Welcome to our monthly trawl for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints. Congratulations to all the researchers who kicked off 2023 by preprinting their research.

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

Developmental biology

• Patterning & signalling
• Morphogenesis & mechanics
• Genes & genomes
• Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling
• Plant development
• Evo-devo

Cell Biology

Modelling

Reviews

Tools & Resources

Research practice & education

Developmental biology

| Patterning & signalling

Intestinal Paneth cell differentiation relies on asymmetric regulation of Wnt signaling by Daam1/2
Gabriele Colozza, Heetak Lee, Alessandra Merenda, Szu-Hsien Sam Wu, Andrea Català-Bordes, Tomasz W. Radaszkiewicz, Ingrid Jordens, Ji-Hyun Lee, Aileen-Diane Bamford, Fiona Farnhammer, Teck Yew Low, Madelon M. Maurice, Vítězslav Bryja, Jihoon Kim, Bon-Kyoung Koo

Notch1 cortical signaling regulates epithelial architecture and cell-cell adhesion
Matthew J. White, Kyle A. Jacobs, Tania Singh, Matthew L. Kutys

Characterization of 3D organotypic epithelial tissues reveals tonsil-specific differences in tonic interferon signaling
Robert Jackson, Esha V Rajadhyaksha, Reid S Loeffler, Caitlyn E Flores, Koenraad Van Doorslaer

Spatial transcriptomics reveals a conserved segment polarity program that governs muscle patterning in Nematostella vectensis
Shuonan He, Wanqing Shao, Shiyuan (Cynthia) Chen, Ting Wang, Matthew C. Gibson

Foveolar cone subtype patterning in human retinal organoids
Katarzyna A Hussey, Kiara Eldred, Thomas Reh, Robert J. Johnston Jr

Cup is essential for oskar mRNA translational repression during early Drosophila oogenesis
Livia V. Bayer, Samantha Milano, Stephen K. Formel, Harpreet Kaur, Rishi Ravichandran, Juan A. Cambeiro, Lizaveta Slinko, Irina E. Catrina, Diana P. Bratu

Haploid androgenetic development in bovines reveals imbalanced WNT signaling and impaired cell fate differentiation
Luis M. Aguila, Ricardo P. Nociti, Rafael V. Sampaio, Jacinthe Therrien, Flavio V. Meirelles, Ricardo N. Felmer, Lawrence C. Smith

Dynamic fate map of hindbrain rhombomeres in zebrafish
Mageshi Kamaraj, Thierry Savy, Sophie Salomé Desnoulez, Nadine Peyrieras, Monique Frain

Control of gastruloid patterning and morphogenesis by the Erk and Akt signaling pathways
Evan J. Underhill, Jared E. Toettcher

Impact of cell size on morphogen gradient precision
Jan A. Adelmann, Roman Vetter, Dagmar Iber

Wengen, a Tumour Necrosis Factor Receptor, regulates the Fibroblast Growth Factor pathway by an unconventional mechanism
Annalisa Letizia, Maria Lluisa Espinàs, Marta Llimargas

The RALF Signaling Pathway Regulates Cell Wall Integrity during Pollen Tube Growth in Maize
Liang-Zi Zhou, Lele Wang, Zengxiang Ge, Julia Mergner, Xingli Li, Bernhard Küster, Gernot Längst, Li-Jia Qu, Thomas Dresselhaus

Morphological changes and two Nodal paralogs drive left-right asymmetry in the squamate veiled chameleon (C. calyptratus)
Natalia A. Shylo, Sarah E. Smith, Andrew Price, Fengli Guo, Melainia McClain, Paul Trainor

Maternal and intrauterine influences on feto-placental growth are accompanied by sexually dimorphic changes in placental mitochondrial respiration, and metabolic signalling pathways
Esteban Salazar-Petres, Daniela Pereira-Carvalho, Jorge Lopez-Tello, Amanda Nancy Sferruzzi-Perri

The phosphodiesterase 2A regulates lymphatic endothelial development via cGMP-mediated control of Notch signaling
Claudia Carlantoni, Leon Liekfeld, Sandra A. Hemkemeyer, Danny Schreier, Ceren Saygi, Roberta Kurelic, Silvia Cardarelli, Joanna Kalucka, Christian Schulte, Manu Beerens, Reiner Mailer, Tilman Schäffer, Fabio Naro, Manuela Pellegrini, Viacheslav O. Nikolaev, Thomas Renné, Maike Frye

More than germ cells: vascular development in the early zebrafish (Danio rerio) gonad
Michelle E. Kossack, Lucy Tian, Kealyn Bowie, Jessica S. Plavicki

Reduced glycolysis links resting zone chondrocyte proliferation in the growth plate
Tatsuya Kobayashi, Cameron Young, Wen Zhou, Eugene P. Rhee

Establishment of Wnt ligand-receptor organization and cell polarity in the C. elegans embryo
Pierre Recouvreux, Pritha Pai, Rémy Torro, Mónika Ludányi, Pauline Mélénec, Mariem Boughzala, Vincent Bertrand, Pierre-François Lenne

Dally is not essential for Dpp spreading or internalization but for Dpp stability by antagonizing Tkv-mediated Dpp internalization
Niklas Simon, Abu Safyan, George Pyrowolakis, Shinya Matsuda

PRDM16 restricts stem cell proliferation by integrating BMP and Wnt signalling in the developing choroid plexus
Li He, Jiayu Wen, Qi Dai

BMP suppresses WNT to integrate patterning of orthogonal body axes in adult planarians
Eleanor G. Clark, Christian P. Petersen

Wnt signaling regulates ion channel expression to promote smooth muscle and cartilage formation in developing mouse trachea
Nicholas X. Russell, Kaulini Burra, Ronak Shah, Natalia Bottasso-Arias, Megha Mohanakrishnan, John Snowball, Harshavardhana H. Ediga, Satish K Madala, Debora Sinner

Leftward transfer of a chemosensory polycystin initiates left-dominant calcium signaling for lateralized embryonic development
Yosuke Tanaka, Ai Morozumi, Nobutaka Hirokawa

Not all Notch pathway mutations are equal in the embryonic mouse retina
Bernadett Bosze, Julissa Suarez-Navarro, Illiana Cajias, Joseph A. Brzezinski IV, Nadean L Brown

The multimodal action of G alpha q in coordinating growth and homeostasis in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc
Vijay Velagala, Dharsan K. Soundarrajan, Maria F. Unger, David Gazzo, Nilay Kumar, Jun Li, Jeremiah Zartman

Follicle stimulating hormone signaling opposes the DRL-1/FLR-4 MAP Kinases to balance p38-mediated growth and lipid homeostasis in C. elegans
Sarah K. Torzone, Aaron Y. Park, Peter C. Breen, Natalie R. Cohen, Robert H. Dowen

C. elegans SMOC-1 interacts with both BMP and glypican to regulate BMP signaling
Melisa S. DeGroot, Byron Williams, Timothy Y Chang, Maria L. Maas Gamboa, Isabel Larus, J. Christopher Fromme, Jun Liu

Endothelial SMAD1/5 signaling couples angiogenesis to osteogenesis during long bone growth
Annemarie Lang, Andreas Benn, Angelique Wolter, Tim Balcaen, Joseph Collins, Greet Kerckhofs, An Zwijsen, Joel D. Boerckel

The myocardium utilizes Pdgfra-PI3K signaling to steer towards the midline during heart tube formation
Rabina Shrestha, Tess McCann, Harini Saravanan, Jaret Lieberth, Prashanna Koirala, Joshua Bloomekatz

| Morphogenesis & mechanics

The mechanics of cephalic furrow formation in the Drosophila embryo
Redowan A. Niloy, Michael C. Holcomb, Jeffrey H. Thomas, Jerzy Blawzdziewicz

Mechanical forces in extendable tissue matrix orient cell divisions via microtubule stabilization in Arabidopsis
Lukas Hoermayer, Juan Carlos Montesinos, Leonhard Spona, Saiko Yoshida, Petra Marhava, Silvia Caballero-Mancebo, Eva Benková, Carl-Philip Heisenberg, Jiří Friml

KDM2B regulates hippocampal morphogenesis by transcriptionally silencing Wnt signaling in neural progenitors
Bo Zhang, Chen Zhao, Wenchen Shen, Wei Li, Yue Zheng, Xiangfei Kong, Junbao Wang, Xudong Wu, Ying Liu, Yan Zhou

Temporal variability and cell mechanics control robustness in mammalian embryogenesis
Dimitri Fabrèges, Bernat Corominas Murtra, Prachiti Moghe, Alison Kickuth, Takafumi Ichikawa, Chizuru Iwatani, Tomoyuki Tsukiyama, Nathalie Daniel, Julie Gering, Anniek Stokkermans, Adrian Wolny, Anna Kreshuk, Véronique Duranthon, Virginie Uhlmann, Edouard Hannezo, Takashi Hiiragi

Anoctamin 10/TMEM16K mediates convergent extension and tubulogenesis during notochord formation in the early chordate Ciona intestinalis
Zonglai Liang, Daniel Christiaan Dondorp, Marios Chatzigeorgiou

Acinar-ductal cell rearrangement drives pancreas branching morphogenesis in an IGF/PI3K-dependent manner
Jean-Francois Darrigrand, Anna Salowka, Francesca M. Spagnoli

YAP and TAZ couple osteoblast precursor mobilization to angiogenesis and mechanoregulated bone development
Joseph M. Collins, Annemarie Lang, Cristian Parisi, Yasaman Moharrer, Madhura P. Nijsure, Jong Hyun (Thomas) Kim, Greg L. Szeto, Ling Qin, Riccardo L. Gottardi, Nathanial A. Dyment, Niamh C. Nowlan, Joel D. Boerckel

Mechanical models affecting beetle horn remodeling
Keisuke Matsuda, Haruhiko Adachi, Hiroki Gotoh, Yasuhiro Inoue, Shigeru Kondo

Spatio-temporal remodeling of extracellular matrix orients epithelial sheet folding
Alice Tsuboi, Koichi Fujimoto, Takefumi Kondo

Information integration during bioelectric regulation of morphogenesis in the embryonic frog brain
Santosh Manicka, Vaibhav P. Pai, Michael Levin

Durotaxis bridges phase transition as a function of tissue stiffness in vivo
Min Zhu, Bin Gu, Evan Thomas, Hirotaka Tao, Theodora M. Yung, Kaiwen Zhang, Janet Rossant, Yu Sun, Sevan Hopyan

| Genes & genomes

Modulating the epigenetic state promotes the reprogramming of transformed cells to pluripotency in a line-specific manner
Xiuling Fu, Qiang Zhuang, Isaac A. Babarinde, Liyang Shi, Gang Ma, Haoqing Hu, Yuhao Li, Jiao Chen, Zhen Xiao, Boping Deng, Li Sun, Ralf Jauch, Andrew P. Hutchins

Genomic resources enable insight into the developmental transcriptome of the blastoclad fungus, Coelomomyces lativittatus, an obligate parasite of mosquitoes and microcrustaceans
Cassandra L. Ettinger, Talieh Ostovar, Mark Yacoub, Steven Ahrendt, Robert H. Hice, Brian A. Federici, Jason E. Stajich

An epigenetic basis of adaptive plasticity in Drosophila melanogaster
Abigail DiVito Evans, Regina A. Fairbanks, Paul Schmidt, Mia T. Levine

Spatial enhancer activation determines inhibitory neuron identity
Elena Dvoretskova, May C. Ho, Volker Kittke, Ilaria Vitali, Daniel D. Lam, Irene Delgado, Chao Feng, Miguel Torres, Juliane Winkelmann, Christian Mayer

scMultiome analysis identifies embryonic hindbrain progenitors with mixed rhombomere identities
Yong-Il Kim, Rebecca O’Rourke, Charles G. Sagerström

Crosstalk between chromatin and the transcription factor Shavenbaby defines transcriptional output along the Drosophila intestinal stem cell lineage
Alexandra Mancheno-Ferris, Clément Immarigeon, Alexia Rivero, David Depierre, Nicolas Chanard, Olivier Fosseprez, Gabriel Aughey, Priscilla Lhoumaud, Julien Anglade, Tony Southall, Serge Plaza, Olivier Cuvier, François Payre, Cédric Polesello

Eomes restricts Brachyury functions at the onset of mammalian gastrulation
Katrin M. Schüle, Jelena Weckerle, Simone Probst, Alexandra E. Wehmeyer, Lea Zissel, Chiara M. Schröder, Mehmet Tekman, Gwang-Jin Kim, Inga-Marie Schlägl, Sagar, Sebastian J. Arnold

