agencies immediate deliverables, to show that our money is spent appropriately, and we can give back to the taxpayers who funded the research. As the exhibition will be here till September, we’ll also be looking at incorporating it into the museum’s public education and outreach programme.”

Filling in the gaps

We are still far from getting a complete picture about the evolution of vertebrate axial skeleton. “As a paleontologist,” said Jason, “I’m dealing with missing data from fossil records. It’s like you’re in a mansion at night: you have to figure out the entire layout of the mansion by looking in the dark with only a small box of matches.” That’s why Jason stressed the importance of expanding taxonomy sampling. “The field has been using the model taxon approach where you take one or two taxa from each major clade. We’ve got a decent sampling across the major divisions of vertebrates, but within the divisions, there’s not much we know. What we need to do is to continue to sample across phyla and look more into the diversity of vertebrates.”

“Most developmental biologists look at developmental processes and then think about what it means in terms of evolution. I’m a paleontologist. I go the other way,” said Jason. “I look at characteristics across phylogeny and then make inferences about the developmental mechanisms that might have led to that.” Kate, also a paleontologist by training studying an extinct group of fossil fishes called placoderms, has since expanded her research focus to include developmental biology: “I think palaeontology and developmental biology are complementary fields that help answer the same evolutionary questions using different approaches.”

Thank you to Jason and Kate for taking the time to explain their research and the process behind curating the exhibition. If you happen to be in Cambridge, UK, do pay a visit to the University Museum of Zoology. The ‘Growing a backbone: Rise of the Vertebrates’ exhibition is running from February to September 2024.

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Can the post-doc shortage get even worse?

Posted by , on 18 March 2024

The road of academia is a pretty established ladder, PhD, then postdoc, then faculty. I am approaching the end of my PhD and the opportunities seemed endless. At least, when considering the current situation. There seems to be phenomenon that is now common in every scientific conference in the last couple years: many principal investigators coincidently appear to be looking for postdocs. Part of the reason could be due to recent reports have noted noting a 10% decrease in postdocs supported by NIH grants from 2020 to 2022, additionally, each of those years saw a 4% average decrease in postdocs across the science and health fields [1]. There are many reasons to blame for the decline in the interest of pursuing an academic postdoc, the main one being the cost of living surge in every state across the country. By April of last year, the prices of the essential needs had increased by 13% since 2021 while the NIH recommended minimum wage only increased a 4% in the same time frame [2,3]. For many, an academic postdoc is no longer financially viable and the biotech industry has not wasted the opportunity to keep up with their increasing demand which is projected to expand by an additional 15% by 2030 [4].

All these recent changes should point to an open post-doc market for someone looking to stay in academia. However, there is an additional demographic, that I happen to be part of, which makes up for over half of the postdocs in the United States who do not have the flexibility to shift to an industry position, which in many cases is a shorter term, riskier decision. Over a third of science and engineering doctorate degrees awarded in the US are to foreign nationals [5]. With another presidential election on the horizon, there is a potential risk to the 30,000 plus international postdoc visas that would need eventual renewing or to be newly awarded. The previous presidential administration cut down the number of green cards awarded by 18% across the board, and continued cuts is which is among the promises for the upcoming elections [6]. This limits academic institutions through increase in legal and processing fees, making international hires no longer viable. For those with the American dream willing to take a postdoc salary, the roadblocks might just get worse. Not only, the salaries will keep falling behind those offered in industry, but academic institutions may become more limited in the amount of help they can offer a postdoc in the efforts of finding a more stable migration status. As someone approaching the transition stage into a post PhD life, my options are were severely limited by the number of institutions that had their hands tied in terms of what they could offer, and with the elections just around the corner, stability is a privilege that is hard to come by.

It should be normal to have these discussions, I hope many are open to connect and try to point each other to possible opportunities and share what we are thinking for our next steps. Are you close to finishing your PhD? What are your options?


1- Gewin V. 2023, Postdoctoral researchers warn NIH that cost of living are gutting the workforce. Nature Career News https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02202-7#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20postdocs%20supported,respectively%2C%20between%202020%20and%202021.

2- Winters, M. and Cortes G. 2023. These 5 charts show how much 2 years of inflation have really cost you. CNBC Spend https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/charts-how-much-inflation-increased-since-2021.html

3- 2022. Postdoc Salary in the US. PostdocInUSA https://postdocinusa.com/postdoc-salary-usa/

4- Ameco Research. 2023. Biotechnology Market is Anticipated to Reach USD 1,334 billion by 2030, Growing at a substantial CAGR of 15.5% from 2022 to 2030. LinkedIn Open Immersive Reader https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/biotechnology-market-anticipated-reach-usd-1334-billion/

5- National Science Board: Science & Engineering Indicators. 2020. Foreign-born students and workers in the US science and engineering enterprise. NSF https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/sei/one-pagers/Foreign-Born.pdf

6- Nowrasteh, A. 2021. President Trump reduced legal immigration. He did not reduce illegal immigration. Cato Institute https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immigration-he-did-not-reduce-illegal-immigration


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Mexican cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus): a non-model organism research story with Dr. Claudia Patricia Ornelas-García

Posted by , on 16 March 2024

Dr. Patricia Ornelas-García seated.

Recently, Brent Foster and I published an article on non-model organism (NMO) research, where we interviewed several researchers working across the globe on the challenges, rewards, and the particular questions they investigate while working on (relatively) little-studied organisms. Although we aimed to provide a bird’s-eye view of NMO research in a pot pourri-style article, we found that they each of our interviewees had many interesting things to say that we thought it was a shame not to share with a wider audience. For this reason, we decided to publish the full interviews as well, which we will be doing over the next several weeks.

This interview is with Dr. Claudia Patricia Ornelas-García, investigator at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), who works on the Mexican cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) and other freshwater fish, looking at their systematics and speciation. The full transcript of the interview is below:

Can you summarise your work in a few sentences?

I work mainly with the systematics and speciation mechanisms in freshwater fish species. Since my PhD, I have worked with Astyanax, a very interesting genus because it is distributed from Argentina [all the way] to the Mexico-US border. During my PhD we reconstructed the evolutionary history of the genus in a particular region identified as Mesoamerica. But in general terms, what we were doing in that project was to analyse four molecular markers, three mitochondrial and one nuclear, to recover the systematics of the group. During the development of the project, I was very interested in the lacustrine systems of Central American Lakes in Nicaragua and Mexico. In these lacustrine systems there are a pair of morpho-species that were sympatric and we were very interested in the correlation between the morphology and the genetic differentiation, because when we were doing this systematic group, they at least seemed to be sharing some haplotypes in the mitochondria. We continued working on the ecological divergence, ecomorphological divergence, and some morphometrics in this pair of species, and more recently with RadSeq Data.

Years later, when I came to Mexico and established my own lab, we started working with cavefish. Actually, when I started, my first job was in Querétaro, very close to the caves in San Luis Potosí. I started working on the caves and I fell in love immediately because the environment is so amazing. It’s very particular. And the system is also very interesting. As you know, there are a lot of genomic resources available nowadays. In the beginning, when I started working with this group, there were maybe 10 or 11 cave populations already analysed from [a] phylogenetic perspective, but not from an evolutionary or developmental perspective. So in the beginning, I just wanted to include as many caves as we could, so we could test these hypotheses of how many times the fish has been able to adapt to the caves. There were several hypotheses, some of them say that it happened only once and there has been a lot of drift. The other says that there’s two independent lineages. I’m in that group that would suggest that there are two independent lineages that came to the caves and adapted to them. Actually, in our most recent paper, by a master’s student of mine, we assess this question, using not only the complete genomes that are already available, but also including some caves that were never analysed before. So we have a very, very exhaustive sampling. And in our results, we have at least three independent colonisation events of the caves, which for some is crazy, it’s not possible. But from our point of view, we are really relying on exhaustive sampling of the caves, and that is what we’re suggesting.

Nowadays, we are starting to move to some developmental analyses, because we were able to capture some fish from the caves, and we are reproducing them here in the lab. So far, we have been able to reproduce five different populations, different from the common ones like Pachón or Tinaja. We are reproducing Escondido, Arroyo, Tigre, Chica, and Pichijumo. Sabinos is common, but it’s less common than others. So far, we are trying to characterise some developmental features.

One of my students is working on the Rad-seq, and we are starting to work with RNA-seq, and we are a trying to compare the genetic convergences across different cavefish lineages, particularly including some less studied populations such as Escondido,  which is from the [second] linage in the Guatemala region. We are trying to compare the differences during early development because we have realised that they have a very particular mutant in some visual pigments, so we are trying to match that variation with the phenotype. We are also exploring the phenotypic convergence with other cavefish in Mexico, like Prietella phreatophila, a catfish in the northern part of Mexico, and also with other families of cavefishes from the southern part of Mexico. We are trying to investigate them for convergences in phenotype, particularly in some processes related with asymmetry that has been reported in Astyanax and in P. phreatophila, and we are trying to check out if it’s consistent across cavefish living in Mexico or only in these two cavefish.

What kinds of asymmetry is this?

Astyanax is very interesting because in Pachón there has been described a directional asymmetry, as well as in Ictalurids [such as Prietella], and actually it’s in the same side, left turn of the head. Particularly in a cave called Chica there is one very well characterised Astyanax hybrid population (between the surface [fish] and the cavefish). In that population there is fluctuation asymmetry, [toward the] left or right, [similar to] chiclids, [that have] fluctuating asymmetry in the mouth of a scales-eating species. It’s interesting that when you analyse it in the hybrid population, the asymmetry is different in comparison to the other caves.

I understand that there are a lot more resources for you to study these types of species now. But obviously, it is generally a group of species that is not studied by an enormous number of people around the world. Are there particular challenges associated with that?

Yeah, I think one of the challenges is that there are a very restricted number of people working with these [species]. And in a way, it’s fascinating, because you will find something new for sure. But [from another point of view], in research groups [studying established organisms] it is easier.

We were trying to characterise the microbiome of the fish, we have a paper on that. And it was a little challenging, because there was not a lot of information already published on protocols or how to treat the data. Or when we are trying to set up [experiments], for example, for physiology or for another kind of ecological analysis, it’s sometimes difficult. But in a way, I think it’s very, very interesting. During my Bachelor’s, I was working with mice, the typical model in the lab, and somehow I think that the number of questions sometimes can be very restricted because there’s already so many studies in these animals, that it’s difficult to come up with something new.