Single cell transcriptomics of human prenatal anterior foregut-derived organs identifies distinct developmental signatures directing commitment and specialization of the thymic epithelial stroma
Abdulvasey Mohammed, Benjamin Solomon, Priscila F. Slepicka, Kelsea M. Hubka, Hanh Dan Nguyen, Michael G. Chavez, Christine Y. Yeh, Virginia D. Winn, Casey A. Gifford, Purvesh Khatri, Andrew Gentles, Katja G. Weinacht

Cellular remodeling and JAK inhibition promote zygotic gene expression in the Ciona germline
Naoyuki Ohta, Lionel Christiaen

A transcriptional and regulatory map of mouse somitogenesis
Ximena Ibarra-Soria, Elodie Thierion, Gi Fay Mok, Andrea E. Münsterberg, Duncan T. Odom, John C. Marioni

YTHDC2 serves a distinct late role in spermatocytes during germ cell differentiation
Alexis S. Bailey, Margaret T. Fuller

Mitochondrial citrate metabolism and efflux regulates trophoblast differentiation
Renee M. Mahr, Snehalata Jena, Sereen K. Nashif, Alisa B. Nelson, Adam J. Rauckhorst, Ferrol I. Rome, Ryan D. Sheldon, Curtis C. Hughey, Patrycja Puchalska, Micah D. Gearhart, Eric B. Taylor, Peter A. Crawford, Sarah A. Wernimont

Whole transcriptome profiling of placental pathobiology in SARS-CoV-2 pregnancies identifies a preeclampsia-like gene signature
Nataly Stylianou, Ismail Sebina, Nicholas Matigian, James Monkman, Hadeel Doehler, Joan Röhl, Mark Allenby, Andy Nam, Liuliu Pan, Anja Rockstroh, Habib Sadeghirad, Kimberly Chung, Thais Sobanski, Ken O’Byrne, Patricia Zadorosnei Rebutini, Cleber Machado-Souza, Emanuele Therezinha Schueda Stonoga, Majid E Warkiani, Carlos Salomon, Kirsty Short, Lana McClements, Lucia de Noronha, Ruby Huang, Gabrielle T. Belz, Fernando Souza-Fonseca-Guimaraes, Vicki Clifton, Arutha Kulasinghe

Determinants of renin cell differentiation: a single cell epi-transcriptomics approach
Alexandre G Martini, Jason P. Smith, Silvia Medrano, Nathan C. Sheffield, Maria Luisa S. Sequeira-Lopez, R. Ariel Gomez

NuRD independent Mi-2 activity represses ectopic gene expression during neuronal maturation
Gabriel N Aughey, Elhana Forsberg, Krista Grimes, Shen Zhang, Tony D Southall

Dbx2, an aging-related homeobox gene, inhibits the proliferation of adult neural progenitors
Andrea Giuliani, Valerio Licursi, Paola S. Nisi, Mario Fiore, Stefano Biagioni, Rodolfo Negri, Peter J. Rugg-Gunn, Emanuele Cacci, Giuseppe Lupo

Nr5a2 is essential for morula development
Nicola Festuccia, Sandrine Vandormael-Pournin, Almira Chervova, Anna Geiselman, Francina Langa-Vives, Rémi-Xavier Coux, Inma Gonzalez, Michel Cohen-Tannoudji, Pablo Navarro

DMRT1 is a Testis Determining Gene in Rabbits and is Also Essential for Female Fertility
Emilie Dujardin, Marjolaine André, Aurélie Dewaele, Béatrice Mandon-Pépin, Francis Poulat, Anne Frambourg, Dominique Thépot, Luc Jouneau, Geneviève Jolivet, Eric Pailhoux, Maëlle Pannetier

Activator-blocker model of transcriptional regulation by pioneer-like factors
Aileen Julia Riesle, Meijiang Gao, Marcus Rosenblatt, Jacques Hermes, Helge Hass, Anna Gebhard, Marina Veil, Björn Grüning, Jens Timmer, Daria Onichtchouk

DNA elements tether canonical Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 to human genes
Juan I. Barrasa, Tatyana G. Kahn, Moa J. Lundkvist, Yuri B. Schwartz

Single-cell response to Wnt activation in human embryonic stem cells reveals uncoupling of Wnt target gene expression
Simon Söderholm, Amaia Jauregi-Miguel, Pierfrancesco Pagella, Valeria Ghezzi, Gianluca Zambanini, Anna Nordin, Claudio Cantù

Single-cell transcriptomic profiling redefines the origin and specification of early adrenogonadal progenitors
Yasmine Neirijnck, Pauline Sararols, Françoise Kühne, Chloé Mayère, Serge Nef, Andreas Schedl

Modulation of protein-DNA binding reveals mechanisms of spatiotemporal gene control in early Drosophila embryos
Sahla Syed, Yifei Duan, Bomyi Lim

INO80 regulates chromatin accessibility to facilitate meiotic sex chromosome inactivation
Prabuddha Chakraborty, Terry Magnuson

Transient loss of Polycomb components induces an epigenetic cancer fate
V. Parreno, V. Loubière, B. Schuettengruber, M. Erokhin, B. Győrffy, M. Di Stefano, L. Fritsch, J. Moreaux, D. Chetverina, A-M. Martinez, G. Cavalli

Loss of NR5A1 in Sertoli cells after sex determination changes their cellular identity and induces their death by anoikis
Sirine Souali-Crespo, Diana Condrea, Nadège Vernet, Betty Féret, Muriel Klopfenstein, Erwan Grandgirard, Violaine Alunni, Marie Cerciat, Matthieu Jung, Chloé Mayere, Serge Nef, Manuel Mark, Frédéric Chalmel, Norbert B. Ghyselinck

TOBF1 modulates mouse embryonic stem cell fate through co-transcriptional regulation of alternative splicing
Meghali Aich, Asgar Hussain Ansari, Li Ding, Vytautas Iesmantavicius, Deepanjan Paul, Chunaram Choudhary, Souvik Maiti, Frank Buchholz, Debojyoti Chakraborty

| Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling

IRF1 regulates self-renewal and stress-responsiveness to support hematopoietic stem cell maintenance
Alexandra Rundberg Nilsson, Hongxu Xian, Shabnam Shalapour, Jörg Cammenga, Michael Karin

The Sin3B chromatin modifier restricts cell cycle progression to dictate hematopoietic stem cell differentiation
Alexander Calderon, Tamara Mestvirishvili, Francesco Boccalatte, Kelly V. Ruggles, Gregory David

Cell division tracing combined with single-cell transcriptomics reveals new cell types and differentiation paths in the regenerating mouse lung
Leila R. Martins, Lina Sieverling, Michelle Michelhans, Chiara Schiller, Cihan Erkut, Sergio Triana, Stefan Fröhling, Lars Velten, Hanno Glimm, Claudia Scholl

Damage-induced senescent immune cells regulate regeneration of the zebrafish retina
Gregory Konar, Zachary Flickinger, Shivani Sharma, Kyle Vallone, Charles Lyon, Claire Doshier, William Lyon, James G. Patton

Age-dependent structural and morphological changes of the stem cell niche disrupt spatiotemporal regulation of stem cells and drive tissue disintegration
Michelle A. Urman, Nimmy S. John, ChangHwan Lee

TGFB1 Induces Fetal Reprogramming and Enhances Intestinal Regeneration
Lei Chen, Abigail Dupre, Xia Qiu, Oscar Pellon-Cardenas, Katherine D. Walton, Jianming Wang, Ansu O. Perekatt, Wenwei Hu, Jason R. Spence, Michael P. Verzi

Dominant-negative mutations in CBX1 cause a neurodevelopmental disorder
Yukiko Kuroda, Aiko Iwata-Otsubo, Kerith-Rae Dias, Suzanna E.L. Temple, Koji Nagao, Lachlan De Hayr, Ying Zhu, Shin-Ya Isobe, Gohei Nishibuchi, Sarah K Fiordaliso, Yuki Fujita, Alyssa L. Rippert, Samuel W Baker, Marco L. Leung, Daniel C. Koboldt, Adele Harman, Beth A. Keena, Izumi Kazama, Gopinath Musuwadi Subramanian, Kandamurugu Manickam, Betsy Schmalz, Maeson Latsko, Elaine H Zackai, Matt Edwards, Carey-Anne Evans, Matthew C. Dulik, Michael F. Buckley, Toshihide Yamashita, W. Timothy O’Brien, Robert J. Harvey, Chikashi Obuse, Tony Roscioli, Kosuke Izumi

Conditional blastocyst complementation of a defective Foxa2 lineage efficiently promotes generation of the whole lung
Akihiro Miura, Hemanta Sarmah, Junichi Tanaka, Youngmin Hwang, Anri Sawada, Yuko Shimamura, Yinshan Fang, Dai Shimizu, Zurab Ninish, Jake Le Suer, Nicole C. Dubois, Jennifer Davis, Shinichi Toyooka, Jun Wu, Jianwen Que, Finn J. Hawkins, Chyuan-Sheng Lin, Munemasa Mori

RUNX1 is required in granulocyte-monocyte progenitors to attenuate inflammatory cytokine production by neutrophils
Alexandra U. Zezulin, Darwin Ye, Elizabeth Howell, Daniel Yen, Erica Bresciani, Jamie Diemer, Jian-gang Ren, Mohd Hafiz Ahmad, Lucio H. Castilla, Ivo P. Touw, Andy J. Minn, Wei Tong, P. Paul Liu, Kai Tan, Wenbao Yu, Nancy A. Speck

Mutation of gabra1 is associated with hypermotility and abnormal expression of proteins critical for ion homeostasis and synaptic vesicle transport
Nayeli G. Reyes-Nava, Isaiah Perez, Brian Grajeda, Igor L. Estevao, Cameron C. Ellis, Sourav Roy, Anita M. Quintana

Fetal exposure to endocrine disrupting-bisphenol A (BPA) alters testicular fatty acid metabolism in the adult offspring: relevance to sperm maturation and quality
Saikanth Varma, Archana Molangiri, Suryam Reddy Kona, Ahamed Ibrahim, Asim K Duttaroy, Sanjay Basak

scRNAseq unravels the transcriptional network underlying zebrafish retina regeneration
Laura Celotto, Fabian Rost, Anja Machate, Juliane Bläsche, Andreas Dahl, Anke Weber, Stefan Hans, Michael Brand

An adult stem-like cell population generates germline and neurons in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis
Paula Miramón-Puértolas, Patrick R.H. Steinmetz

Abnormal chondrocyte intercalation in a zebrafish model of cblC syndrome restored by an MMACHC cobalamin binding mutant
David Paz, Briana E. Pinales, Barbara S. Castellanos, Isaiah Perez, Claudia B. Gil, Lourdes Jimenez Madrigal, Nayeli G. Reyes-Nava, Victoria L. Castro, Jennifer L. Sloan, Anita M. Quintana

Nutrient-regulated dynamics of chondroprogenitors in the postnatal murine growth plate
Takeshi Oichi, Joe Kodama, Kimberly Wilson, Hongying Tian, Yuka Imamura, Yu Usami, Yasushi Oshima, Taku Saito, Sakae Tanaka, Masahiro Iwamoto, Satoru Otsuru, Motomi Iwamoto-Enomoto

Spatiotemporal reconstruction of the origin and assembly of smooth muscles in the intestinal villus
Bhargav D. Sanketi, Madhav Mantri, Mohammad A. Tavallaei, Shing Hu, Michael F. Z. Wang, Iwijn De Vlaminck, Natasza A. Kurpios

Coordinated multiple cellular processes in tongue development
Maiko Kawasaki, Katsushige Kawasaki, Finsa Tisna Sari, Takehisa Kudo, Jun Nihara, Madoka Kitamura, Takahiro Nagai, Vanessa Utama, Yoko Ishida, Fumiya Meguro, Takayuki Nishimura, Yuan Kogure, Satoshi Maruyama, Jun-ichi Tanuma, Yoshito Kakihara, Takeyasu Maeda, Sarah Ghafoor, Roman H. Khonsari, Pierre Corre, Paul T. Sharpe, Martyn T. Cobourne, Brunella Franco, Atsushi Ohazama

Apical expansion of calvarial osteoblasts and suture patency is dependent on graded fibronectin cues
Xiaotian Feng, Helen Molteni, Megan Gregory, Jennifer Lanza, Nikaya Polsani, Rachel Wyetzner, M. Brent Hawkins, Greg Holmes, Sevan Hopyan, Matthew P. Harris, Radhika P. Atit

Biallelic Variants in MAD2L1BP (p31comet) Cause Female Infertility Characterized by Oocyte Maturation Arrest
Lingli Huang, Wenqing Li, Xingxing Dai, Shuai Zhao, Bo Xu, Fengsong Wang, Ren-Tao Jin, Lihua Luo, Liming Wu, Xue Jiang, Yu Cheng, Jiaqi Zou, Caoling Xu, Xianhong Tong, Heng-yu Fan, Han Zhao, Jianqiang Bao