You did touch upon this when you’re describing your work, but was there a specific thing that convinced you that these fish are what you want to work on?

I think the main reason was a because I have always been interested in mechanisms driving the evolution of morphology. When I started working on the lacustrine forms, it was like “Why do they have these different teeth, or different heads, or different body shapes?” and in the caves it’s dramatic, the change is impressive. Are these important morphological changes? When I started investigating the environment, it’s fascinating that they can survive under those conditions. That was one of the reasons.

Another important thing to highlight in Astyanax is that we have the Annual Meeting. It is very interesting because there are a lot of young people, together with senior researchers, and the community is very open. Because it’s not a model organism, [everyone is] really [willing] to talk about the system in a very open way, and include new researchers. Particularly for me, when I was finishing my PhD, this was a very dramatic point, because I saw a potential in the system that I can be included. And I have a lot of things in my favour, I am from Mexico, I can work in the field, I can do a lot of in situ experiments. Even nowadays, there are very few Mexicans working with Astyanax. It just happened that there were a lot of things that made me realise that there was a lot of potential in the [Astyanax] system for me.

Would you say there’s a particular question in your field that you find really fascinating? Or a finding or a result that you really weren’t expecting?

Yeah, as a systematic biologist, I have a very, very important question for me, which is how many species [the cavefish are]. This is an important question from two different perspectives. One is conservation. The other is from an evolutionary point of view, because for sure, they can hybridise, even lineages between the two branches can hybridise. So in a way, it’s very difficult to test for the biological concept of a species. Sometimes it’s difficult even for the developmental biologists, because they are really trying to understand the link between the gene and the morphology. We are trying to understand the mechanisms giving rise to this kind of systems, and how easy it is to speciate in this context. So the implicit question regarding these ecomorphs or ecotypes is, are they different species? And how significant is this for the evolutionary history of the model?

So in a way, it was very interesting for me at the beginning, because when I started going to these conferences on Astyanax, it was very easy for me to always think about the systematics, about the phylogeny. And sometimes [other groups] were interpreting some variation in the morphology through local adaptation. But actually, it’s related to the [evolutionary] history of the system, like the number of vertebrae, or various characteristics, actually, they were shared by ancestry, not by local adaptation. So I think that’s very, very important in these kinds of studies, trying to link between the genetics and the morphology. That’s one of the reasons I want to have a very good notion of how many times this [cave dwelling] model has evolved, because if it [evolved] only once, the interpretation of repeated evolution, or whatever we are asking, is different. The other question that is very fascinating for me is how their morphology can be so divergent, even under gene flow circumstances. How is this possible without any barriers [between the putative species]? That’s the reason we work with Astyanax.

How does data analysis and sharing between labs that use Astyanax and related species differ, in your opinion, compared to studies that use more established model organisms? You said, it’s a fairly open community. But you know, are there any major differences?

I must admit that I don’t know if I have enough experience on this question. All of my experience is with Astyanax. Even though during my Bachelor’s I was working with mice, I’m not familiar with other groups. In the lab where I was working, they were very specific in the questions that they were [asking], and it was not very easy to share information with other labs.

In my opinion, one of the things that the Astyanax model has is that [researchers working on it] are very open. For example, when we were trying to reproduce a fish, we were obtaining a lot of information [from other groups].

From what I know about Astyanax, that there are labs that work on it in the context of heart regeneration, because some have a non-regenerative heart, in contrast to the regenerative zebrafish heart. How large is the community that works on the more phylogenetic aspect of the species compared to those working on developmental or regenerative questions and is there any crosstalk?

Nowadays, a lot of people are trying to [investigate] this model [from] the eco-evo-devo perspective. They have realised [that it is important to distinguish between the different Astyanax lineages], because some of the results that they get are related with the lineage, and not with particularly with the environment. In these terms, there is a growing number of labs wanting to work in the field, know more about the ecology in situ, learn more about the behaviour, the physiological adaptations. Some are is trying to [replicate] experiments in the field, check if the same thing happens in the lab versus in natural conditions. In my opinion, the species gives a very particular opportunity, because it’s not like in other places where it’s very difficult to get access to the cave systems in the in the field. So nowadays, even though regulations are increasing, they are attainable. [Researchers] can [request] permits and get them in a year, which a reasonable time. So it’s more a question of what the interests of the researchers are, because they can really put their questions in different contexts, and navigate between eco, evo, and devo.

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

The problem with non-model organisms is the conservation situation. For sure, nobody will catch Mus musculus from the field, they already have so many reproductive lines in captivity that they don’t have to. The non-model organisms are in the opposite situation. Most of the labs [working on them] want to have more wild lines, more related with what is really happening in the field. And if you have 200 labs working [on cavefish], imagine the impact that we can have on the natural population. These cavefish are not really large [populations]. We published, just at the beginning of 2023, a paper [on] size estimation of the fish population in the caves, and it’s maybe around 1000 fish, or [a few thousands] of fish. It’s not really that large [a] number. And imagine, in the last 10 years, more or less, there have been around 200 fish extracted from the caves. So if you imagine a system that has to recover from 20% of the population being lost only because of scientific sampling, it’s a problematic situation.

When you try to make researchers aware of the situation, [they] really believe that the main extinction drivers of this kind of population are not related with our sampling. Most of us really believe that it’s all global warming, or local people extracting water for drink. I’m very surprised, because normally you have to fight this kind of attitude outside the scientific [world]. So in my position, I’m trying to make people aware of this, but it’s not easy. But none of the above is false. Global warming, and people extracting water for drink, are part of the problem. Thus, it’s important to be part of the solution, and maybe we should consider what we can do to solve the conservation situation.

Some of the most iconic populations, like Pachón, you can find thousands of papers published on it. And it’s in a little bit of a critical conservation situation right now. Many labs have been able to reproduce it. And most [subpopulations] can be easily [obtained] from [other] labs. But even nowadays, to avoid inbreeding, some labs could require to collect wild fish. The Guatemala region has conservation issues, because although they are not easily-accessible caves, most populations are very small, and not well-connected between them, because of the phreatic level of the water, which can lead to extinction more due to their demography than to other causes. So its conservation situation is very different. But in a way, we have the same situation in other places.

And it’s not only in Astyanax, it could happen in other non-model organisms too. For example, Axolotl is also an amazing model system. If 50 labs in the world start working with one particular population, there can really be an impact in the local population. That is why I think we need to be more aware of the impact and do our best to guarantee the prevalence of this model for future generations. [Because] what makes these organisms amazing also makes them vulnerable, in a way.

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Diversity drives discovery in developmental plasticity

Posted by , on 15 March 2024

This is an excerpt from the Editorial by Patricia Wright and Kathleen Gilmour, editors of Journal of Experimental Biology’s Special Issue “Developmental Plasticity: From Mechanisms to Evolutionary Processes“.

Understanding the effects of the environment on animal physiology and biomechanics is at the core of Journal of Experimental Biology. Environmental factors such as temperature, food availability, sound or the presence of predators can profoundly shape how an animal grows and matures into an adult. In this Special Issue, we take a close look at developmental plasticity, which is the influence of conditions experienced during early development on an animal’s phenotype. In her classic book of 20 years ago, ‘Developmental Plasticity and Evolution’, Mary Jane West-Eberhard proposed that ‘alternative phenotypes’ that arise in organisms under different early life conditions play a critical role in moulding animal evolution and diversification (West-Eberhard, 2003). The ensuing years have seen increasing attention on how developmental plasticity may contribute to evolution. Given this, coupled with the explosion of new information on the epigenetic mechanisms underlying developmental plasticity, the growing number of submissions to JEB in this area, and the fact that an earlier special issue on ‘Phenotypic Plasticity’ (Hoppeler et al., 2006) is now 18 years old, the time seemed right for a special issue on developmental plasticity. In the current issue, we have capitalized on the diversity of animal models under study, from worms to dung beetles and lizards to mice, to assemble a strong comparative approach to the topic. We also aimed to bring together researchers considering developmental plasticity from diverse angles, from molecular and cellular biology to whole animal physiology, ecology and evolution, to more fully understand and integrate new approaches and research findings.

Developmental plasticity is defined by the rearing environment, from nutrition to social conditions, which provides critical information that developing animals use to shape the maturation process and resultant adult behaviour and physiology. Such context-dependent plasticity during development is often considered to be both widespread and adaptive, although the extent to which this is the case remains unclear (Sánchez-Tójar et al., 2020). It is also important to recognize that conditions such as resource limitations or exposure to environmental contaminants can result in damaged phenotypes that are clearly not adaptive. In this Special Issue, Metcalfe (2024) discusses a third possibility – that variation in early conditions need not always result in obvious adult changes, but may alter developmental trajectories in ways that have more nuanced consequences over longer periods of time. Other articles in this Special Issue focus on identifying critical environmental factors that serve as cues for developmental adjustments, and how these, in turn, are transduced within the developing animal. For example, information transmission may be mediated by parental behaviour (e.g. Mariette, 2024) or indirectly via provisioning of the egg. Hotter temperatures, food scarcity or stress (e.g. from predators) experienced by a parent provide anticipatory cues to developing animals that may prepare them for similar stressors in later life. Food availability or nutrition, in particular, appears to be of fundamental importance in an animal’s developmental trajectory, to the point where we may ask whether it is a ‘master’ regulator of development. Understanding the mechanisms involved in nutritional effects on development is a critically important area for future research.

Read the full Editorial.

Browse through the entire Special Issue.

Cover: The male gazelle dung beetle (Digitonthophagus gazella) develops nutritionally plastic head horns. Males with access to low-quality nutrition during their larval stage develop into hornless adults (left). By contrast, males with access to a high-quality diet develop into large adults with exaggerated head horns (right; both images are on the same scale). Rohner et al. (jeb245976) review the many ways in which plasticity, symbionts and niche construction interact in shaping dung beetle development and evolution. Photo credit: Patrick Rohner.
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Funded Research Internships at the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University

Posted by , on 14 March 2024

Exceptional students from anywhere in the world are invited to apply!