SMIM36, a novel and conserved microprotein, is involved in retinal lamination in zebrafish
Surbhi Sharma, Soundhar Ramasamy, Yasmeen Khan, Dheeraj Chandra Joshi, Beena Pillai

The exon junction complex component EIF4A3 is essential for mouse and human cortical progenitor mitosis and neurogenesis
Bianca M. Lupan, Rachel A. Solecki, Camila Manso Musso, Fernando C. Alsina, Debra L. Silver

Production of β-PheRS fragments correlates with food avoidance and slow growth, and is suppressed by the appetite-inducing hormone CCHa2
Dominique Brunßen, Beat Suter

Maternal exposure to environmental levels of carbamazepine induces mild growth retardation in mouse embryos
Douek-Maba Orit, Kalev-Altman Rotem, Mordehay Vered, Hayby-Averbuch Hilla, Shlezinger Neta, Chefetz Benny, Sela-Donenfeld Dalit

Adult stem cell characterization from the Medial Gastrocnemius and Semitendinosus muscles in early development of cerebral palsy pathology
M Corvelyn, J Meirlevede, J Deschrevel, E Huyghe, E De Wachter, G Gayan-Ramirez, M Sampaolesi, A Van Campenhout, K Desloovere, D Costamagna

The neurodevelopmental transcriptome of the Drosophila melanogaster microcephaly gene abnormal spindle reveals a role for temporal transcription factors and the immune system in regulating brain size
Maria C. Mannino, Mercedes Bartels Cassidy, Steven Florez, Zeid Rusan, Shalini Chakraborty, Todd Schoborg

Six3 acts independently of Pax6 to provide an essential contribution to lens development
Sumanth Manohar, Takuya Nakayama, Marilyn Fisher, Robert M. Grainger

Macrophage activation drives ovarian failure and masculinization
Paloma Bravo, Yulong Liu, Bruce W. Draper, Florence L. Marlow

Directed differentiation of human hindbrain neuroepithelial stem cells recapitulates cerebellar granule neurogenesis
Biren M. Dave, Xin Chen, Fraser McCready, Jignesh K. Tailor, James Ellis, Xi Huang, Peter B. Dirks

Defining Cardiac Nerve Architecture During Development, Disease, and Regeneration
Rebecca J. Salamon, Poorva Halbe, William Kasberg, Jiyoung Bae, Anjon Audhya, Ahmed I. Mahmoud

| Plant development

Three-dimensional morphological analysis revealed the cell patterning bases for the sexual dimorphism development in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha
Yihui Cui, Tetsuya Hisanaga, Tomoaki Kajiwara, Shohei Yamaoka, Takayuki Kohchi, Tatsuaki Goh, Keiji Nakajima

AGAMOUS mediates timing of guard cell formation during gynoecium development
Ailbhe J. Brazel, Róisín Fattorini, Jesse McCarthy, Rainer Franzen, Florian Rümpler, George Coupland, Diarmuid S. Ó’Maoiléidigh

Establishment of cell transcriptional identity during seed germination
Lim Chee Liew, Yue You, Marina Oliva, Marta Peirats-Llobet, Sophia Ng, Muluneh Tamiru-Oli, Oliver Berkowitz, Uyen Vu Thuy Hong, Asha Haslem, Tim Stuart, Matthew E. Ritchie, George W. Bassel, Ryan Lister, James Whelan, Quentin Gouil, Mathew G. Lewsey

Sugar signaling modulates SHOOT MERISTEMLESS expression and meristem function in Arabidopsis
Filipa L. Lopes, Pau Formosa-Jordan, Alice Malivert, Leonor Margalha, Ana Confraria, Regina Feil, John E. Lunn, Henrik Jönsson, Benoît Landrein, Elena Baena-González

Competing differentiation gradients coordinate fruit morphogenesis
A. Gómez-Felipe, M. Marconi, E. Branchini, B. Wang, H. Bertrand-Rakusova, T. Stan, J. Burkiewicz, S. de Folter, A-L. Routier-Kierzkowska, K. Wabnik, D. Kierzkowski

Microbe-induced plant drought tolerance by ABA-mediated root morphogenesis and epigenetic reprogramming of gene expression
Khairiah M. Alwutayd, Anamika A. Rawat, Arsheed H. Sheikh, Marilia Almeida-Trapp, Alaguraj Veluchamy, Rewaa Jalal, Michael Karampelias, Katja Froehlich, Waad Alzaed, Naheed Tabassum, Thayssa Rabelo Schley, Anton R. Schaeffner, Ihsanullah Daur, Maged M. Saad, Heribert Hirt

| Evo-devo

Wolbachia is a nutritional symbiont
Amelia RI Lindsey, Audrey J Parish, Irene LG Newton, Jason M Tennessen, Megan W Jones, Nicole Stark

Systemic orchestration of cell size throughout the body: Influence of sex and rapamycin exposure in Drosophila melanogaster
Ewa Szlachcic, Anna Maria Labecka, Valeriya Privalova, Anna Sikorska, Marcin Czarnoleski

Evolutionary history of the Brachyury gene in Hydrozoa: duplications, divergence and neofunctionalization
Alexandra A. Vetrova, Daria M. Kupaeva, Tatiana S. Lebedeva, Peter Walentek, Nikoloz Tsikolia, Stanislav V. Kremnyov

Cell Biology

Spontaneous rotations in epithelia as an interplay between cell polarity and boundaries.
Simon Lo Vecchio, Olivier Pertz, Marcela Szopos, Laurent Navoret, Daniel Riveline

Nhsl1b regulates mesodermal cell migration by controlling protrusion dynamics during zebrafish gastrulation
Sophie Escot, Amélie Elouin, Lucille Mellottee, Nicolas B David

Newly born mesenchymal cells disperse through a rapid mechanosensitive migration
Jon Riddell, Shahzeb Raja Noureen, Luigi Sedda, James D. Glover, William K. W. Ho, Connor A. Bain, Arianna Berbeglia, Helen Brown, Calum Anderson, Yuhang Chen, Michael L. Crichton, Christian A. Yates, Richard L. Mort, Denis J. Headon

A planar-polarized MYO6-DOCK7-RAC1 axis promotes tissue fluidification in mammary epithelia
Luca Menin, Janine Weber, Stefano Villa, Emanuele Martini, Elena Maspero, Valeria Cancila, Paolo Maiuri, Andrea Palamidessi, Emanuela Frittoli, Fabrizio Bianchi, Claudio Tripodo, Kylie J. Walters, Fabio Giavazzi, Giorgio Scita, Simona Polo

The Shot CH1 domain recognises a distinct form of F-actin during Drosophila oocyte determination
D. Nashchekin, I. Squires, A. Prokop, D. St Johnston

Arp2/3 Complex Activity Enables Nuclear YAP for Naïve Pluripotency of Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Nathaniel P. Meyer, Tania Singh, Matthew L. Kutys, Todd Nystul, Diane L. Barber

SCAR and the Arp2/3 complex polarise the actomyosin cortex and plasma membrane organization in asymmetrically dividing neuroblasts
Giulia Cazzagon, Chantal Roubinet, Buzz Baum

Sperm-contributed centrioles segregate stochastically into blastomeres of 4-cell stage C. elegans embryos
Pierre Gönczy, Fernando R. Balestra

Intrinsic microtubule destabilization of multiciliated choroid plexus epithelial cells during postnatal lifetime
Kim Hoa Ho, Valentina Scarpetta, Chiara Salio, Elisa D’Este, Martin Meschkat, Christian A. Wurm, Matthias Kneussel, Carsten Janke, Maria M. Magiera, Marco Sassoè-Pognetto, Monika S. Brill, Annarita Patrizi

Modelling

Unbalanced response to growth variations reshapes the cell fate decision landscape
Jingwen Zhu, Pan Chu, Xiongfei Fu

Artificial intelligence supports automated characterization of differentiated human pluripotent stem cells
Katarzyna Marzec-Schmidt, Nidal Ghosheh, Sören Richard Stahlschmidt, Barbara Küppers-Munther, Jane Synnergren, Benjamin Ulfenborg

CoVar: A generalizable machine learning approach to identify the coordinated regulators driving variational gene expression
Satyaki Roy, Shehzad Z. Sheikh, Terrence S. Furey

A Clock and Wavefront Self-Organizing model explains somitogenesis in vivo and in vitro
Julie Klepstad, Luciano Marcon

Lineage tracing identifies heterogeneous hepatoblast contribution to cell lineages and postembryonic organ growth dynamics
Iris. A. Unterweger, Julie Klepstad, Edouard Hannezo, Pia R. Lundegaard, Ala Trusina, Elke A. Ober

Machine-guided cell-fate engineering
Evan Appleton, Jenhan Tao, Greg Fonseca, Songlei Liu, Christopher Glass, George Church

Flow similarity model predicts the allometry and allometric covariation of petiole dimensions
Charles A. Price

Tools & Resources

Remote-refocusing light-sheet fluorescence microscopy enables 3D imaging of electromechanical coupling of hiPSC-derived and adult cardiomyocytes in co-culture
L Dvinskikh, H Sparks, L Brito, K MacLeod, SE Harding, C Dunsby

Utilization of an Artery-on-a-chip to unravel novel regulators and therapeutic targets in vascular diseases
Valentina Paloschi, Jessica Pauli, Greg Winski, Zhiyuan Wu, Zhaolong Li, Nadiya Glukha, Nora Hummel, Felix Rogowitz, Sandro Meucci, Lorenzo Botti, Albert Busch, Ekaterina Chernogubova, Hong Jin, Nadja Sachs, Hans-Henning Eckstein, Anne Dueck, Reinier A. Boon, Andreas R. Bausch, Lars Maegdefessel

Hep3D: A 3D single-cell digital atlas of the liver to study spatio-temporal tissue architecture
Dilan Martínez, Valentina Maldonado, Cristian Pérez, Rodrigo Yañez, Valeria Candia, Yannis Kalaidzidis, Marino Zerial, Hernán Morales-Navarrete, Fabián Segovia-Miranda

Generation of human alveolar epithelial type I cells from pluripotent stem cells
Claire L Burgess, Jessie Huang, Pushpinder Bawa, Konstantinos-Dionysios Alysandratos, Kasey Minakin, Michael P Morley, Apoorva Babu, Carlos Villacorta-Martin, Anne Hinds, Bibek R Thapa, Feiya Wang, Adeline M Matschulat, Edward E Morrisey, Xaralabos Varelas, Darrell N Kotton

A 3-dimensional molecular cartography of human cerebral organoids revealed by double-barcoded spatial transcriptomics
Gwendoline Lozachmeur, Aude Bramoulle, Antoine Aubert, François Stüder, Julien Moehlin, Lucie Madrange, Frank Yates, Jean-Philippe Deslys, Marco Antonio Mendoza-Parra

Trophoblast organoids with physiological polarity model placental structure and function
Liheng Yang, Pengfei Liang, Huanghe Yang, Carolyn B. Coyne

Targeted gene deletion with SpCas9 and multiple guide RNAs in Arabidopsis thaliana: four are better than two
Jana Ordon, Niklas Kiel, Dieter Becker, Carola Kretschmer, Paul Schulze-Lefert, Johannes Stuttmann

Ultrasensitive Proteomics Depicted an In-depth Landscape for Mouse Embryo
Lei Gu, Xumiao Li, Wencheng Zhu, Yi Shen, Qinqin Wang, Huiping Zhang, Jingquan Li, Ziyi Li, Zhen Liu, Chen Li, Hui Wang

CRaTER enrichment for on-target gene-editing enables generation of variant libraries in hiPSCs
Clayton E. Friedman, Shawn Fayer, Sriram Pendyala, Wei-Ming Chien, Linda Tran, Leslie Chao, Ashley Mckinstry, Elaheh Karbassi, Aidan M. Fenix, Alexander Loiben, Charles E. Murry, Lea M. Starita, Douglas M. Fowler, Kai-Chun Yang

Targeted Screening and Identification of Chlorhexidine as a Pro-myogenic Circadian Clock Activator
Tali Kiperman, Weini Li, Xuekai Xiong, Hongzhi Li, David Horne, Ke Ma

Automated staging of zebrafish embryos with KimmelNet
David J. Barry, Rebecca A. Jones, Matthew J. Renshaw

spinDrop: a droplet microfluidic platform to maximise single-cell sequencing information content
Joachim De Jonghe, Tomasz S. Kaminski, David B. Morse, Marcin Tabaka, Anna L. Ellermann, Timo N. Kohler, Gianluca Amadei, Charlotte Handford, Gregory M. Findlay, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Sarah A. Teichmann, Florian Hollfelder

Epithelioids: Self-sustaining 3D epithelial cultures to study long-term processes
Albert Herms, David Fernandez-Antoran, Maria P. Alcolea, Argyro Kalogeropoulou, Ujjwal Banerjee, Gabriel Piedrafita, Emilie Abby, Jose Antonio Valverde-Lopez, Inês S. Ferreira, Stefan C. Dentro, Swee Hoe Ong, Bartomeu Colom, Kasumi Murai, Charlotte King, Krishnaa Mahbubani, Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, Alan R Lowe, Moritz Gerstung, Philip H Jones

Emergent dynamics of adult stem cell lineages from single nucleus and single cell RNA-Seq of Drosophila testes
Amelie A. Raz, Gabriela S. Vida, Sarah R. Stern, Sharvani Mahadevaraju, Jaclyn M. Fingerhut, Jennifer M. Viveiros, Soumitra Pal, Jasmine R. Grey, Mara R. Grace, Cameron W. Berry, Hongjie Li, Jasper Janssens, Wouter Saelens, Zhantao Shao, Chun Hu, Yukiko M. Yamashita, Teresa M. Przytycka, Brian Oliver, Julie A. Brill, Henry M. Krause, Erika L. Matunis, Helen White-Cooper, Stephen DiNardo, Margaret T. Fuller

Inducible in vivo genome editing in the sea star Patiria miniata
Olga Zueva, Veronica F. Hinman

Development of Encarsia tabacivora (Viggiani) (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae) in nymphs of Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) MEAN 1 (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae)
Heidy Gamarra, Marc Sporleder, Luz Supanta, Alexander Rodríguez, Jürgen Kroschel, Jan Kreuze

CartoCell, a high-throughput pipeline for accurate 3D image analysis, unveils cell morphology patterns in epithelial cysts
Jesús A. Andrés-San Román, Carmen Gordillo-Vázquez, Daniel Franco-Barranco, Laura Morato, Antonio Tagua, Pablo Vicente-Munuera, Ana M. Palacios, María P. Gavilán, Valentina Annese, Pedro Gómez-Gálvez, Ignacio Arganda-Carreras, Luis M. Escudero

A single-cell, time-resolved profiling of Xenopus mucociliary epithelium reveals non-hierarchical model of development
Julie Lee, Andreas Fønss Møller, Shinhyeok Chae, Alexandra Bussek, Tae Joo Park, Youni Kim, Hyun-Shik Lee, Tune H. Pers, Taejoon Kwon, Jakub Sedzinski, Kedar Nath Natarajan

The Embryonic Origin of Primordial Germ Cells in the Tardigrade Hypsibius exemplaris
Kira L. Heikes, Mandy Game, Frank W. Smith, Bob Goldstein

LoxCode in vivo clonal barcoding resolves mammalian epiblast contribution to fetal organs
Tom S. Weber, Christine Biben, Denise C. Miles, Stephen Zhang, Patrick Tam, Samir Taoudi, Shalin H. Naik

Research practice & education

Talk To A Scientist: A Framework for a Webinar-Based Science Outreach Platform for Children
Shreeya Mhade, Snehal Kadam, Karishma Kaushik

Scientific civility and academic performance
Emma Camacho, Quigly Dragotakes, Isabella Hartshorn, Arturo Casadevall, Daniel L Buccino

Improving Interdisciplinary Teaching through a Complexity Lens
Sarah Neitzel, Yuhao Zhao, Carrie Diaz Eaton

A publishing infrastructure for AI-assisted academic authoring
Milton Pividori, Casey S. Greene

Experiential diversity training and science learning for college students alongside peers with intellectual and developmental disabilities
Kaelin N. Rubenzer, Jonathan T. Pierce

Fly-CURE, a Multi-institutional CURE using Drosophila, Increases Students’ Confidence, Sense of Belonging, and Persistence in Research
Julie A. Merkle, Olivier Devergne, Seth M. Kelly, Paula A. Croonquist, Cory J. Evans, Melanie A. Hwalek, Victoria L. Straub, Danielle R. Hamill, David P. Puthoff, Kenneth J. Saville, Jamie L. Siders, Zully J. Villanueva Gonzalez, Jackie K. Wittke-Thompson, Kayla L. Bieser, Joyce Stamm, Alysia D. Vrailas-Mortimer, Jacob D. Kagey

The Preprint Club – A cross-institutional, community-based approach to peer reviewing
Felix Clemens Richter, Ester Gea-Mallorquí, Nicolas Ruffin, Nicolas Vabret

Innovative Research Experiences for Underrepresented Undergraduates: A Collaborative STEM Research Program as a Pathway to Graduate School
Gokhan Hacisalihoglu

Sustained Selective Attention in Adolescence: Cognitive Development and Predictors of Distractibility at School
Michael H. Hobbiss, Nilli Lavie

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Dear all,

Yesterday was my last official day as the Community Manager of the Node, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the Node community for being so welcoming over the last 18 months. I’ll still be moonlighting on the Node, alongside preLights Community Manager Reinier Prosée, until we have the new Community Manager in place. If you have any questions, comments and feedback, you can still contact us at thenode@biologists.com. It’s lucky that I get to hang around for a while longer, as we have been working on a couple of new projects that we hope to share with you in the next month. Watch this space!

One of the projects that we are working on is a collaboration between the Node and FocalPlane. FocalPlane will be my new home as I have moved across to join the Journal of Cell Science team as FocalPlane Community Manager. If you use microscopy as part of your work, or would like to get started, I recommend checking out our website! Like the Node, FocalPlane is driven by the community, so if you have any feedback, suggestions or comments please get in touch at focalplane@biologists.com or helen.zenner@biologists.com. If you would like to contribute to the site with a blog post, event listing, or job advert, you can register and request permission to write, and once approved you’ll be ready to go.

Thanks again for all the fun times on the Node. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with some amazing people, not least the wonderful team at Development – Alex, who puts up with all my ‘stupid’ questions (not sure this is going to stop), Seema, who helped me so much when I started, and Katherine, who is the most excellent manager! I’m now excited to try and bring some of ‘the Node spirit’ to FocalPlane and hope to see you there.

Best wishes, Helen

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At the Joint Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) – Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology Meeting in 2022, I spoke to Christopher Wright, the winner of the 2022 SDB Victor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize. You can read the interview in Development, but Chris shared some stories that we couldn’t squeeze in, so with his permission I have reproduced a couple of examples here. I selected these stories as they show the fun side of doing science and the excitement for biology that Chris expressed throughout our interview.

Science on a whim

“When I was in Eddy de Robertis’ lab for my postdoc, we decided to start probing the organizer region – the Spemann-Mangold organizer – for homeobox genes. We did this on a whim when Eddy went on vacation, and when he came back several people in the lab were running around clearly excited running old-school “high-throughput” DNA sequencing by hand. We told Eddy what we’d done and he was somewhat shocked. But, in the end, organizer molecules were what set his lab moving forward for the next 10 or 15 years. Out of that work came goosecoid. A huge amount of work went on after I had left, but finding goosecoid and naming it, based on part of its homeodomain sequence resembling the fruit fly gene gooseberry and the other part bicoid, was great. We decided that ‘bicberry’ sounded wrong but goosecoid stuck. It felt like we had just joined the Drosophila community and could name things crazily! There was an important lesson in this situation: when working with postdocs, the challenge for the PI is to understand that there are often things that are done outside of the PI’s undoubted own brilliance. Great postdocs should be semi-independent almost straightaway. You want them to cause (almost) paroxysmal change in the lab. I think Eddy learnt that. And Eddy was phenomenal to just talk to about science, he was always asking, “what do you think this means?” I remember looking down the microscope together, at the first Xenopus nuclei ever labelled with antibodies I’d made to the homeodomain proteins. He jerked me up from the microscope and gave me a huge hug!”

Seeing is believing

“It is wonderful to look down the microscope at new findings. One fun time was when Yoshiya Kawaguchi, a terrific Japanese postdoc with me, did an experiment that would be the first time that lineage tracing was combined with a gene knockout in the endoderm. He took the pancreas master transcriptional regulator called Ptf1A and hooked it up to Cre. The Cre replaced the protein, so was essentially a knock-in as a knockout, and we had a ROSA26-lacZ reporter in there too. One day he came bowling into my office and said, “Chris, Chris, Chris, you have to come right now and look at this embryo (which had been stained with X-gal overnight). The mutant is amazing”. And I said, “yep, okay, I’m coming right now. I’m really excited. Let me just tell you what I think you have found, I bet you found that all the cells that were going to become pancreas have now become duodenum”. He was shocked, asking “how can you know that?” I said, “don’t let that disturb you. Let’s go and look together.” As soon as I looked down the microscope, I knew this was an important result and we were so excited. It’s a memory that sticks with me, seeing that result for the first time!

Another result that really stuck with me was when we got involved in cloning Nodal, cobbling it together using various parts of the mouse gene, and isolating the frog orthologs. We injected the mRNA into Xenopus embryos and when we came back the next day, well – they had made notochord everywhere. This started our move away from homeobox genes. Left-Right asymmetry patterns came up from our Nodal work early on. This time I absolutely couldn’t believe the result to start with and I told my postdoc (the wonderful Karuna Sampath) that the pattern must be due to the side the embryos were lying down, having had some horrible glass reaction. She very kindly said “No, no, it’s all on the left-hand side of the embryo irrespective of which side they were lying”. Again, off we charged to look down the microscope straight away!

Overall, I have so many exciting moments in my career, and I feel very privileged and fortunate to have been born at the right time, landed in the right place and then to have done at least some of the right experiments!”

(2 votes)
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Thanks to everyone who interacted with the Node in 2022, it been another fantastic year for the site. We have a few new initiatives that we’ll be announcing soon, but first let us look back on 2022!

What are you looking at…

• >400,000 total page views
• 18,483 views of our jobs board
• 4,992 view of our event calendar

What’s being posted…

• 226 blog posts, including 7 SciArt profiles, 7 Featured resources, 12 behind the paper stories and 12 preprint lists
• 260 job adverts
• 163 events listings

Most popular posts from 2022

1. Everyone loves a bit of controversy, so it probably won’t come as a surprised that our most read post in 2022 was Peter Lawrence’s open letter to Claudio Stern. And Alfonso Martinez Arias’ response was our most liked comment!
2. At number two on our list was the livestream from our Development meeting ‘From Stem Cells to Human Development. Setting this up was a little nerve wracking and it was fantastic to see so many people tuning in live and viewing the recording, which featured talks from Sarah Teichmann and Sergiu Pasca and a panel discussion on ‘Technical, ethical and legal challenges of studying early human development’.
3. The third most read post started on a whim, with Alex Eve converting his popular #wordcountchop tweetorial into a blog post. If you have written a tweetorial on a topic relevant to developmental and stem cell biologists and want to give it a more permanent home, do considering sharing it as a blog post on the Node
4. Voting for your favourite Development cover comes in as our 4th most read post. Everyone loves a competition, and we had a worthy winner with the Issue 21, the mouse lung lobe from Prashant Chandrasekaran, Nicholas Negretti, Aravind Sivakumar, Jennifer Sucre, David Frank and colleagues. Keep your eyes out for our next competition, which is coming soon!
5. Joachim Goedhart’s Protocols for data visualization came in at number five. In this post, Joachim shared an update on his book, which brings aims to lower the barrier for using R and the ggplot2 package for data visualization. Joachim’s post on Data Visualization with Flying Colours, published in 2019, was again our most read post with a massive 49,405 views!

We would love to hear feedback and suggestions on how we can make the Node better in 2023. You can contact us using our contact form and at thenode@biologists.com. We are always happy to discuss ideas, comment on drafts, or help with website gremlins. Finally, remember the Node is your site and, once registered, you can post freely.

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“This description of the creation of the first humans – Adam and Eve – from the biblical book of Genesis is a cool story. But in my opinion, the scientific truth about the origins of humans is way cooler – and an awful lot messier”

Dr Kat Arney

In the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast, we’re going back to the very genesis of our species in search of the genetic Adam and Eve. Who were they? When and where did they live? Were there really just two of them? And how should we really be referring to these ancient ancestors anyway?

Genetics Unzipped is the podcast from The Genetics Society. Full transcript, links and references available online at GeneticsUnzipped.com.

Subscribe from Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Head over to GeneticsUnzipped.com to catch up on our extensive back catalogue.If you enjoy the show, please do rate and review on Apple podcasts and help to spread the word on social media. And you can always send feedback and suggestions for future episodes and guests to podcast@geneticsunzipped.com Follow us on Twitter – @geneticsunzip

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A survey of over 2000 British adults finds that trust in genetics is high, and went up significantly during the pandemic. It also finds that there is a hunger for more coverage of genetics.

The pandemic has gone hand-in-hand with a much-increased public profile of science – genetics in particular. Be it the prominence of PCR testing or the development of vaccines, genetics has been in the spotlight in an unprecedented way. Given this, researchers from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, and Aberdeen wanted to know what the public felt about genetics and whether this new exposure of the science has made a difference.