Who can apply? We’re excited to welcome outstanding young scientists who have  completed their BSc or MSc studies or are in their final year, in the fields of biological/medical sciences, and are considering conducting a Ph.D. Applicants are expected to possess outstanding academic records and substantial research experience.

What will you get? A two-month immersive research experience in an outstanding world-class university. Undertaking your own research project with amazing mentors in a stimulating environment. Interacting with students and principal investigators in the Faculty in informal settings. Full  flight ticket reimbursement  as well as housing and living allowance of up to $2000.

Why Choose Us? As the largest and most diverse Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences in Israel, we pride ourselves on fostering cutting-edge research led by globally renowned  scientists and a diverse cohort of local and international students. Our state-of-the-art facilities boast the latest scientific equipment, with access to clinical samples sourced from Israel’s premier hospitals. Moreover, Tel Aviv, an international metropolis, offers picturesque beaches, a bustling nightlife, and a progressive atmosphere.

How to Apply? Two steps: 1. Identify a lab aligned with your research interests and contact the principal investigator directly by email to secure a sponsor. 2. Upload the following documents to this Online Form: i. CV, ii. BSc diploma and transcripts, iii. MSc diploma and transcripts (including partial records,if applicable), iv. A 1-page cover letter outlining your research interests and motivation for joining the program, and a Letter of support from a principal investigator in the Faculty.

Questions? Write to Zaidelbar@tauex.tau.ac.il

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Lab meeting with the Soiza-Reilly lab

Posted by , on 12 March 2024

Where is the lab?

Our lab is located at the Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias from CONICET and University of Buenos Aires within the main campus of the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We are embedded in a large and beautiful green area of Buenos Aires facing the giant Rio de la Plata.

Research summary

We are interested in how early postnatal maladaptive development and miswiring of cortico-limbic circuits could enhance our predisposition to develop psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, stress vulnerability and depression in adult life. 

Group photo of the lab (Photo credit: Fernando Vázquez-Rovere)

Lab roll call

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: I have the huge responsibility (and pleasure) of leading this young team of researchers. 

Tamara S. Adjimann: PhD student – I am finishing my PhD thesis on the effects of pharmacologically increased levels of serotonin, induced by postnatal fluoxetine, on the brain morphology and function.

Carla V. Argañaraz: PhD student – I´ve been part of the lab since its early stages, first as an intern and now as a PhD student working on the effects of early adversity on the serotonergic system.

Rocío B. Foltran: Postdoc – I joined the lab to study how hyposerotonergy and stress in early life can have consequences in emotional behavior in adult life.

Grace Wu: Master student – I investigate how a specific serotonin receptor is implicated in the morphological changes in a cortico-limbic circuit produced in an early postnatal stress model.

Melina Maidana: Master student – I’m working on my degree’s thesis, which consists of studying adult mice behavior after treating them with a serotonin receptor antagonist in early stages of their life.

Favourite technique, and why?

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: I’m particularly attached to an immunofluorescent technique called array tomography that is extremely useful to quantitatively explore molecular and fine anatomical features of synaptic circuits. I learned this technique during my first postdoc in Boston more than 10 years ago and since then it has been accompanying me throughout my scientific career.

Apart from your own research, what are you most excited about in developmental and stem cell biology?

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: There are so many great advances in these fields. For instance, current investigations in cortical development combining the use of organoids (or even assembloids!) and transcriptomics are certainly stunning. I´m always fascinated by current advances in the technologies available to obtain hiPSCs from patients and to differentiate them to better understand (and perhaps to treat) many neurological and psychiatric disorders with developmental origins.

How do you approach managing your group and all the different tasks required in your job?

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: I guess a fundamental factor for me is to try to enjoy every aspect of the academic career. I try to transmit this philosophy to students and young collaborators. Of course everyone is different (and this is great in a team!) but it is important to reach a balance of the different tasks to avoid the burnout. I like to think that I’m open and available to all the people in the lab, not only regarding lab life, but also for career advice. In general, we establish clear goals and objectives and then we help each other to reach them timely. We work very much as a family and this is key to maintain a nurturing and relaxing environment that facilitates career development. Having the right scientific collaborators also contributes to keep this atmosphere. 

What is the most complicated issue in your job?

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: One of the most demanding tasks for labs like ours, based in peripheral countries, is to obtain international visibility from colleagues based in central countries. Sadly, our countries devote quite small budgets to science and often we have to apply to international calls to try to have access to more realistic budgets for science. This is extremely hard to achieve and only can happen with international visibility and successful collaborative work.

What is the best thing about where you work? 

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: Our lab is placed in a new building with a great community of colleagues and students, and surrounded by trees and the waters of the Rio de la Plata. We are immersed in a large scientific community where many young researchers start their scientific careers. It is a huge privilege to be part of that process.

Tamara S. Adjimann: PhD student – The institute is placed in a new building with many facilities that make doing science more comfortable. Our lab is quite spacious and luminous, which makes going to work more pleasurable. Also, we are surrounded by a lovely community that is always looking to make improvements and keep pushing forward for the benefit of all.

Carla V. Argañaraz: PhD student – I think the best thing about our workplace is that we get to be in a pretty quiet place, near an ecological reserve and next to the river, so coming here you get the kind of peace that big cities rarely allow. Of course this would mean nothing without the awesome group of people that always receives you with a smile, they are truly the heart of the community here.

Rocío B. Foltran: Postdoc – I think that it’s the atmosphere, not only because it’s surrounded by nature away from the craziness of the city, but because it’s next to several other scientific institutes and the natural sciences faculty, filled with people who love science as much as we do.

Grace Wu: Master student – The people! The institute has a collaborative environment where everybody is so nice, respectful, patient and always willing to help each other out. Also the building is well maintained and comfortable to work in, and the view from the lab is peaceful and calming, perfect to look at while having a little break.

Melina Maidana: Master student – The comfortable work environment is a remarkable quality of the lab.

What’s there to do outside of the lab?

Mariano Soiza-Reilly: I enjoy doing sports and spending time with my family. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city with many corners to be discovered.

Tamara S. Adjimann: PhD student –  There is a lot to do around here. Buenos Aires is one of the most active cities in the world, with many diverse activities to enjoy both during the day and night. There are lots of restaurants and cafés, many parks and museums and lots of places to discover in its surroundings. The people here are very warm and friendly, and will make everything even more enjoyable.

Carla V. Argañaraz: PhD student – Our city is so big and diverse that it offers something to fit every taste. You can find great art museums, usually next to lovely parks where you can take a stroll after. Buenos Aires is filled with cultural activities, from clubs playing local music to jazz clubs all over the city, you can find any genre you want and have a nice drink while listening to some music. There’s also lots of green spaces if chilling and reading there is your thing, and of course, lots of beautiful libraries to find your book companion.

Rocío B. Foltran: Postdoc – Buenos Aires is a very culturally rich city, and I enjoy going to the theater, to the cinema, to eat some delicious meals or to rest in some of the green parks.

Grace Wu: Master student – Buenos Aires is a city that never sleeps, so for the night owls this means open bars, restaurants and clubs till late night! If not, there are many green areas to practice sports or have a little walk, museums, concerts, theaters, markets, cute cafes… you name it! Also, the gastronomy is diverse and great, especially the meat and wine ;)

Melina Maidana: Master student – near Ciudad Universitaria you can go for a walk and visit the “Parque de la memoria”.

Group photo of the lab (Photo credit: Fernando Vázquez-Rovere)

Browse through other ‘Lab meeting’ posts featuring developmental and stem cell biology labs around the world.

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Exploring multi-hub conferences: interview with Sally Lowell

Posted by , on 7 March 2024

Transportation is one of the main environmental issues of a scientific conference, usually accounting for around half of the event’s total CO2 emissions.

But innovative ideas can help mitigate this impact, without compromising the benefits of bringing people together. Sally Lowell and her colleagues recently ran a multi-hub conference across three different regional locations for the European Society for Developmental Biology meeting which ran in September 2023.

We interviewed Sally to find out more about how the event went.

Looking to bring your own creativity to organising scientific events with a lower environmental impact? Check out our Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing.

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Categories: Events, Funding, Interview

Meet the Node correspondents — Shreyasi Mukherjee

Posted by , on 7 March 2024

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 on the Node. We chatted to Shreyasi to find out more about her background and her plans as a Node Correspondent.


Congratulations on being selected as one of our new correspondents! What made you decide to apply to become a Node correspondent?

I follow many of The Company of Biologists journals like Development, Journal of Cell Science and Disease Models and Mechanisms. I had recently transitioned from PhD to postdoc and veered into a slightly new field. There is so much literature and it is overwhelming. I was looking for opportunities to write for preLights because I thought that would help me hold myself accountable and stay current in the field. But I also enjoyed the different kind of articles the Node puts out. When I saw the opportunity to become a correspondent, it was a no brainer for me to try and see what happens.

Have you done much science communication/ writing before?

I’ve written my PhD thesis and papers in the last couple of years, but I haven’t really done much other types of science writing. When I was working as research assistant, I would help organise an event where students from high school and undergrads come to the lab and we talked to them about our research. I’ve tried to do similar outreach things throughout my PhD and even now, I still talk to high school and college students back in India. I’m trying to show them what the career trajectory in research looks like. I’m also involved with the Genetics Society of America and doing some science outreach with them. We’re organising Capitol Hill Day, as a part of the upcoming TAGC conference.

Over the past few years, I’ve become more cognizant of the necessity to do science communication, not just for the scientific community, but to get the public and even our families to understand the importance of basic biological research. I really enjoy the science TikToks and podcasts out there, which I think are great ways to give people snapshots of how science actually happens.

What is your background and what is your current research focus?

I grew up and did my undergrad in India, where the education system is very different. You don’t really get a chance to do hands on research as an undergrad. This is true for most places except a few of the more elite institutions. You learn a lot of the concepts but at that point you don’t really know what research looks like as a career.