In a study funded by the Genetics Society, they commissioned a survey of over 2000 randomly selected British adults through public polling company Kantar Public. The researchers found that as a baseline most people were trusting of genetic technologies before the pandemic. Nearly half (45%) reported they trusted it to work for the societal good. 37% were neutral on this question, while 18% said they did not, and only very few (1-2%) were strongly distrusting. A descriptive report with all the answers from the questionnaire is now available on the Genetics Society website, along the technical report with panel sample and questionnaire: https://genetics.org.uk/public-perception-of-genetics/

When asked if their trust in genetics had gone up through the pandemic, four times more people said their trust had increased than those who reported that it had gone down. (as a control, the same increase in trust was not seen for sciences that were not involved in the pandemic but might be confused with genetics e.g. geologists not geneticists). Trust in science more generally had strongly gone up with a third saying it had increased. Not only has trust in science gone up, but people also want to hear more about it. Less than 10% thought that there is too much coverage of the science in the media, while 44% reported that they want to hear more about it.

Co-lead Professor Laurence Hurst of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath commented “this is potentially important to know – scientists have a tendency to stick in their labs, but it looks like, for the most part, public not only trust us but that this trust has gone up somewhat and many want to hear more from us about our work.” As Professor Jonathan Pettitt, co-lead from the University of Aberdeen noted, “It is hard to see any upsides to the pandemic but perhaps this is one? We never knew that so many people wanted to hear more from scientists.” Prof Anne Ferguson-Smith, President of the Genetics Society and Professor in the Department of Genetics at Cambridge University reinforced this: “These results really challenge us to double our efforts. We need to rise to the new opportunity and the challenge created by the outcomes of this survey”.

However, co-lead Prof Alison Woollard of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, cautioned: “We think we have established the limits of science communication. Despite all the talk of PCR over the last many months, we found that 30% hadn’t heard the term or knew it was a tool for testing for the virus. It is hard to see how any science can have more exposure than PCR has had. We need to be realistic and understand that, no matter what, we will never reach everyone. For informing people about things like vaccines this is important to know. Dr Adam Rutherford from the UCL department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, (and prominent public science communicator) notes that ‘We often hear that trust in science is at a low point, but what we found is that most people do trust the science of genetics as the basis of how we address global issues such as pandemics. However, scientists should not be complacent: we also found that the exposure of genetics during the pandemic made those suspicious of science more distrusting, despite the evidence. In a world where these voices can easily be amplified, we must be vigilant that our processes, methodologies and results are clearly and transparently communicated.

Dr Cristina Fonseca, project coordinator for the Genetics Society (the funders of the project), noted that “having a representative random survey is really vital and allows us insight into the true diversity of opinions.”

The survey also led to a research paper in PLOS Biology titled, ‘People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified‘.

Why do people hold highly variable attitudes towards well-evidenced science? For many years researchers focused on what people know about science, thinking that “to know science is to love it”. But do people who think they know science actually know science? A new study publishing January 24th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Cristina Fonseca of the Genetics Society, UK; Laurence Hurst of the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath, UK; and colleagues, finds that people with strong attitudes tend to believe they understand science, while neutrals are less confident. Overall, the study revealed that that people with strong negative attitudes to science tend to be overconfident about their level of understanding.

Whether it be vaccines, climate change or GM foods, societally important science can evoke strong and opposing attitudes. Understanding how to communicate science requires an understanding of why people may hold such extremely different attitudes to the same underlying science. The new study performed a survey of over 2,000 UK adults, asking them both about their attitudes to science and their belief in their own understanding. A few prior analyses found that individuals that are negative towards science tend to have relatively low textbook knowledge but strong self-belief in their understanding. With this insight as foundational, the team sought to ask whether strong self-belief underpinned all strong attitudes.
The team focused on genetic science and asked attitudinal questions, such as: “Many claims about the benefits of modern genetic science are greatly exaggerated.” People could say how much they agreed or disagreed with such a statement. They also asked questions about how much they believe they understand about such science, including: “When you hear the term DNA, how would you rate your understanding of what the term means.” All individuals were scored from zero (they know they have no understanding) to one (they are confident they understand). The team discovered that those at the attitudinal extremes – both strongly supportive and strongly anti-science – have very high self-belief in their own understanding, while those answering neutrally do not.

Psychologically, the team suggest, this makes sense: to hold a strong opinion you need to strongly believe in the correctness of your understanding of the basic facts. The current team could replicate the prior results finding that those most negative tend also not to have high textbook knowledge. By contrast, those more accepting of science both believe they understand it and scored well on the textbook fact (true/false) questions.

When it was thought that what mattered most for scientific literacy was scientific knowledge, science communication focused on passing information from scientists to the public. However, this approach may not be successful, and in some cases can backfire. The present work suggests that working to address the discrepancies between what people know and what they believe they know may be a better strategy.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, President of the Genetics Society and co-author of the study comments, “Confronting negative attitudes towards science held by some people will likely involve deconstructing what they think they know about science and replacing it with more accurate understanding. This is quite challenging.”
Hurst concludes, “Why do some people hold strong attitudes to science whilst others are more neutral? We find that strong attitudes, both for and against, are underpinned by strong self confidence in knowledge about science.”

The Genetics Society, established 1919, is one of the world’s oldest societies devoted to the study of genetics and to the public understanding of genetics. It is an independent and unaffiliated charity.

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The application process for Principal Investigator positions can be daunting, especially if you don’t know what to expect and don’t have the necessary support. For this reason, Development has created a new scheme, our Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, which will provide support, mentorship and networking opportunities for the selected researchers (PI fellows).

Applications for Development’s Pathway to Independence (PI) programme are open until 31 January.

While we are only able to select a small number of applicants for the programme, we have been looking for other ways to support those applying for group leader positions. We have come across some fantastic resources that already exist to help candidates through this process (often from new group leaders), and we thought that the Node would be a great place to collate this information. Below, we have included some of the advice that we have come across, and we would like your help in continuing to build this collection. If you have written, used or have come across any useful advice, please get in touch via our contact page, email us at thenode@biologists.com or use the comments section below. Once we have collated this information, we’ll create a new page in our Resources section, which we can continue to update. Thanks to Arjun, Jessica, Kara and Daniel for letting us share their advice!

Thoughts on applying for faculty positions by Arjun Raj

I sought out a lot of advice last year before starting faculty interviews. After being lucky enough to be invited for several myself I found what worked for me (and what didn’t) so I thought I’d share as the next cohort gets started. In order of my perceived importance:

— Jessica Osterhout PhD (@Jess_Osterhout) January 4, 2023

It's faculty interview season! My ramblings about my experiences on the job market (biology/biomedical tenure-track jobs, 2019-2020) and various things I learned about surviving in-person interviews are here:https://t.co/EkrwyAkQpO https://t.co/kMG9KUJIjJ

— Kara McKinley (@karalmckinley) January 4, 2023

I wrote a blog post on the academic job market. This is mostly to share my own materials like research/teaching statements, chalk talk slides, startup budgets, etc. But along the way I also give my best notes. Hope it helps some of y'all out there!https://t.co/4TGA1rXYVn

— Daniel Gonzales (@dgonzales1990) January 7, 2023

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

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

Developmental biology

• Patterning & signalling
• Morphogenesis & mechanics
• Genes & genomes
• Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling
• Plant development
• Evo-devo

Cell Biology

Modelling

Reviews

Tools & Resources

Research practice & education

Developmental biology

| Patterning & signalling

TOR signalling regulates epithelial cell shape transition in Drosophila oogenesis
Sudipta Halder, Gaurab Ghosh, Budhaditya Gayen, Mohit Prasad

The bHLH-PAS transcriptional complex Sim:Tgo plays active roles in late oogenesis to promote follicle maturation and ovulation
Rebecca Oramas, Elizabeth Knapp, Baosheng Zeng, Jianjun Sun

LHX2 in germ cells control tubular organization in the developing mouse testis
Neha Singh, Domdatt Singh, Anshul Bhide, Richa Sharma, Shilpa Bhowmick, Vainav Patel, Deepak Modi

Vangl facilitates mesenchymal thinning during lung sacculation independently of Celsr
Sarah V. Paramore, Carolina Trenado-Yuste, Rishabh Sharan, Danelle Devenport, Celeste M. Nelson

Coupling dynamics of 2D Notch-Delta signalling
Francisco Berkemeier, Karen Page

Molecular characterization of Left-Right symmetry breaking in the mouse embryo
Richard C.V. Tyser, Ximena Ibarra-Soria, Monique Pedroza, Antonio M.A. Miranda, Teun A.H. van den Brand, Antonio Scialdone, John C. Marioni, Shankar Srinivas

Intracellular fraction of zona pellucida protein 3 is required for the oocyte to embryo transition in mice
Steffen Israel, Julia Seyfarth, Thomas Nolte, Hannes C.A. Drexler, Georg Fuellen, Michele Boiani

4931414P19Rik: A Chemoattractant Secreted by Neural Progenitors Modulates Microglia Activation and Neuronal Migration During Mammalian Brain Development
Ivan Mestres, Federico Calegari

Coronary vessel assembly involves patterned endocardial sprouting and tip-cell-to artery specification
Elena Cano, Jennifer Paech, Masatoshi Kanda, Eric L. Lindberg, Irene Hollfinger, Caroline Brauening, Cornelius Fischer, Norbert Hübner, Holger Gerhardt

Cylicins are a structural component of the sperm calyx being indispensable for male fertility in mice and human
Simon Schneider, Andjela Kovacevic, Michelle Mayer, Ann-Kristin Dicke, Lena Arévalo, Sophie A. Koser, Jan N. Hansen, Samuel Young, Christoph Brenker, Sabine Kliesch, Dagmar Wachten, Gregor Kirfel, Timo Strünker, Frank Tüttelmann, Hubert Schorle

Symmetry-breaking in adherent pluripotent stem cell-derived developmental patterns
Daniel Aguilar-Hidalgo, Joel Ostblom, M Mona Siu, Benjamin McMaster, Tiam Heydari, Nicolas Werschler, Mukul Tewary, Peter Zandstra

The contribution of maternal oral, vaginal, and gut microbiota to the developing offspring gut
Amber L. Russell, Erin Donovan, Nicole Seilhamer, Melissa Siegrist, Craig L. Franklin, Aaron C. Ericsson

An important role for triglyceride in regulating spermatogenesis
Charlotte F. Chao, Yanina-Yasmin Pesch, Huaxu Yu, Chenjingyi Wang, Maria Aristizabal, Tao Huan, Guy Tanentzapf, Elizabeth J. Rideout

Distinct molecular profile of the chick Organizer as a stem zone during axial elongation
Timothy R. Wood, Iwo Kucinski, Octavian Voiculescu

Multiple pathways for reestablishing PAR polarity in C. elegans embryo
Laurel A. Koch, Lesilee S. Rose

Polychrome labeling reveals skeletal triradiate and elongation dynamics and abnormalities in patterning cue-perturbed embryos
Abigail E. Descoteaux, Daniel T. Zuch, Cynthia A. Bradham

Sfrp2 is a multifunctional regulator of rodent color patterns
Matthew R. Johnson, Sha Li, Christian F. Guerrero-Juarez, Pearson Miller, Benjamin J. Brack, Sarah A. Mereby, Charles Feigin, Jenna Gaska, Qing Nie, Jaime A. Rivera-Perez, Alexander Ploss, Stanislav Y. Shvartsman, Ricardo Mallarino

FGF2 and BMP4 influence on FGFR2 dynamics during the segregation of epiblast and primitive endoderm cells in the pre-implantation mouse embryo
Marcelo D. Goissis, Brian Bradshaw, Eszter Posfai, Janet Rossant

Evidence implicating sequential commitment of the founder lineages in the human blastocyst by order of hypoblast gene activation
Elena Corujo-Simon, Arthur H. Radley, Jennifer Nichols

A bioelectrical phase transition patterns the first beats of a vertebrate heart
Bill Z. Jia, Yitong Qi, J. David Wong-Campos, Sean G. Megason, Adam E. Cohen

Stat3 has a different role in axon growth during development than it does in axon regeneration after injury
Qinwen Duan, Hongfei Zheng, Yanjun Qin, Jizhou Yan, Shawn Burgess, Jian Wang, Chunxin Fan

Cell coupling compensates for changes in single-cell Her6 dynamics and provides phenotypic robustness
Parnian Doostdar, Joshua Hawley, Elli Marinopoulou, Robert Lea, Veronica Biga, Nancy Papalopulu, Ximena Soto Rodriguez

Dual functions of labial resolve the Hox logic of chelicerate head segments
Guilherme Gainett, Benjamin C. Klementz, Pola O. Blaszczyk, Heather Bruce, Nipam Patel, Prashant P. Sharma

| Morphogenesis & mechanics

Phenotypical Rescue of Bmp15 Deficiency by Mutation of Inhibin α (inha) Provides Novel Clues to How Bmp15 Controls Zebrafish Folliculogenesis
Yue Zhai, Cheng Zhao, Ruijing Geng, Kun Wu, Mingzhe Yuan, Nana Ai, Wei Ge

Systematic characterization of Drosophila RhoGEF/GAP localizations uncovers regulators of mechanosensing and junction formation during epithelial cell division
Florencia di Pietro, Mariana Osswald, José M De las Heras, Ines Cristo, Jesus Lopez- Gay, Zhimin Wang, Stéphane Pelletier, Isabelle Gaugué, Adrien Leroy, Charlotte Martin, Eurico Morais-De-Sá, Yohanns Bellaïche

Actomyosin remodeling regulates biomineral formation, growth and morphology during eukaryote skeletogenesis
Eman Hijaze, Tsvia Gildor, Ronald Seidel, Mark Winter, Luca Bertinetti, Majed Layous, Yael Politi, Smadar Ben-Tabou de-Leon

Organ-Founder Stem Cells Mediate Post-Embryonic Neuromast Formation In Medaka
Karen Gross, Tuğçe Raif, Ali Seleit, Jasmin Onistschenko, Isabel Krämer, Lazaro Centanin

Local angiogenic interplay of Vegfc/d and Vegfa drives fenestrated capillary network formation in the choroid plexuses and circumventricular organs
Sweta Parab, Olivia A. Card, Qiyu Chen, Luke D. Buck, Rachael E. Quick, William F. Horrigan, Gil Levkowitz, Benoit Vanhollebeke, Ryota L. Matsuoka

Core PCP mutations affect short time mechanical properties but not tissue morphogenesis in the Drosophila pupal wing
Romina Piscitello-Gómez, Franz S Gruber, Abhijeet Krishna, Charlie Duclut, Carl D Modes, Marko Popović, Frank Jülicher, Natalie A Dye, Suzanne Eaton

A mechanical wave travels along a genetic guide to drive the formation of an epithelial furrow
Anna Popkova, Sophie Pagnotta, Matteo Rauzi

Scavenger receptor endocytosis controls apical membrane morphogenesis in the Drosophila airways
Ana S. Pinheiro, Vasilios Tsarouhas, Kirsten Senti, Badrul Arefin, Christos Samakovlis

Mechanical forces across compartments coordinate cell shape and fate transitions to generate tissue architecture
Clémentine Villeneuve, Ali Hashmi, Irene Ylivinkka, Elizabeth Lawson-Keister, Yekaterina A. Miroshnikova, Carlos Pérez-González, Bhagwan Yadav, Tao Zhang, Danijela Matic Vignjevic, Marja L. Mikkola, M. Lisa Manning, Sara A. Wickström

Down-regulation of Drosophila Glutactin, a cholinesterase-like adhesion molecule of the basement membrane, impairs development, compromises adult function and shortens lifespan
Pedro Alvarez-Ortiz, Shawna Guillemette, Rachel Humphrey, Bryan A. Ballif, Jim O. Vigoreaux

In situ quantification of osmotic pressure within living embryonic tissues
Antoine Vian, Marie Pochitaloff, Shuo-Ting Yen, Sangwoo Kim, Jennifer Pollock, Yucen Liu, Ellen Sletten, Otger Campàs

MicroRNA-205 promotes hair regeneration by modulating mechanical properties of hair follicle stem cells
Jingjing Wang, Yuheng Fu, Wenmao Huang, Ritusree Biswas, Avinanda Banerjee, Joshua A. Broussard, Zhihai Zhao, Dongmei Wang, Glen Bjerke, Srikala Raghavan, Jie Yan, Kathleen J. Green, Rui Yi

Modeling epithelial tissue and cell deformation dynamics using a viscoelastic slab sculpted by surface forces
XinXin Du, Michael Shelley

| Genes & genomes

The multiple lncRNAs encoding hsrω gene is essential for oogenesis in Drosophila
Rima Saha, Subhash C. Lakhotia

ZBTB20 is Essential for Cochlear Maturation and Hearing in Mice
Zhifang Xie, Xian-Hua Ma, Qiu-Fang Bai, Jie Tang, Jian-He Sun, Fei Jiang, Wei Guo, Chen-Ma Wang, Rui Yang, Yin-Chuan Wen, Fang-Yuan Wang, Yu-Xia Chen, Hai Zhang, David Z. He, Matthew W. Kelley, Shiming Yang, Weiping J. Zhang

Regulatory changes associated with the head to trunk developmental transition
Patrícia Duarte, Rion Brattig Correia, Ana Nóvoa, Moisés Mallo

A MTA2-SATB2 chromatin complex restrains colonic plasticity toward small intestine by retaining HNF4A at colonic chromatin
Wei Gu, Xiaofeng Huang, Pratik N. P. Singh, Ying Lan, Jesus M Gomez-Salinero, Shahin Rafii, Mike Verzi, Ramesh Shivdasani, Qiao Zhou

Cell-specific occupancy dynamics between the pioneer-like factor Opa/ZIC and Ocelliles/OTX regulate early head development in embryos
Kelli D. Fenelon, Fan Gao, Priyanshi Borad, Shiva Abbasi, Lior Pachter, Theodora Koromila

The MOV10 RNA helicase is a dosage-dependent host restriction factor for LINE1 retrotransposition in mice
Yongjuan Guan, Hongyan Gao, N. Adrian Leu, Anastassios Vourekas, Panagiotis Alexiou, Manolis Maragkakis, Zissimos Mourelatos, Guanxiang Liang, P. Jeremy Wang

New enhancer-promoter interactions are gained during tissue differentiation and reflect changes in E/P activity
Tim Pollex, Adam Rabinowitz, Maria Cristina Gambetta, Raquel Marco-Ferreres, Rebecca R. Viales, Aleksander Jankowski, Christoph Schaub, Eileen E.M. Furlong

Associations of Socioeconomic Disparities With Buccal DNA-Methylation Measures Of Biological Aging
L. Raffington, T. Schwaba, M. Aikins, D. Richter, G.G. Wagner, K.P. Harden, D.W. Belsky, E.M. Tucker-Drob

ythdf2(ch200) and its role in development of the early zebrafish embryo
Alana V. Beadell

DNA methylation entropy is associated with DNA sequence features and developmental epigenetic divergence
Yuqi Fang, Zhicheng Ji, Weiqiang Zhou, Jordi Abante, Michael A. Koldobskiy, Hongkai Ji, Andrew P. Feinberg

Longevity and rejuvenation effects of cell reprogramming are decoupled from loss of somatic identity
Dmitrii Kriukov, Ekaterina E. Khrameeva, Vadim N. Gladyshev, Sergey E. Dmitriev, Alexander Tyshkovskiy

Multiplex profiling of developmental enhancers with quantitative, single-cell expression reporters
Jean-Benoît Lalanne, Samuel G. Regalado, Silvia Domcke, Diego Calderon, Beth Martin, Tony Li, Chase C. Suiter, Choli Lee, Cole Trapnell, Jay Shendure

Pioneer transcription factors coordinate active and repressive gene expression states to regulate cell fate
Satoshi Matsui, Marissa Granitto, Morgan Buckley, Joseph Shiley, William Zacharias, Christopher Mayhew, Hee-Woong Lim, Makiko Iwafuchi

Neuron types in the developing mouse CNS can be divided into several epigenomic and transcriptomic classes
Sami Kilpinen, Heidi Heliölä, Kaia Achim

| Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling

Neuroendocrine control of catch-up growth in Drosophila
Diana M Vallejo, Ernesto Saez, Lucia García-López, Roberto Santoro, Maria Dominguez

The shh limb enhancer is activated in patterned limb regeneration but not in hypomorphic limb regeneration in Xenopus laevis
Reimi Tada, Takuya Higashidate, Takanori Amano, Shoma Ishikawa, Chifuyu Yokoyama, Saki Nara, Koshiro Ishida, Akane Kawaguchi, Haruki Ochi, Hajime Ogino, Nayuta Yakushiji-Kaminatsui, Joe Sakamoto, Yasuhiro Kamei, Koji Tamura, Hitoshi Yokoyama

GSK3 and Lamellipodin balance lamellipodial protrusions and focal adhesion maturation in mouse neural crest migration
Lisa Dobson, William B. Barrell, Zahra Seraj, Steven Lynham, Sheng-Yuan Wu, Matthias Krause, Karen J. Liu

The Tip60/Ep400 chromatin remodeling complex impacts basic metabolic and cellular functions in cranial neural crest-derived tissue during early orofacial development
Sebastian Gehlen-Breitbach, Theresa Schmid, Matthias Weider, Michael Wegner, Lina Gölz

FOXC2 marks and maintains the primitive spermatogonial stem cells subpopulation in the adult testis
Zhipeng Wang, Cheng Jin, Pengyu Li, Yiran Li, Jielin Tang, Zhixin Yu, Tao Jiao, Jinhuan Ou, Han Wang, Dingfeng Zou, Mengzhen Li, Xinyu Mang, Jun Liu, Yan Lu, Kai Li, Ning Zhang, Shiying Miao, Jia Yu, Linfang Wang, Wei Song

E4F1 COORDINATES PYRUVATE METABOLISM AND THE ACTIVITY OF THE ELONGATOR COMPLEX TO ENSURE PROTEIN TRANSLATION FIDELITY DURING NEURONAL DEVELOPMENT
Di Michele Michela, Attina Aurore, Laguesse Sophie, De Blasio Carlo, Wendling Olivia, Frenois Francois-Xavier, Encislai Betty, Fuentes Maryse, Jahanault-Tagliani Céline, Rousseau Mélanie, Roux Pierre-François, Guégan Justine, Buscail Yoan, Dupré Pierrick, Michaud Henri-Alexandre, Rodier Geneviève, Bellvert Floriant, Kulyk Barbier Hannah, Ferraro Peyret Carole, Mathieu Hugo, Chaveroux Cédric, Pirot Nelly, Rubio Lucie, Torro Adeline, Compan Vincent, Sorg Tania, Ango Fabrice, David Alexandre, Lebigot Elise, Legati Andrea, Hirtz Christophe, Ghezzi Daniele, Nguyen Laurent, Sardet Claude, Lacroix Matthieu, Le Cam Laurent

Actl7b-deficiency leads to mislocalization of LC8 type dynein light chains and disruption of murine spermatogenesis
Gina E. Merges, Lena Arévalo, Keerthika Lohanadan, Dirk G. de Rooij, Melanie Jokwitz, Walter Witke, Hubert Schorle

Transcriptomic landscape and potential therapeutic targets for human testicular aging revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing
Kai Xia, Siyuan He, Peng Luo, Lin Dong, Feng Gao, Xuren Chen, Yunlin Ye, Yong Gao, Yuanchen Ma, Yadong Zhang, Qiyun Yang, Dayu Han, Xin Feng, Zi Wan, Hongcai Cai, Qiong Ke, Tao Wang, Weiqiang Li, Xiang’an Tu, Xiangzhou Sun, Chunhua Deng, Andy Peng Xiang

Single-cell dynamics of core pluripotency factors in human pluripotent stem cells
Sonja Mihailovic, Samuel C. Wolff, Katarzyna M. Kedziora, Nicole M. Smiddy, Margaret A. Redick, Yuli Wang, Guang Ken Lin, Tarek M. Zikry, Jeremy Simon, Travis Ptacek, Nancy L. Allbritton, Adriana S. Beltran, Jeremy E. Purvis

Distinct stem-like cell populations facilitate functional regeneration of the Cladonema medusa tentacle
Sosuke Fujita, Erina Kuranaga, Masayuki Miura, Yu-ichiro Nakajima

Exploring cognitive, behavioural and autism trait network topology in very preterm and term-born children
Marguerite Leoni, Lucy D. Vanes, Laila Hadaya, Dana Kanel, Paola Dazzan, Emily Simonoff, Serena Counsell, Francesca Happé, A. David Edwards, Chiara Nosarti

Disruption of fos causes craniofacial anomalies in developing zebrafish
Lorena Maili, Bhavna Tandon, Qiuping Yuan, Simone Menezes, S. Shahrukh Hashmi, Ariadne Letra, George T. Eisenhoffer, Jacqueline T. Hecht

Pleiotropy of autism-associated chromatin regulators
Micaela Lasser, Nawei Sun, Yuxiao Xu, Karen Law, Silvano Gonzalez, Belinda Wang, Vanessa Drury, Sam Drake, Yefim Zaltsman, Jeanselle Dea, Ethel Bader, Kate E. McCluskey, Matthew W. State, A. Jeremy Willsey, Helen Rankin Willsey

Administration of amniotic fluid stem cell extracellular vesicles promotes development of fetal hypoplastic lungs by immunomodulating lung macrophages
Lina Antounians, Rebeca Lopes Figueira, Bharti Kukreja, Elke Zani-Ruttenstock, Kasra Khalaj, Louise Montalva, Fabian Doktor, Mikal Obed, Matisse Blundell, Taiyi Wu, Cadia Chan, Richard Wagner, Martin Lacher, Michael D. Wilson, Brian T. Kalish, Augusto Zani