I wanted to see what research was all about, so I got a scholarship to do my master’s at the University of Edinburgh in neuroscience. That was a valuable experience because I got to do my dissertation in a lab setting. After that, I wanted to get more research experience, so I came back to India and worked as a research assistant for a few years. I worked with flies, looking at chromatin dynamics in early fly development and how perturbations in the environment can cause transgenerational or intergenerational effects in flies. That was my first experience thinking about research questions and executing a research hypothesis.

I did my PhD in developmental biology at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. It was a great experience. I mainly worked with human embryonic stem cell-based differentiation systems, trying to understand the mechanisms that provide transcriptional specificity to the Wnt pathway.

While I was doing my PhD, I knew that I wanted to look more into the interplay of developmental signalling and other processes during early development, like epigenetic regulation and transcription factor activity. I wanted to integrate and study all of that in a 3D model that has more spatial context. I decided to be more invested in the epigenetic field when I transitioned to my postdoc. I’m now using stem cell derived embryo models and studying how epigenetic complexes, especially the Polycomb complexes, regulate tissue organisation and cell fate decisions during very early embryonic events like gastrulation. Even though it wasn’t too much of a field switch, it’s still very intimidating because there is so much literature on chromatin function between the many epigenetic complexes and so much interplay. But there are still many outstanding questions in chromatin regulation that I think are very interesting, especially during the cell fate transitions in development. 

You’ve worked in quite a few different countries. How has that experience shaped you?

There’re a lot of immigrants who have gone to other countries for their PhDs. I think their journeys are all a bit unconventional and unique. I think my experience has helped me become a better scientist. The structure in which science works, the funding for science, the resources that are allocated — all these things are so different back in India. The way you’re viewed on the global level is also different. When I was working in India, I would reach out to people and  rarely get a response. When I started applying to PhD programmes, I got rejected several times because they said that I needed to have research experience in Western countries. That made me very discouraged because I didn’t know how I could change this. Now that I’m in the US, people reply very quickly and nicely when I email. I think there are a lot of perception issues based on where people come from.

Do you have any ideas about what kind of content you will contribute to the Node?

I would like to highlight the research being done in Global south countries. Most research being talked about, even if they’re from countries in the Global South, are normally from elite institutions or projects with a lot of international collaborations. There are a lot of disparities in terms of funding and allocation of resources, even simple things like buying cell culture equipment. Scientists often end up spending a disproportionate amount of funding on publishing and buying consumables due to currency conversions. By writing about the research going on in the Global South, I hope to explore the researchers’ career trajectories and highlight any unique challenges they face in research. There’s also another interesting perspective there because many of those scientists left their country to do a postdoc in a Western country, but then went back home to set up their own labs, which I think is extremely necessary. It will be interesting to get their perspective about how they adjusted to the transition. I hope that writing more about the research in the Global South can create a change in perception when people are judging job applications from candidates.

We look forward to seeing more research from the Global South being highlighted! Is there anything else you want to write for the Node?

I would like to get more up to date on the literature around modelling development with stem cells. There are now so many in vitro embryo models that recapitulate different processes. These models are not all-encompassing, but they’re good in studying many aspects of morphogenesis, tissue organisation, and species-specific developmental processes. This is very exciting because I think in developmental biology, we are at the point where technologies like single cell and spatial transcriptomics allow us to get very high-resolution information into early developmental processes.

I’m also interested in comparing the models derived from conventional versus unconventional organisms. I was recently reading a preprint about spheroids derived from cavefish which was fascinating. I love the idea of a bottom-up approach in making an embryo.

What do you hope to gain from the experience of being a Node correspondent?

I would love to get to know other correspondents and gain a sense of community within the science writing field. I really look forward to learning from other correspondents and from The Company of Biologists team and expand my professional network.  It would be really cool to see what happens behind the scenes in publishing.

The Node is such an international community. I’m hoping to learn how to write in a way that’s more globally accessible to reach an international audience.

Finally, is there anything about you that people find surprising? What do you like to do in your spare time?

Something that really helped me through grad school was getting into comedy. I started taking improv classes, because during the pandemic, I wanted to be involved in something that was the complete opposite of academia.

It was such a great experience for me. I found a community of really funny people. It has helped me develop my public speaking skills and have more perspective on things. It’s also gotten me interested in other forms of comedy. Since then, I’ve also been dabbling in doing sketch writing, stand-up and long-form comedy!

That sounds fun! Do you mix science with comedy or are they separate?

For me, they are completely separate. Although for stand up, I do have a little bit of material about how ridiculous it is to go to grad school. Comedy has really helped me in the past few years because I always know that no matter how bad my day is, in the evenings I get to laugh with a group of people I enjoy spending time with. It also helps put things in perspective — when you have a bad day because your Western blot didn’t work, but your scene partner is a physician, and they had a really bad day but they’re still there being so funny. It’s important to think beyond just being in the lab. I think most beginner improv classes are free so everybody should just go take one. You can be silly and not think about anything else!

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Catch up on Development presents… February webinar on organogenesis

Posted by , on 6 March 2024

In the second 2024 webinar, Development Editor Liz Robertson (University of Oxford) hosted two early career researchers studying organogenesis.

Jean-Francois Darrigrand (King’s College London)

Talk and Q&A by Jean-Francois Darrigrand

Paolo Panza (Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research)

Talk and Q&A by Paolo Panza. Read the paper: https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(25)00055-4

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Categories: Development presents..., Video

February in preprints

Posted by , on 5 March 2024

Welcome to our monthly trawl for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints.

The preprints this month are hosted on bioRxiv – use these links below to get to the section you want:

Developmental biology

Cell Biology

Modelling

Tools & Resources

Research practice and education

Developmental biology

| Patterning & signalling

Rbm8a deficiency causes hematopoietic defects by modulating Wnt/PCP signalingv

Agnese Kocere, Elena Chiavacci, Charlotte Soneson, Harrison H. Wells, Kevin Manuel Méndez-Acevedo, Jacalyn S. MacGowan, Seth T. Jacobson, Max S. Hiltabidle, Azhwar Raghunath, Jordan A. Shavit, Daniela Panáková, Margot L. K. Williams, Mark D. Robinson, Christian Mosimann, Alexa Burger

Hedgehog signaling is required for the maintenance of mesenchymal nephron progenitors

Eunah Chung, Patrick Deacon, Yueh-Chiang Hu, Hee-Woong Lim, Joo-Seop Park

Grb7, Grb10 and Grb14, encoding the growth factor receptor-bound 7 family of signalling adaptor proteins have overlapping functions in the regulation of fetal growth and post-natal glucose metabolism

Kim Moorwood, Florentia M. Smith, Alastair S. Garfield, Michael Cowley, Lowenna J. Holt, Roger J. Daly, Andrew Ward

Genetic interference with HvNotch provides new insights into the role of the Notch-signalling pathway for developmental pattern formation in Hydra

Qin Pan, Moritz Mercker, Alexander Klimovich, Jörg Wittlieb, Anna Marciniak-Czochra, Angelika Böttger

FGF2 promotes the expansion of parietal mesothelial progenitor pools and inhibits BMP4-mediated smooth muscle cell differentiation

Youngmin Hwang, Yuko Shimamura, Junichi Tanaka, Akihiro Miura, Anri Sawada, Hemanta Sarmah, Dai Shimizu, Yuri Kondo, Zurab Ninish, Kazuhiko Yamada, Munemasa Mori

TBX3 is essential to establish the posterior boundary of anterior genes and up-regulate posterior genes with HAND2 during onset of limb bud development

Geoffrey Soussi, Ausra Girdziusaite, Shalu Jhanwar, Victorio Palacio, Rushikesh Sheth, Rolf Zeller, Aimée Zuniga

Notch controls early temporal factor expression to control timing of Mushroom body neuroblast apoptosis

Kendall R. Branham, Chhavi Sood, Susan E. Doyle, Matt C. Pahl, Sarah E. Siegrist

Jag1 represses Notch activation in lateral supporting cells and inhibits an outer hair cell fate in the medial compartment of the developing cochlea

Sandra de Haan, Agustin A. Corbat, Christopher R. Cederroth, Lisa G. Autrum, Simona Hankeova, Elizabeth C. Driver, Barbara Canlon, Matthew W. Kelley, Emma R. Andersson

Suppression of ERK signalling promotes pluripotent epiblast in the human blastocyst

Claire S. Simon, Afshan McCarthy, Laura Woods, Desislava Staneva, Qiulin Huang, Madeleine Linneberg-Agerholm, Alex Faulkner, Athanasios Papathanasiou, Kay Elder, Phil Snell, Leila Christie, Patricia Garcia, Valerie Shaikly, Mohamed Taranissi, Meenakshi Choudhary, Mary Herbert, Joshua M. Brickman, Kathy K. Niakan

A TBX5-dependent compartment boundary patterns the cardiac interventricular septum

Irfan S. Kathiriya, Martin H. Dominguez, Kavitha S. Rao, Jonathon M. Muncie-Vasic, W. Patrick Devine, Kevin M. Hu, Swetansu K. Hota, Bayardo I. Garay, Diego Quintero, Piyush Goyal, Megan N. Matthews, Reuben Thomas, Tatyana Sukonnik, Dario Miguel-Perez, Sarah Winchester, Emily F. Brower, André Forjaz, Pei-Hsun Wu, Denis Wirtz, Ashley L. Kiemen, Benoit G. Bruneau

Temporal dynamics of BMP/Nodal ratio drive tissue-specific gastrulation morphogenesis

Alyssa A Emig, Megan Hansen, Sandra Grimm, Cristian Coarfa, Nathan D Lord, Margot Kossmann Williams

Identifying the molecular basis for functional divergence of duplicated SOX factors controlling endoderm formation and left-right patterning in zebrafish

Simaran Johal, Randa Elsayed, Kristen A. Panfilio, Andrew C. Nelson

Hemilineage-specific expression of the RHG genes Grim and Reaper sculpt neural network composition during Drosophila neurogenesis

Connor J Sproston, Julia E Rak, Shu Kondo, Darren W Williams

Heterogeneity of Sonic Hedgehog response dynamics and fate specification in single neural progenitors

Fengzhu Xiong, Andrea R Tentner, Sandy Nandagopal, Tom W Hiscock, Peng Huang, Sean Megason

The deubiquitylating enzyme Fat Facets promotes Fat signalling and restricts tissue growth