Early eye and forebrain development are facilitated by Bone Morphogenetic Protein antagonism
Johannes Bulk, Valentyn Kyrychenko, Philipp Rensinghoff, Stephan Heermann

Logical modelling of myelofibrotic microenvironment predicts dysregulated progenitor stem cell crosstalk
S. P. Chapman, E. Duprez, E. Remy

Transgenic porcine model reveals two roles for LGR5 during lung development and homeostasis
Kathryn M. Polkoff, Nithin K. Gupta, Yanet Murphy, Ross Lampe, Jaewook Chung, Amber Carter, Jeremy M. Simon, Katherine Gleason, Adele Moatti, Preetish K. Murthy, Laura Edwards, Alon Greenbaum, Aleksandra Tata, Purushothama Rao Tata, Jorge A. Piedrahita

Transcriptional networks are dynamically regulated during cell cycle progression in human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Anna Osnato, Stephanie Brown, Ludovic Vallier

Exercise reprograms the inflammatory landscape of multiple stem cell compartments during mammalian aging
Ling Liu, Soochi Kim, Matthew T. Buckley, Jaime M. Reyes, Jengmin Kang, Lei Tian, Mingqiang Wang, Alexander Lieu, Michelle Mao, Cristina Rodriguez-Mateo, Heather Ishak, Mira Jeong, Joseph C. Wu, Margaret A. Goodell, Anne Brunet, Thomas A. Rando

| Plant development

The miR156-targeted SlSBP15 represses tomato shoot branching via modulating auxin transport and interacting with GOBLET and BRANCHED1b
Carlos Hernán Barrera-Rojas, Mateus Henrique Vicente, Diego Armando Pinheiro Brito, Eder M. Silva, Aitor Munoz Lopez, Leticia F. Ferigolo, Rafael Monteiro do Carmo, Carolina M. S. Silva, Geraldo F.F. Silva, Joao P. O. Correa, Marcela M. Notini, Luciano Freschi, Pilar Cubas, Fabio T.S. Nogueira

The ratio of auxin to cytokinin controls leaf development and meristem initiation in Physcomitrium patens
Joseph Cammarata, Adrienne H. K. Roeder, Michael J. Scanlon

The canonical E2Fs together with RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED are required to establish quiescence during plant development
Magdolna Gombos, Cécile Raynaud, Yuji Nomoto, Eszter Molnár, Rim Brik-Chaouche, Hirotomo Takatsuka, Ahmad Zaki, Dóri Bernula, David Latrasse, Keito Mineta, Fruzsina Nagy, Xiaoning He, Hidekazu Iwakawa, Erika Őszi, Jing An, Takamasa Suzuki, Csaba Papdi, Clara Bergis, Moussa Benhamed, László Bögre, Masaki Ito, Zoltán Magyar

Cytokinin synthesis and export from symbiotic root nodules coordinates shoot growth with nitrogen fixation
Yumeng Chen, Jie Liu, Jieshun Lin, Yuda Purwana Roswanjaya, Marcin Nadzieja, Flavien Buron, Wouter Kohlen, Markus Geisler, Jens Stougaard, Dugald Reid

The Class VIII myosin ATM1 is required for root apical meristem function
Damilola Olatunji, Natalie M. Clark, Dior R. Kelley

| Evo-devo

Convergent deployment of ancestral programs during the evolution of mammalian flight membranes
Charles Y. Feigin, Jorge A. Moreno, Raul Ramos, Sarah A. Mereby, Ares Alivisatos, Wei Wang, Renée van Amerongen, Jasmin Camacho, John J. Rasweiler IV, Richard R. Behringer, Bruce Ostrow, Maksim V. Plikus, Ricardo Mallarino

Probing the evolutionary dynamics of whole-body regeneration within planarian flatworms
Miquel Vila-Farré, Andrei Rozanski, Mario Ivanković, James Cleland, Jeremias N. Brand, Felix Thalen, Markus Grohme, Stephanie von Kannen, Alexandra Grosbusch, Han T-K Vu, Carlos E. Prieto, Fernando Carbayo, Bernhard Egger, Christoph Bleidorn, John E. J. Rasko, Jochen C. Rink

Flexible parental care ensures robustness of post-embryonic development
Ahva L. Potticary, Christopher B. Cunningham, Allen J. Moore

The developmental basis for scaling of mammalian tooth size
Mona M. Christensen, Outi Hallikas, Rishi Das Roy, Vilma Väänänen, Otto E. Stenberg, Teemu J. Häkkinen, Jean-Christophe François, Robert J. Asher, Ophir D. Klein, Martin Holzenberger, Jukka Jernvall

Cell Biology

Ectopic activation of the polar body extrusion pathway triggers cell fragmentation in preimplantation embryos
Diane Pelzer, Ludmilla de Plater, Peta Bradbury, Adrien Eichmuller, Anne Bourdais, Guillaume Halet, Jean-Léon Maître

The RNA-binding protein Adad1 is necessary for germ cell maintenance and meiosis in zebrafish
Kazi Nazrul Islam, Anuoluwapo Ajao, Katrin Henke, Kellee R. Siegfried

VCP acts downstream of tTAFs to downregulate mono-ubiquitinated H2A and promote spermatocyte differentiation in Drosophila
Tyler J. Butsch, Olga Dubuisson, Alyssa E. Johnson, K. Adam Bohnert

ClpP/ClpX deficiency impairs mitochondrial functions and mTORC1 signaling during spermatogenesis and meiosis
Chenxi Guo, Yuan Xiao, Jingkai Gu, Zhe Hu, Jiahuan Zheng, Renwu Hua, Zhuo Hai, Jiaping Su, Jian V. Zhang, William S.B. Yeung, Tianren Wang

Cleavage furrow-directed cortical flows bias mechanochemical pathways for PAR polarization in the C. elegans germ lineage
KangBo Ng, Nisha Hirani, Tom Bland, Joana Borrego-Pinto, Nathan W. Goehring

Constriction forces imposed by basement membranes regulate developmental cell migration
Ester Molina López, Anna Kabanova, Maria D. Martín-Bermudo

The vascular gene Apold1 is dispensable for normal development but controls angiogenesis under pathological conditions
Zheng Fan, Raphaela Ardicoglu, Aashil A. Batavia, Ruslan Rust, Lukas von Ziegler, Rebecca Waag, Jing Zhang, Thibaut Desgeorges, Oliver Sturman, Hairuo Dang, Rebecca Weber, Andreas E. Moor, Martin E. Schwab, Pierre-Luc Germain, Johannes Bohacek, Katrien De Bock

Modelling

Dynamic readout of the Hh gradient in the Drosophila wing disc reveals pattern-specific tradeoffs between robustness and precision
Rosalío Reyes, Arthur D. Lander, Marcos Nahmad

Homeostasis, injury and recovery dynamics at multiple scales in a self-organizing intestinal crypt
Louis Gall, Carrie Duckworth, Ferran Jardi, Lieve Lammens, Aimée Parker, Ambra Bianco, Holly Kimko, D. Mark Pritchard, Carmen Pin

Spatial-temporal order-disorder transition in angiogenic NOTCH signaling controls cell fate specification
Tae-Yun Kang, Federico Bocci, Qing Nie, José Nelson Onuchic, Andre Levchenko

Tools & Resources

Molecular and spatial design of early skin development
Tina Jacob, Karl Annusver, Paulo Czarnewski, Tim Dalessandri, Maria Eleni Kastriti, Chiara Levra Levron, Marja L Mikkola, Michael Rendl, Beate M Lichtenberger, Giacomo Donati, Åsa Björklund, Maria Kasper

Vessel Metrics: A python based software tool for automated analysis of vascular structure in confocal imaging
Sean D. McGarry, Cynthia Adjekukor, Suchit Ahuja, Jasper Greysson-Wong, Idy Vien, Kristina D. Rinker, Sarah.J. Childs

Establishment of Bovine Trophoblast Stem Cells
Yinjuan Wang, Leqian Yu, Jie Li, Linkai Zhu, Hao Ming, Carlos Pinzon Arteaga, Hai-Xi Sun, Jun Wu, Zongliang Jiang

Bovine blastocyst like structures derived from stem cell cultures
Carlos A. Pinzón-Arteaga, Yinjuan Wang, Yulei Wei, Leijie Li, Ana Elisa Ribeiro Orsi, Giovanna Scatolin, Lizhong Liu, Masahiro Sakurai, Jianfeng Ye, Leqian Yu, Bo Li, Zongliang Jiang, Jun Wu

Anatomy of the complete mouse eye vasculature in development and pathology explored by light-sheet fluorescence microscopy
Luc Krimpenfort, Maria Garcia-Collado, Tom van Leeuwen, Filippo Locri, Anna-Liisa Luik, Antonio Queiro-Palou, Shigeaki Kanatani, Helder André, Per Uhlén, Lars Jakobsson

Histology-associated transcriptomic heterogeneity in ovarian folliculogenesis revealed by quantitative single-cell RNA-sequencing for tissue sections with DRaqL
Hiroki Ikeda, Shintaro Miyao, So Nagaoka, Takuya Yamamoto, Kazuki Kurimoto

A ligand-receptor interactome atlas of the zebrafish
Milosz Chodkowski, Andrzej Zielezinski, Savani Anbalagan

A cell atlas of human adrenal cortex development and disease
Ignacio del Valle, Matthew D Young, Gerda Kildisiute, Olumide K Ogunbiyi, Federica Buonocore, Ian C Simcock, Eleonora Khabirova, Berta Crespo, Nadjeda Moreno, Tony Brooks, Paola Niola, Katherine Swarbrick, Jenifer P Suntharalingham, Sinead M McGlacken-Byrne, Owen J Arthurs, Sam Behjati, John C Achermann

Aging Fly Cell Atlas Identifies Exhaustive Aging Features at Cellular Resolution
Tzu-Chiao Lu, Maria Brbić, Ye-Jin Park, Tyler Jackson, Jiaye Chen, Sai Saroja Kolluru, Yanyan Qi, Nadja Sandra Katheder, Xiaoyu Tracy Cai, Seungjae Lee, Yen-Chung Chen, Niccole Auld, Doug Welsch, Samuel D’Souza, Angela Oliveira Pisco, Robert C. Jones, Jure Leskovec, Eric C. Lai, Hugo J. Bellen, Liqun Luo, Heinrich Jasper, Stephen R. Quake, Hongjie Li

Production and Characterization of Monoclonal antibodies to Xenopus proteins
Brett Horr, Ryan Kurtz, Ankit Pandey, Benjamin G Hoffstrom, Elizabeth Schock, Carole LaBonne, Dominique Alfandari

Tissue microenvironment dictates the state of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cells of distinct developmental origin in 3D cardiac microtissues
Xu Cao, Maria Mircea, Francijna E. van den Hil, Hailiang Mei, Katrin Neumann, Konstantinos Anastassiadis, Christine L. Mummery, Stefan Semrau, Valeria V. Orlova

Next-generation plasmids for transgenesis in zebrafish and beyond
Cassie L. Kemmler, Hannah R. Moran, Brooke F. Murray, Aaron Scoresby, John R. Klem, Rachel L. Eckert, Elizabeth Lepovsky, Sylvain Bertho, Susan Nieuwenhuize, Sibylle Burger, Gianluca D’Agati, Charles Betz, Ann-Christin Puller, Anastasia Felker, Karolína Ditrychová, Seraina Bötschi, Markus Affolter, Nicolas Rohner, C. Ben Lovely, Kristen M. Kwan, Alexa Burger, Christian Mosimann

Fatecode: Cell fate regulator prediction using classification autoencoder perturbation
Mehrshad Sadria, Anita Layton, Sidharta Goyal, Gary D. Bader

The protooncogene Ski regulates the neuron-glia switch during development of the mammalian cerebral cortex
Alice Grison, Zahra Karimaddini, Jeremie Breda, Tanzila Mukhtar, Marcelo Boareto, Katja Eschbach, Christian Beisel, Dagmar Iber, Erik van Nimwegen, Verdon Taylor, Suzana Atanasoski

The compact Casπ (Cas12l) ‘bracelet’ provides a unique structural platform for DNA manipulation
Ao Sun, Cheng-Ping Li, Zhihang Chen, Shouyue Zhang, Danyuan Li, Yun Yang, Long-Qi Li, Yuqian Zhao, Kaichen Wang, Zhaofu Li, Jinxia Liu, Sitong Liu, Jia Wang, Jun-Jie Gogo Liu

Morphogenesis and development of human telencephalic organoids in the absence and presence of exogenous ECM
Catarina Martins-Costa, Vincent Pham, Jaydeep Sidhaye, Maria Novatchkova, Angela Peer, Paul Möseneder, Nina S. Corsini, Jürgen A. Knoblich