Lauren E Dawson, Alexander D Fulford, Aashika Sekar, Paulo S Ribeiro

NOTUM-MEDIATED WNT SILENCING DRIVES EXTRAVILLOUS TROPHOBLAST CELL LINEAGE DEVELOPMENT

Vinay Shukla, Ayelen Moreno-Irusta, Kaela M. Varberg, Marija Kuna, Khursheed Iqbal, Anna M. Galligos, John D. Aplin, Ruhul H. Choudhury, Hiroaki Okae, Takahiro Arima, Michael J. Soares

Lineage-specific intersection of endothelin and GDNF signaling in enteric nervous system development

Denise M. Poltavski, Alexander T. Cunha, Jaime Tan, Henry M. Sucov, Takako Makita

Duplication of the anteroposterior body axis in postembryos of the Eratigena atrica spider

Teresa Napiórkowska, Julita Templin, Paweł Napiórkowski

Diverse Fgfr1 signaling pathways and endocytic trafficking regulate early mesoderm development

James F. Clark, Philippe Soriano

Skeletal progenitor LRP1 deficiency causes severe and persistent skeletal defects with WNT/planar cell polarity dysregulation

Mohammad Alhashmi, Abdulrahman ME Gremida, Santosh K Maharana, Marco Antonaci, Amy Kerr, Noor A Al-Maslamani, Ke Liu, Maria M Meschis, Hazel Sutherland, Peter Wilson, Peter Clegg, Grant N Wheeler, Robert J van ’t Hof, George Bou-Gharios, Kazuhiro Yamamoto

Inhibition of the serine protease HtrA1 by SerpinE2 suggests an extracellular proteolytic pathway in the control of neural crest migration

Edgar M. Pera, Josefine Nilsson-De Moura, Yuriy Pomeshchik, Laurent Roybon, Ivana Milas

Spatiotemporal dynamics of NF-κB/Dorsal inhibitor IκBα/Cactus in Drosophila blastoderm embryos

Allison E. Schloop, Sharva Hiremath, Razeen Shaikh, Cranos M. Williams, Gregory T. Reeves

Spatial Multiomics Reveal the Role of Wnt Modulator, Dkk2, in Palatogenesis

Jeremie Oliver Pina, Resmi Raju, Daniela M Roth, Emma Wentworth Winchester, Cameron Padilla, James Iben, Fabio R Faucz, Justin L Cotney, Rena N D’Souza

Craniofacial studies in chicken embryos confirm the pathogenicity of Frizzled2 variants associated with Robinow syndrome

Shruti S. Tophkhane, Katherine Fu, Esther M. Verheyen, Joy M. Richman

The ciliary protein C2cd3 is required for mandibular musculoskeletal tissue patterning

Evan C. Brooks, Simon J.Y. Han, Christian Louis Bonatto Paese, Amya A. Lewis, Megan Aarnio-Peterson, Samantha A. Brugmann

| Morphogenesis & mechanics

Coupling and uncoupling of midline morphogenesis and cell flow in amniote gastrulation

Rieko Asai, Vivek N. Prakash, Shubham Sinha, Manu Prakash, Takashi Mikawa

Role of Fibronectin in Postnatal Skeletal Development

Neha E. H. Dinesh, Nissan Baratang, Justine Rosseau, Ronit Mohapatra, Ling Li, Ramshaa Mahalingam, Kerstin Tiedemann, Philippe M. Campeau, Dieter P. Reinhardt

Compressive stress drives morphogenetic apoptosis

Tatiana Merle, Martine Cazales, Ronan Bouzignac, Brice Ronsin, Christian Rouvière, Magali Suzanne

A tension-induced morphological transition shapes the avian extra-embryonic territory

Arthur Michaut, Alexander Chamolly, Aurélien Villedieu, Francis Corson, Jérôme Gros

Differential tissue deformability underlies shape divergence of the embryonic brain and spinal cord under fluid pressure

Susannah B.P. McLaren, Shi-Lei Xue, Siyuan Ding, Alex Winkel, Oscar Baldwin, Shreya Dwarakacherla, Kristian Franze, Edouard Hannezo, Fengzhu Xiong

Identification of novel buffering mechanisms in aortic arch artery development and congenital heart disease.

AnnJosette Ramirez, Christina Vyzas, Kevin Eng, Karl Degenhardt, Sophie Astrof

Mechanotransductive feedback control of endothelial cell motility and vascular morphogenesis

Devon E. Mason, Paula Camacho, Megan E. Goeckel, Brendan R. Tobin, Sebastián L. Vega, Pei-Hsun Wu, Dymonn Johnson, Su-Jin Heo, Denis Wirtz, Jason A. Burdick, Levi Wood, Brian Y. Chow, Amber N. Stratman, Joel D. Boerckel

Signatures of structural disorder in developing epithelial tissues

Christian Cupo, Cole Allan, Vikram Ailiani, Karen E. Kasza

Eph/ephrin signalling in the developing brain is regulated by tissue stiffness

Jana Sipkova, Kristian Franze

An analysis of contractile and protrusive cell behaviours at the superficial surface of the zebrafish neural plate

Claudio Araya, Raegan Boekemeyer, Francesca Farlie, Lauren Moon, Freshta Darwish, Chris Rookyard, Leanne Allison, Gema Vizcay-Barrena, Roland Fleck, Millaray Aranda, Masa Tada, Jonathan D W Clarke

ROCK and the actomyosin network control biomineral growth and morphology during sea urchin skeletogenesis

Eman Hijaze, Tsvia Gildor, Ronald Seidel, Majed Layous, Mark Winter, Luca Bertinetti, Yael Politi, Smadar Ben-Tabou de-Leon

Differential proliferation regulates multi-tissue morphogenesis during embryonic axial extension: Integrating viscous modeling and experimental approaches.

Michele Romanos, Tasha Salisbury, Samuel Stephan, Rusty Lansford, Pierre Degond, Ariane Trescases, Bertrand Benazeraf

Lens Placode Modulates Extracellular Matrix Formation During Early Eye Development

Cecilia Gallottini de Magalhaes, Ales Cvekl, Ruy G. Jaeger, Chao Yun Irene Yan

| Genes & genomes

Sf3b4 mutation in Xenopus tropicalis causes RNA splicing defects followed by massive gene dysregulation that disrupt cranial neural crest development

Casey Griffin, Kelsey Coppenrath, Doha Khan, Ziyan Lin, Marko Horb, Jean-Pierre Saint-Jeannet

hoxb genes determine the timing of cell ingression by regulating cell surface fluctuations during zebrafish gastrulation

Yuuta Moriyama, Toshiyuki Mitsui, Carl-Philipp Heisenberg

Sex-Specific DNA Methylation and Gene Expression Changes in Mouse Placentas After Early Preimplantation Alcohol Exposure

Lisa-Marie Legault, Thomas Dupas, Mélanie Breton-Larrivée, Fannie Filion-Bienvenue, Anthony Lemieux, Alexandra Langford-Avelar, Serge McGraw

miR-203 controls timing of developmental transitions during early preimplantation embryogenesis

José González-Martínez, Estefanía Ayala, Agustín Sanchez-Belmonte, Alejandro García, Enrique Nogueira, Anna Melati, Daniel Gimenez, Ana Losada, Sagrario Ortega, Marcos Malumbres

DNA methylation modulates nucleosome retention in sperm and H3K4 methylation deposition in early mouse embryos

Grigorios Fanourgakis, Laura Gaspa-Toneu, Pavel A. Komarov, Evgeniy A. Ozonov, Sebastien A. Smallwood, Antoine H.F.M. Peters

Developmental pathways underlying sexual differentiation in a U/V sex chromosome system

Daniel Liesner, Guillaume Cossard, Min Zheng, Olivier Godfroy, Josue Barrera-Redondo, Fabian B. Haas, Susana M Coelho

X-chromosome loss rescues Sertoli cell maturation and spermatogenesis in Klinefelter syndrome

Sofia Boeg Winge, Niels E. Skakkebaek, Lise Aksglaede, Guelizar Saritas, Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts, Ellen Goossens, Anders Juul, Kristian Almstrup

HemK2 functions for sufficient protein synthesis and RNA stability through eRF1 methylation during Drosophila oogenesis

Fengmei Xu, Ritsuko Suyama, Toshifumi Inada, Shinichi Kawaguchi, Toshie Kai

Gastrulation-stage gene expression in Nipbl+/- mouse embryos foreshadows the development of syndromic birth defects

Stephenson Chea, Jesse Kreger, Martha E. Lopez-Burks, Adam L. MacLean, Arthur D. Lander, Anne L. Calof

Single-nucleus multiomics reveals the gene-regulatory networks underlying sex determination of murine primordial germ cells

Adriana Karina Alexander, Karina F Rodriguez, Yu-Ying Chen, Ciro Amato, Martin A Estermann, Xin Xu, Humphrey Yao

Epigenetic regulation by TET1 in gene-environmental interactions influencing susceptibility to congenital malformations

Bernard K. van der Veer, Lehua Chen, Spyridon Champeris Tsaniras, Wannes Brangers, Qiuying Chen, Mariana Schroiff, Colin Custers, Harm H.M. Kwak, Rita Khoueiry, Robert Cabrera, Steven S. Gross, Richard H. Finnell, Yunping Lei, Kian Peng Koh

Escape from X inactivation is directly modulated by levels of Xist non-coding RNA

Antonia Hauth, Jasper Panten, Emma Kneuss, Christel Picard, Nicolas Servant, Isabell Rall, Yuvia A. Pérez-Rico, Lena Clerquin, Nila Servaas, Laura Villacorta, Ferris Jung, Christy Luong, Howard Y. Chang, Oliver Stegle, Duncan T. Odom, Agnese Loda, Edith Heard

Spatial patterning of the epigenome during vertebrate gastrulation

Ana Paula Azambuja, Megan Rothstein, Tatiane Y. Kanno, Marcos Simoes-Costa

Rapid response of fly populations to gene dosage across development and generations

Xueying C. Li, Lautaro Gandara, Måns Ekelöf, Kerstin Richter, Theodore Alexandrov, Justin Crocker

Haploidy-linked cell proliferation defects limit larval growth in Zebrafish

Kan Yaguchi, Daiki Saito, Triveni Menon, Akira Matsura, Takeomi Mizutani, Tomoya Kotani, Sreelaja Nair, Ryota Uehara

Temporal Analysis of Pituitary Transcriptional Dynamics in Mice Models of Hypopituitarism During Postnatal Development

Juliana Moreira Marques, Claudia Veiga Chang, Nicholas Silvestre Souza Trigueiro, Ricardo Vieira Araujo, Cinthya dos Santos Cerqueira, Lilian Cristina Russo, Bruna Viscardi Azevedo, Berenice Bilharinho de Mendonca, Nicolas Hoch, Luciani Renata Silveira de Carvalho

A high throughput CRISPR perturbation screen identifies epigenetic regulators impacting primordial germ cell development

Liangdao Li, Xinbao Ding, Alex P. Sheft, John C. Schimenti

A temporal sequence of heterochronic gene activities promotes stage-specific developmental events in C. elegans

Maria Ivanova, Eric G. Moss

| Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling

Aging impairs cold-induced beige adipogenesis and adipocyte metabolic reprogramming

Corey D. Holman, Alexander P. Sakers, Ryan P. Calhoun, Lan Cheng, Ethan C. Fein, Christopher Jacobs, Linus Tsai, Evan D. Rosen, Patrick Seale

foxe1 mutant zebrafish show indications of a hypothyroid phenotype and increased sensitivity to ethanol for craniofacial malformations

Sophie T Raterman, Frank A D T G Wagener, Jan Zethof, Vincent Cuijpers, Peter H M Klaren, Juriaan R Metz, Johannes W. Von den Hoff

Notch is Required for Neural Progenitor Proliferation During Embryonic Eye Regrowth

Dylan J. Guerin, Belen Gutierrez, Baoyi Zhang, Kelly Ai-Sun Tseng

Somite-independent regeneration of the axolotl primary body axis

Wouter Masselink, Tobias Gerber, Francisco Falcon, Tom Deshayes, Sofia-Christina Papadopoulos, Marko Pende, Vijayishwer Singh Jamwal, Yuka Taniguchi-Sugiura, Tzi-Yang Lin, Thomas Kurth, Jingkui Wang, Detlev Arendt, Ji-Feng Fei, Barbara Treutlein, Elly M. Tanaka, Prayag Murawala

HvNotch coordinates two independent pattern forming systems during head regeneration in Hydra by supporting a lateral inhibition process restricting the tentacle system

Mona Steichele, Lara Sauermann, Qin Pan, Jasmin Moneer, Alexandra de la Porte, Martin Heß, Moritz Mercker, Catharina Strube, Marcell Jenewein, Angelika Böttger

Substrate Stiffness Reshapes Layer Architecture and Biophysical Features of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells to Modulate their Differentiation Potential

Jack Llewellyn, Anne Charrier, Emmanuèle Helfer, Rosanna Dono

Hypoxia and TNF-alpha modulate extracellular vesicle release from human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes

Margarida Viola, Maarten P. Bebelman, Renee G. C. Maas, Frederik J. Verweij, Cor S. Seinen, Saskia C. A. de Jager, Pieter Vader, D. Michiel Pegtel, Joost P. G. Sluijter

Deciphering Endothelial and Mesenchymal Organ Specification in Vascularized Lung and Intestinal Organoids

Yifei Miao, Cheng Tan, Nicole M. Pek, Zhiyun Yu, Kentaro Iwasawa, Daniel O. Kechele, Nambirajan Sundaram, Victor Pastrana-Gomez, Keishi Kishimoto, Min-Chi Yang, Cheng Jiang, Jason Tchieu, Jeffrey A. Whitsett, Kyle W. McCracken, Robbert J. Rottier, Darrell N. Kotton, Michael A. Helmrath, James M. Wells, Takanori Takebe, Aaron M. Zorn, Ya-Wen Chen, Minzhe Guo, Mingxia Gu

Microtubule perturbations of neurite extension and nucleokinesis in an iPSC-derived model system

Muriel Sébastien, Alexandra L. Paquette, Adam G. Hendricks, Gary J. Brouhard

Progressive cell fate specification in morphallactic regeneration

Clara Nuninger, Panagiotis Papasaikas, Jacqueline Ferralli, Sebastien Smallwood, Charisios D. Tsiairis

Novel 3D Approach to Model Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease using human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Carola Maria Morell, Samantha Grace Tilson, Rute Alexandra Tomaz, Arash Shahsavari, Andi Munteanu, Giovanni Canu, Brandon Tyler Wesley, Marion Perrin, Imbisaat Geti, Subhankar Mukhopadhyay, Francesca Mazzacuva, Paul Gissen, Jose Garcia-Bernardo, Martin Bachman, Casey Allison Rimland, Fotios Sampaziotis, Irina Mohorianu, Ludovic Vallier

Tuning apicobasal polarity and junctional recycling in the hemogenic endothelium orchestrates the morphodynamic complexity of emerging pre-hematopoietic stem cells

Léa Torcq, Sara Majello, Catherine Vivier, Anne A. Schmidt

Setdb1 safeguards genome integrity in muscle stem cells to allow for regenerative myogenesis and inflammation

Pauline Garcia, William Jarassier, Caroline Brun, Lorenzo Giordani, Fany Agostini, Wai Hing Kung, Cécile Peccate, Jade Ravent, Sidy Fall, Valentin Petit, Tom H Cheung, Slimane Ait-Si-Ali, Fabien Le Grand

Loss of UBE3A impacts both neuronal and non-neuronal cells in human cerebral organoids

R. Chris Estridge, Z. Begum Yagci, Dilara Sen, Travis S. Ptacek, Jeremy M. Simon, Albert J. Keung

Selective Translation Orchestrates Key Signaling Pathways in Primed Pluripotency

Chikako Okubo, Michiko Nakamura, Masae Sato, Yuichi Shichino, Mari Mito, Yasuhiro Takashima, Shintaro Iwasaki, Kazutoshi Takahashi

Developmental emergence of quiescent-like neural progenitor cells in the zebrafish embryonic brain

Yuanyuan Liu, Carla-Sophie Lembke, Judith TML Paridaen

The Drosophila histone methyl-transferase SET1 coordinates multiple signaling pathways in regulating male germline stem cell maintenance and differentiation

Velinda Vidaurre, Annabelle Song, Taibo Li, Wai Lim Ku, Keji Zhao, Jiang Qian, Xin Chen

Characterization of Pro-Fibrotic Signaling Pathways using Human Hepatic Organoids

Yuan Guan, Zhuoqing Fang, Angelina Hu, Sarah Roberts, Meiyue Wang, Wenlong Ren, Patrik K. Johansson, Sarah C. Heilshorn, Annika Enejder, Gary Peltz

Axolotl mandible regeneration occurs through mechanical gap closure and a shared regenerative program with the limb

Julia Kramer, Rita Aires, Sean D. Keeley, Tom Alexander Schröder, Günter Lauer, Tatiana Sandoval-Guzmán

Resistance to Naïve and Formative Pluripotency Conversion in RSeT Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Kevin G. Chen, Kory R. Johnson, Kyeyoon Park, Dragan Maric, Forest Yang, Wen Fang Liu, Yang C. Fann, Barbara S. Mallon, Pamela G. Robey

Licensing and competition of stem cells at the niche combine to regulate tissue maintenance

Rodrigo Garcia-Tejera, Marc Amoyel, Ramon Grima, Linus Schumacher

Clonal analysis of fetal hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell subsets reveals how post-transplantation capabilities are distributed

Olivia Stonehouse, Christine Biben, Tom S Weber, Alexandra Garnham, Katie Fennell, Alison Farley, Antoine Terreaux, Warren Alexander, Mark Dawson, Shalin Naik, Samir Taoudi

DDR1 regulates RUNX1-CBFβ to control breast stem cell differentiation

Colin Trepicchio, Gat Rauner, Nicole Traugh, Meadow Parrish, Daniel E.C. Fein, Youssof Mal, Charlotte Kuperwasser

Mitotic Block and Epigenetic Repression Underlie Neurodevelopmental Defects and Neurobehavioral Deficits in Congenital Heart Disease

George C. Gabriel, Hisato Yagi, Tuantuan Tan, Abha S. Bais, Benjamin J. Glennon, Margaret C. Stapleton, Lihua Huang, William T. Reynolds, Marla G. Shaffer, Madhavi Ganapathiraju, Dennis Simon, Ashok Panigrahy, Yijen L. Wu, Cecilia W. Lo

TASOR expression in naive embryonic stem cells safeguards their developmental potential

Carlos A. Pinzon-Arteaga, Ryan O’Hara, Alice Mazzagati, Emily Ballard, Yingying Hu, Alex Pan, Daniel A. Schmitz, Yulei Wei, Masahiro Sakurai, Peter Ly, Laura Banaszynski, Jun Wu

Stereotyped cell lineage trees support robust development

Xiaoyu Zhang, Zizhang Li, Jingyu Chen, Wenjing Yang, Peng Wu, Feng Chen, Xingxing He, Xiaoshu Chen, Jian-Rong Yang

The Mayo Clinic Salivary Tissue-Organoid Biobanking: A Resource for Salivary Regeneration Research

Syed Mohammed Musheer Aalam, Ana Rita Varela, Aalim Khaderi, Ronsard J Mondesir, Dong-Gi Mun, Andrew Ding, Isabelle M.A. Lombaert, Rob P. Coppes, Chitra Priya Emperumal, Akhilesh Pandey, Jeffrey R. Janus, Nagarajan Kannan

Local ecdysone synthesis in a wounded epithelium sustains developmental delay and promotes regeneration in Drosophila

Douglas Terry, Colby Schweibenz, Kenneth Moberg

| Plant development

Modular mechanisms of immune priming and growth inhibition mediated by plant effector-triggered immunity

Himanshu Chhillar, Pei-Min Yeh, Hoang Hung Nguyen, Jonathan DG Jones, Pingtao Ding

Receptor kinase LecRK-I.9 regulates cell wall remodelling and signalling during lateral root formation in Arabidopsis

Kevin Bellande, David Roujol, Josiane Chourré, Sophie Le Gall, Yves Martinez, Alain Jauneau, Vincent Burlat, Elisabeth Jamet, Hervé Canut

Twilight length alters growth and flowering time in Arabidopsis via LHY/CCA1

Devang Mehta, Sabine Scandola, Curtis Kennedy, Christina Lummer, Maria Camila Rodriguez Gallo, Lauren E. Grubb, Maryalle Tan, Enrico Scarpella, R. Glen Uhrig

A shade-responsive microProtein in the Arabidopsis ATHB2 gene regulates elongation growth and root development

Ashleigh Edwards, Maurizio Junior Chiurazzi, Anko Blaakmeer, Ylenia Vittozzi, Ashish Sharma, Sanne Matton, Valdeko Kruusvee, Daniel Straub, Giovanna Sessa, Monica Carabelli, Giorgio Morelli, Stephan Wenkel

Tyrosine-sulfated peptide hormone induces flavonol biosynthesis to control elongation and differentiation in Arabidopsis primary root

Maria Florencia Ercoli, Alexandra M. Shigenaga, Artur Teixeira de Araujo Jr, Rashmi Jain, Pamela C. Ronald

Understanding Regeneration: investigating the apical notch and meristem re-emergence in Marchantia polymorpha

Alan O. Marron, Marius Rebmann, Mihails Delmans, Jim Haseloff

OsNF-YB7 inactivates OsGLK1 to inhibit chlorophyll biosynthesis in rice embryo

Zongju Yang, Tianqi Bai, E Zhiguo, Baixiao Niu, Chen Chen

Spatial transcriptomics reveals distinct lineage identities for major and minor vein initiation during maize leaf development

Chiara Perico, Maricris Zaidem, Olga Sedelnikova, Samik Bhattacharya, Christian Korfhage, Jane A. Langdale

Geometry and cell wall mechanics guide early pollen tube growth in Arabidopsis thaliana

Lucie Riglet, Catherine Quilliet, Christophe Godin, Karin John, Isabelle Fobis-Loisy

Medicago truncatula ABCG40 is a cytokinin importer that negatively regulates lateral root density and nodule number

Tomasz Jamruszka, Joanna Banasiak, Aleksandra Pawela, Karolina Jarzyniak, Jian Xia, Wanda Biała-Leonhard, Lenka Plačková, Tashi Tsering, Francesca Romana Iacobini, Ondřej Novák, Markus Geisler, Michał Jasiński

ABCC10 roles in plant development and the transport of indole-3-butyric acid

Arielle L. Homayouni, Suresh Damodaran, Katherine Schreiber, Marta Michniewicz, Lauren K. Gunther, Lucia C. Strader

A shade-responsive microProtein in the Arabidopsis ATHB2 gene regulates elongation growth and root development

Ashleigh Edwards, Maurizio Junior Chiurazzi, Anko Blaakmeer, Ylenia Vittozzi, Ashish Sharma, Sanne Matton, Valdeko Kruusvee, Daniel Straub, Giovanna Sessa, Monica Carabelli, Giorgio Morelli, Stephan Wenkel

The ELF3-BBX24/BBX25-PIF4 module controls thermosensory growth in Arabidopsis

Bidhan Chandra Malakar, Shivani Singh, Vikas Garhwal, Gouranga Upadhyaya, Rajanesh Chandramohan, Sreeramaiah N. Gangappa

Characterization of gelling agents in callus inducing media: Physical properties and their effect on callus development

Noy Sadot Muzika, Tamir Kamai, Leor Eshed Williams, Maya Kleiman

Young guard cells function dynamically despite low mechanical anisotropy but gain efficiency during stomatal maturation in Arabidopsis thaliana

Leila Jaafar, Yintong Chen, Sedighe Keynia, Joseph A Turner, Charles T Anderson

The DC1 domain protein Vacuoleless Gametophytes regulates stamen development in Arabidopsis

Natalia L. Amigo, Leonardo A. Arias, Fernanda Marchetti, Sebastián D’Ippólito, Jesica Frik, María Cristina Lombardo, María Cecilia Terrile, Claudia A. Casalongue, Gabriela C. Pagnussat, Diego F. Fiol

Stomatal patterning is differently regulated in adaxial and abaxial epidermis in Arabidopsis

Pirko Jalakas, Ingmar Tulva, Nele Malvīne Bērziņa, Hanna Hõrak

Overexpressing NRT2.7 induces nitrate export from the vacuole and increases growth of Arabidopsis

Patrick Armengaud, Alexis De Angeli, Patrick Berquin, Virginie Bréhaut, Mickaël Durand, Françoise Daniel-Vedele, Anne Krapp, Sophie Filleur

SHOOTMERISTEMLESS autoactivation: A prerequisite for fruit metamorphosis

Yang Dong, Zhi-Cheng Hu, Mateusz Majda, Hao-Ran Sun, Yao Zhang, Yi-Ning Ding, Quan Yuan, Tong-Bing Su, Tian-Feng Lü, Feng Gao, Gui-Xia Xu, Richard S. Smith, Lars Østergaard

| Evo-devo

Potential role of microRNAs in regulating transcriptional profile, and sculpting development and metabolism in cavefish

Tathagata Biswas, Huzaifa Hassan, Nicolas Rohner

Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution in C. elegans and C. briggsae

Christopher R. L. Large, Rupa Khanal, LaDeana Hillier, Chau Huynh, Connor Kubo, Junhyong Kim, Robert H. Waterston, John I. Murray

Insights into ontogenetic scaling and morphological variation in sharks from near-term brown smooth-hound (Mustelus henlei) embryos

Joel H. Gayford, Phillip C. Sternes, Scott G. Seamone, Hana Godfrey, Darren A. Whitehead

Changing rounds into squares or combining stripes: Diversity and formation of checkerboard patterns in Eukaryotes

Pierre Galipot, Julie Zalko

Bats of a feather: Range characteristics and wing morphology predict phylogeographic breaks in volant vertebrates

Sydney K Decker, Kaiya L Provost, Bryan C Carstens

The ivory lncRNA regulates seasonal color patterns in buckeye butterflies

Richard A Fandino, Noah K Brady, Martik Chatterjee, Jeanne Marie Chan McDonald, Luca Livraghi, Karin van der burg, Anyi Mazo-Vargas, Robert D. Reed

Polygenic architecture of adaptation to a high-altitude environment for Drosophila melanogaster wing shape and size.

Katie Pelletier, Megan Bilodeau, Isabella Pellizzari-Delano, M. Daniel Siemon, Yuheng Huang, John E. Pool, Ian E Dworkin

Eyespots originated multiple times independently across the Lepidoptera

Brian Hanotte, Beatriz Willink, Antónia Monteiro

Rapid growth and the evolution of complete metamorphosis in insects

Christin Manthey, C Jessica E Metcalf, Michael T Monaghan, Ulrich Karl Steiner, Jens Rolff

Inferring a role for programmed cell death during the origin and evolution of wing polyphenism in ants

Lisa Hanna, Brendon E. Boudinot, Jürgen Liebig, Ehab Abouheif

mirror determines the far posterior domain in butterfly wings

Martik Chatterjee, Xin Y. Yu, Noah K. Brady, Gabriel C. Hatto, Robert D. Reed

Cephalopod Sex Determination and its Ancient Evolutionary Origin Revealed by Chromosome-level Assembly of the California two-spot Octopus

Gabrielle C. Coffing, Silas Tittes, Scott T. Small, Jeremea O. Songco-Casey, Denise M. Piscopo, Judit R. Pungor, Adam C Miller, Cristopher Niell, Andrew D. Kern

Cell Biology

Cell cycle variants during Drosophila accessory gland development

Allison M. Box, Navyashree A. Ramesh, Shyama Nandakumar, Samuel Jaimian Church, Dilan Prasad, Ariana Afrakhteh, Russell S. Taichman, Laura Buttitta

Oct4 is a gatekeeper of epithelial identity by regulating cytoskeletal organization in skin keratinocytes

Elena D. Christofidou, Marios Tomazou, Chrysovalantis Voutouri, Christina Michael, Triantafyllos Stylianopoulos, George M. Spyrou, Katerina Strati

Plasmodium NEK1 coordinates MTOC organisation and kinetochore attachment during rapid mitosis in male gamete formation

Mohammad Zeeshan, Ravish Rashpa, David J. Ferguson, George Mckeown, Raushan Nugmanova, Amit K. Subudhi, Raphael Beyeler, Sarah L. Pashley, Robert Markus, Declan Brady, Magali Roques, Andrew R. Bottrill, Andrew M. Fry, Arnab Pain, Sue Vaughan, Anthony A. Holder, Eelco C. Tromer, Mathieu Brochet, Rita Tewari

Nutritional sex-specificity on bacterial metabolites during mosquito development leads to adult sex-ratio distortion

Ottavia Romoli, Javier Serrato-Salas, Chloé Gapp, Yanouk Epelboin, Pol Figueras Ivern, Frédéric Barras, Mathilde Gendrin

IL-1β disrupts blood-brain barrier development by inhibiting endothelial Wnt/β-catenin signaling

Audrey R. Fetsko, Dylan J. Sebo, Lilyana B. Budzynski, Alli Scharbarth, Michael R. Taylor

Loss of the mitochondrial citrate carrier, Slc25a1/CIC disrupts embryogenesis via 2-Hydroxyglutarate

Anna Kasprzyk-Pawelec, Mingjun Tan, Yu Leng Phua, Raneen Rahhal, Alec McIntosh, Harvey Fernandez, Rami Mosaoa, Michael Girgis, Amrita Cheema, Lei Jiang, Lawrence F. Kroemer, Anastas Popratiloff, Cheryl Clarkson, Brian M. Kirmsa, Gray W. Pearson, Eric Glasgow, Christopher Albanese, Jerry Vockley, Maria Laura Avantaggiati

Identification and characterization of intermediate states in mammalian neural crest cell epithelial to mesenchymal transition and delamination

Ruonan Zhao, Emma L. Moore, Madelaine M Gogol, Jay R. Unruh, Zulin Yu, Allison Scott, Yan Wang, Naresh Kumar Rajendran, Paul A. Trainor

Truncated NLRC5 isoforms in human placenta: expression, regulation by miR-218-5p, and function in trophoblasts

Yanan Shan, Jacob A O’Brian, Lubna Nadeem, Caroline Dunk, Yan Chen, Jelena Brkic, Heyam Hayder, Stephen J Lye, Chun Peng

The transmembrane protein Syndecan regulates stem cell nuclear properties and cell maintenance

Buffy L. Eldridge-Thomas, Jerome G. Bohere, Chantal Roubinet, Alexandre Barthelemy, Tamsin J. Samuels, Felipe Karam Teixeira, Golnar Kolahgar

Innervation of cranial muscles requires Mllt11/Af1q/Tcf7c function during trigeminal ganglion development

Nicholas W. Zinck, Danielle Stanton-Turcotte, Emily A. Witt, Marley Bloomers, Angelo Iulianella

Filamin A mediates embryonical palatal fusion by linking mechanotransduction with β-Catenin/Smad2

Ziyi Wang, Satoru Hayano, Yao Weng, Xindi Mu, Mitsuaki Ono, Jeremie Oliver Piña, Rena N. D’Souza, Takashi Yamashiro, Toshitaka Oohashi, Hiroshi Kamioka

The Alk receptor tyrosine kinase regulates Sparkly, a novel activity regulating neuropeptide precursor in the Drosophila CNS

Sanjay Kumar Sukumar, Vimala Antonydhason, Linnea Molander, Jawdat Sandakly, Malak Kleit, Ganesh Umapathy, Patricia Mendoza-Garcia, Tafheem Masudi, Andreas Schlossser, Dick R. Nässel, Christian Wegener, Margret Shirinian, Ruth H. Palmer

Antagonistic Roles of Tau and MAP6 in Regulating Neuronal Development

Xiaohuan Sun, Wenqian Yu, Peter W. Baas, Kazuhito Toyooka, Liang Qiang

Placental cytotrophoblast microvillar stabilization is required for cell-cell fusion

Wendy K. Duan, Sumaiyah Z. Shaha, Khushali J. Patel, Ivan K. Domingo, Meghan R. Riddell

Control of ciliary transcriptional programs during spermatogenesis by antagonistic transcription factors

Weihua Wang, Junqiao Xing, Xiqi Zhang, Hongni Liu, Haochen Jiang, Cheng Xu, Xue Zhao, Zhangfeng Hu

Novel Nuclear Roles for Testis-Specific ACTL7A and ACTL7B Supported by In Vivo Characterizations and AI Facilitated In Silico Mechanistic Modeling with Implications for Epigenetic Regulation in Spermiogenesis.

Pierre Ferrer, Srijana Upadhyay, James Cai, Tracy M Clement

Modelling

Rapid growth and the evolution of complete metamorphosis in insects

Christin Manthey, Jessica CE Metcalf, Michael T Monaghan, Ulrich Karl Steiner, Jens Rolff

Modularity of the segmentation clock and morphogenesis

James E. Hammond, Ruth E. Baker, Berta Verd

Deep Learning Based Models for Preimplantation Mouse and Human Development

Martin Proks, Nazmus Salehin, Joshua M. Brickman

Novel mathematical morphology model identifies dorsal-ventral asymmetry of endothelial cell morphology in dorsal aorta of wild-type and Endoglin-deficient zebrafish embryos

Daniel Seeler, Nastasja Grdseloff, Claudia Jasmin Rödel, Charlotte Kloft, Salim Abdelilah-Seyfried, Wilhelm Huisinga

A quantitative model for in vivo stem cell decisions in planarians

Tamar Frankovits, Prakash Varkey Cherian, Yarden Yesharim, Simon Dobler, Omri Wurtzel

Tools & Resources

A Comprehensive Human Embryogenesis Reference Tool using Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Data

Cheng Zhao, Alvaro Plaza Reyes, John Paul Schell, Jere Weltner, Nicolás M. Ortega, Yi Zheng, Åsa K. Björklund, Laura Baqué-Vidal, Joonas Sokka, Ras Torokovic, Brian Cox, Janet Rossant, Jianping Fu, Sophie Petropoulos, Fredrik Lanner

A Genetic Screen for regulators of CNS morphology in Drosophila

Haluk Lacin, Yuqing Zhu, Jose DiPaola, Beth A. Wilson, Yi Zhu, James B. Skeath

NeuroTri2-VISDOT: An open-access tool to harness the power of second trimester human single cell data to inform models of Mendelian neurodevelopmental disorders

Kelly J. Clark, Emily E. Lubin, Elizabeth M. Gonzalez, Annabel K. Sangree, Dana E. Layo-Carris, Emily L. Durham, Rebecca C. Ahrens-Nicklas, Tomoki T. Nomakuchi, Elizabeth J. Bhoj

Single-cell and bulk transcriptional profiling of mouse ovaries reveals novel genes and pathways associated with DNA damage response in oocytes

Monique Mills, Chihiro Emori, Parveen Kumar, Zachary Boucher, Joshy George, Ewelina Bolcun-Filas

Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics of the avian embryo tailbud

GF Mok, S Turner, E Smith, L Mincarelli, A Lister, J Lipscombe, V Uzun, W Haerty, IC Macaulay, A Münsterberg

Volumetric trans-scale imaging of massive quantity of heterogeneous cell populations in centimeter-wide tissue and embryo

Taro Ichimura, Taishi Kakizuka, YuKi Sato, Keiko Itano, Kaoru Seiriki, Hitoshi Hashimoto, Hiroya Itoga, Shuichi Onami, Takeharu Nagai

High-throughput identification of the spatial origins of Drosophila optic lobe neurons using single-cell mRNA-sequencing

Félix Simon, Isabel Holguera, Yen-Chung Chen, Jennifer Malin, Priscilla Valentino, Ted Erclik, Claude Desplan

A single-cell 3D spatiotemporal multi-omics atlas from Drosophila embryogenesis to metamorphosis

Mingyue Wang, Qinan Hu, Zhencheng Tu, Lingshi Kong, Jiajun Yao, Rong Xiang, Zhan Chen, Yan Zhao, Yanfei Zhou, Tengxiang Yu, Yuetian Wang, Zihan Jia, Kang Ouyang, Xianzhe Wang, Yinqi Bai, Mingwei Lian, Zhenyu Yang, Tao Yang, Jing Chen, Yunting Huang, Ni Yin, Wenyuan Mo, Wenfu Liang, Chang Liu, Xiumei Lin, Chuanyu Liu, Ying Gu, Wei Chen, Longqi Liu, Xun Xu, Yuhui Hu

The Guinea Pig: A New Model for Human Preimplantation Development

Jesica Romina Canizo, Cheng Zhao, Sophie Petropoulos

Decoding morphogen patterning of human neural organoids with a multiplexed single-cell transcriptomic screen

Fátima Sanchís-Calleja, Akanksha Jain, Zhisong He, Ryoko Okamoto, Charlotte Rusimbi, Pedro Rifes, Gaurav Singh Rathore, Malgorzata Santel, Jasper Janssens, Makiko Seimiya, Jonas Simon Fleck, Agnete Kirkeby, J. Gray Camp, Barbara Treutlein

A double ovulation protocol for Xenopus laevis produces doubled fertilisation yield and moderately transiently elevated corticosterone levels without loss of egg quality

Chloe Moss, Barbara Vacca, Jo Arnold, Chantal Hubens, Dominic M. Lynch, James Pegge, Michael A.R. Green, Charlotte A. Hosie, Tessa E. Smith, Jeremy B.A. Green

A screen of mutants generated and imaged by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium identifies 39 novel genes regulating the development of the secondary palate.

Ashwin Bhaskar, Sophie Astrof

Induction and in silico staging of human gastruloids with neural tube, segmented somites & advanced cell types

Nobuhiko Hamazaki, Wei Yang, Connor Kubo, Chengxiang Qiu, Beth K Martin, Riddhiman K Garge, Samuel G Regalado, Eva Nichols, Choli Lee, Riza M Daza, Sanjay Srivatsan, Jay Shendure

Scalable and Efficient Generation of Mouse Primordial Germ Cell-like Cells

Xinbao Ding, Liangdao Li, Jingyi Gao, Dain Yi, John C Schimenti

PCP Auto Count: A Novel Fiji/ImageJ plug-in for automated quantification of planar cell polarity and cell counting

Kendra L. Stansak, Luke D. Baum, Sumana Ghosh, Punam Thapa, Vineel Vanga, Bradley J. Walters

morphoHeart: a novel quantitative tool to perform integrated 3D morphometric analyses of heart and ECM morphology during embryonic development

Juliana Sánchez-Posada, Emily S Noël

Nuclear instance segmentation and tracking for preimplantation mouse embryos

Hayden Nunley, Binglun Shao, David Denberg, Prateek Grover, Jaspreet Singh, Maria Avdeeva, Bradley Joyce, Rebecca Kim-Yip, Abraham Kohrman, Abhishek Biswas, Aaron Watters, Zsombor Gal, Alison Kickuth, Madeleine Chalifoux, Stanislav Shvartsman, Lisa M. Brown, Eszter Posfai

A single-cell transcriptomics atlas for the parasitic nematode Heligmosomoides bakeri: Extrapolating model organism information to non-model systems

Stephen M J Pollo, Hongrui Liu, Aralia Leon Coria, Nicole Rosin, Elodie Labit, Jeff Biernaskie, Constance A M Finney, James D Wasmuth

Research practice & education

Structured Peer Review: Pilot results from 23 Elsevier Journals

Mario Malički, Bahar Mehmani

Sci-comm “behind the scenes”: Gendered narratives of scientific outreach activities in the life sciences

Perry G Beasley-Hall, Pam Papadelos, Anne Hewitt, Kate D L Umbers, Michelle T Guzik

Nationwide Inclusive Facilitator Training: Mindsets, Practices and Growth

Diane Codding, Alexandria H. Yen, Haley Lewis, Vanessa Johnson-Ojeda, Regina F. Frey, Sarah Chobot Hokanson, Bennett B. Goldberg

Postdoctoral Scholar Recruitment and Hiring Practices in STEM: A Pilot Study

Meagan Heirwegh, Douglas C. Rees, Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux

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