Single Cell transcriptional analysis of ex vivo models of cortical and hippocampal development identifies unique longitudinal trends
Daniel K. Krizay, David B. Goldstein, Michael J. Boland

Selective volumetric excitation and imaging for single molecule localization microscopy in multicellular systems
Tommaso Galgani, Yasmina Fedala, Romeo Zapata, Laura Caccianini, Virgile Viasnoff, Jean-Baptiste Sibarita, Rémi Galland, Maxime Dahan, Bassam Hajj

Predicting regulators of epithelial cell state through regularized regression analysis of single cell multiomic sequencing
Nicolas Ledru, Parker C. Wilson, Yoshiharu Muto, Yasuhiro Yoshimura, Haojia Wu, Amish Asthana, Stefan G. Tullius, Sushrut S. Waikar, Giuseppe Orlando, Benjamin D. Humphreys

A toolkit for converting Gal4 into LexA and Flippase transgenes in Drosophila
Sasidhar Karuparti, Ann T. Yeung, Bei Wang, Pedro F. Guicardi, Chun Han

Employing active learning in the optimization of culture medium for mammalian cells
Takamasa Hashizume, Yuki Ozawa, Bei-Wen Ying

Integrating human iPSC-derived macrophage progenitors into retinal organoids to generate a mature retinal microglial niche
Ayumi Usui-Ouchi, Sarah Giles, Yasuo Ouchi, Elizabeth A Mills, Martin Friedlander, Kevin T Eade

Research practice & education

A Pilot Survey of Authors’ Experiences with Poor Peer Review Practices
Kyle McCloskey, Jon F. Merz

Public exams may decrease anxiety and facilitate deeper conceptual thinking
Benjamin Wiggins, Leah Lily, Carly Busch, Meta Landys, J. Gwen Shlichta, Tianhong Shi, Tandi Ngwenyama

Does it pay to pay? A comparison of the benefits of open-access publishing across various sub-fields in Biology
Amanda D. Clark, Tanner C. Myers, Todd D. Steury, Ali Krzton, Julio A. Yanes, Angela Barber, Jacqueline L. Barry, Subarna Barua, Katherine M. Eaton, Devadatta Gosavi, Rebecca L. Nance, Zahida H. Pervaiz, Chidozie G. Ugochukwu, Patricia Hartman, Laurie S. Stevison

Bridging the gap between formal theory and scientific reform practices
Erkan Buzbas, Berna Devezer

Taxonomy of interventions at academic institutions to improve research quality
Alexandra R Davidson, Ginny Barbour, Shinichi Nakagawa, Alex O. Holcombe, Fiona Fidler, Paul P Glasziou

The Australian academic STEMM workplace post-COVID: a picture of disarray
Katherine Christian, Jo-ann Larkins, Michael R. Doran

Putting on academic armor: How Black physicians and trainees take stances to make racism visible amidst publishing constraints
M. Johnson, L.A. Maggio, A. Konopasky

SCIP: a self-paced summer coding program creates community and increases coding confidence
Rochelle-Jan Reyes, Olivia Pham, Ryan Fergusson, Niquo Ceberio, Candace Clark, C Sarah Cohen, Megumi Fuse, Pleuni Pennings

Comparing scientific abstracts generated by ChatGPT to original abstracts using an artificial intelligence output detector, plagiarism detector, and blinded human reviewers
Catherine A. Gao, Frederick M. Howard, Nikolay S. Markov, Emma C. Dyer, Siddhi Ramesh, Yuan Luo, Alexander T. Pearson

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After a short break, our first ‘Developing news’ post of 2023 focusses on disruption in science.

How good is ChatGPT?

One of the main talking point on Twitter in December was ChatGPT, a chatbot from OpenAI that interacts with the user in a conversational tone. The success of ChatGPT has prompted worries of how the technology could affect student assessment and even write scientific papers!

Comparing scientific abstracts generated by ChatGPT to original abstracts using an artificial intelligence output detector, plagiarism detector, and blinded human reviewers
Catherine A. Gao, Frederick M. Howard, Nikolay S. Markov, Emma C. Dyer, Siddhi Ramesh, Yuan Luo, Alexander T. Pearson

Abstracts written by ChatGPT fool scientists – comment

U.S. universities are starting to overhaul classrooms in response to the new AI chatbot ChatGPT, prompting a potentially huge shift in teaching. Some professors are redesigning their courses, even choosing handwritten assignments over typed ones. https://t.co/5B6eEPyBS1

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 16, 2023

Publishing with ChatGPT

A conversation with ChatGPT on the role of computational systems biology in stem cell research

First article with ChatGPT as coauthor 🤨. Next article: Word, M., Excel, M., and GPT, C. (2023). 'Does Adding Software as Authors Result in More Citations? An Ongoing Experiment' pic.twitter.com/M8IfabC1Tu

— Johan Farkas (@farkasjohan) January 14, 2023

Just for fun?

Checkmate, biologists pic.twitter.com/4d1zWODUoz

— Michael Baym (@baym) January 16, 2023

Innovation in science

A new paper analysing the frequency of major new directions (or disruption) of science over time prompted discussions on i) whether this is true, ii) the causes and iii) whether we should be worried. We have picked out some examples of the chat below and recommend that you click the links for the full discussion.

New Nature paper provides evidence that science has become less innovative since the 1950s. The authors suggest reversing the trend by:
1. reading widely,
2. focusing less on quantity of papers, & more on research quality,
3. taking year-long sabbaticals.https://t.co/oYV5JCXRl8 pic.twitter.com/viN2IJ0cSn

— Itai Yanai (@ItaiYanai) January 4, 2023

This is a thought provoking article, If it is not the quality of published work than what is causing it! 🧐😶🙄🤔thread below 👇🏻 Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time | Nature https://t.co/RIwG1VuiMu

— Shuchi Agrawal Singh (@ShuchiChromaBio) January 5, 2023

https://twitter.com/IslandGenomics/status/1610996544420937728

https://twitter.com/Mathieu_Ferron/status/1611355396383584257

Piping hot morning coffee take: if there really is a decline in "disruptive" science, could it be linked to our easy, finger-tip access to *all* the literature? Maybe out-of-the-box thinking is correlated with naivety and ingnorance?

— Maxim Greenberg (@maxvcg) January 12, 2023

preLights in #devbio

Want Erk-cellent representation of Erk signalling dynamics? Wilcockson and authors explore an improved biosensor that faithfully reports Erk activity without being impacted by Cdk1

Like Meta, but better. METALoci: a new tool to identify 3D regulatory regions in the genome, sex-determination edition.

“Worry” your way out: Driscoll and colleagues characterize a bleb-based mode of cell migration featuring repetitive agitation of the extracellular matrix.

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Victoria Deneke, a postdoc in Andi Pauli’s lab at the Vienna BioCenter, was the winner of the 2022 Society of Developmental Biology (SDB) Trainee Science Communication Award. Victoria is passionate about developing communities within the science world and creating opportunities for scientists from low-income countries. We caught up with Victoria to find out about her outreach and communication work, as well as her research career.

Where are you originally from and when did you first get interested in science?

I was born and raised in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador in Central America. Whilst growing, I was lucky enough to have access to school, and received a very good education. When I was 18, I applied for university places in the United States and that was when I really picked up science academically, but I’ve always been interested in the natural world. For example, I remember being fascinated by snake scales as a child and one of my favourite experiments in middle school was to dissect a frog to study the vasculature and the amazing organisation of the organism. Despite this early interest in biology, I decided to study chemical engineering as an undergraduate, as I thought that degree would be more versatile, either allowing me to return to my home country, or to develop elsewhere. Biology is not a very developed topic in El Salvador, but after my undergraduate degree I found myself being drawn back to biology. I decided to apply for umbrella PhD programmes, which give you access to a broad range of biology departments. You do rotations in different laboratories and then choose one for your PhD. This was an important aspect of the programme for me, particularly as I didn’t have a strong background in biology as an undergraduate. That’s how I ended up joining Stefano Di Talia’s lab, which was my fourth laboratory rotation. I very quickly fell in love with the research that was ongoing at the lab, which had just started at Duke. I was one of the first two graduate students that joined and the first graduate student that joined a fruit fly project. During my rotation, I was imaging early Drosophila embryos, and in particular the nuclear divisions that occur in the first few hours of development. These events are remarkably synchronous, and the waves of division spread through the embryo. My first PhD project was trying to figure out how these divisions are synchronised in the syncytial embryo. We found that there are waves of chemical activity via cyclin dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1), and through a combination of diffusion and positive feedback, these waves can synchronise the whole cytoplasm within minutes. It was the perfect project for me because it was very visual – I got to see and make these beautiful movies every day of my PhD! At the same time, the project involved not only biological concepts, like kinases and cell cycle regulation, but also concepts from physics and maths. For example, how the signal spreads, and the dynamics and the kinetics of chemical waves. This meant I got to collaborate with physicists, and indeed Stefano is a physicist by training, so I felt this project really suited my engineering background.

You said this was your first PhD project, can you tell us what you worked on for the rest of your PhD?

For the second half of my PhD, I decided to look at the role of cytoplasmic flows in spreading nuclei in the Drosophila embryo. So, originally these nuclei are all clustered in one part of the embryo and then there are beautiful contractions and subsequent flows that emerge and appear to move the nuclei. The regulation of the contractions is fascinating, and we assumed they must be tightly regulated for the nuclei to become so uniformly spaced through self-organisation. I started out by making movies of both the nuclei and the flows, trying to correlate these two movements. I went on to use optogenetics to perturb the contractions and monitor how that affects the nuclear spreading. Another beautiful, visual project where we really benefited from the application of quantitative biology methods. We tracked the cytoplasm and the nuclei and established quantitative relationships between these two movements to build a model. From the model, we made predictions that we then tested experimentally. I loved both of these projects, they allowed me to combine both imaging techniques and mathematical modelling, to address questions about fundamental developmental processes. Overall, I couldn’t have picked a better place for my PhD given my background and the kind of biology that excites me.

For your postdoc, you moved to Andi Pauli’s lab in Vienna, Austria, can you tell us about this move and your research in the Pauli lab?

In the final year of my PhD, I started reading more broadly to find other scientific topics that interest me, and I always seemed to be coming back to oocyte and sperm biology. I’ve always thought that those cells are really fascinating and really special, and I was particularly drawn to the process of fertilisation, whereby these two cells have to bind specifically to each other and then fuse. I came across the first paper from Andi Pauli’s lab describing the discovery of a protein called Bouncer, which is on the surface of zebrafish eggs, and is an essential fertilisation factor. The other really cool thing that the Pauli lab found was that if you replace the zebrafish Bouncer with the medaka homologue, you can now fertilise the zebrafish eggs with medaka sperm, changing the compatibility of sperm and egg by just switching this one protein on the surface of the eggs. I thought this was amazing, so I reached out to her, keen to come for a visit. I was excited by the science and felt a good connection with Andi, so I decided to take a plunge and change completely scientific field, change model organism, change continents! It was quite a 180-degree change. I have been here for three years now, and I’ve really had such a good time. I think that picking an area of science that you’re just completely fascinated by for your postdoc is definitely the way to go. I don’t think I’ve ever had a day where I’m bored by my projects, I’m always wondering, what is really going on? How could we figure this out? So, I have been studying the process of fertilisation, mostly using zebrafish, and specifically I’m working on trying to decipher, which proteins, at the molecular level, are mediating this process, both on the sperm side and on the egg side. I love thinking about how these two cells come together and how they can achieve specific cell fusion between them. That’s a concept that really fascinates me and is my research interest in a nutshell!

Did you find switching model organisms a big change, or was that quite easy to do?

It was easier than I expected. I think it helped that the lab here (in Vienna) was already established and there were a lot of people in the lab that helped me pick up the zebrafish model organism. One of the biggest advantages of working with zebrafish is that the embryos are transparent. This means that you can look through a bright field microscope and watch development unfold.  You can watch the embryo gastrulating and you can see even the somites forming, which was so exciting to me.

Congratulations on being awarded the 2022 SDB Trainee Science Communication Award, can you tell us what winning this award means to you?

This award means so much to me. I think oftentimes, this kind of work is considered extracurricular, and is overlooked. It’s wonderful that the SDB is recognising that outreach and communication are important aspects of academic science, and I think it shows the direction that we’re moving in. I think that being a well-rounded scientist is not just about making exciting discoveries in biology, but also about mentoring the next generation of scientists, and building an inclusive space for everyone. My short story of how I got involved into outreach work was when, after being in the US for a few years, I realised that I was in a unique position to contribute to my home country of El Salvador. I started doing simple outreach activities whenever I was back in El Salvador in the summertime. I would reach out to a local university and got involved with a workshop encouraging middle school girls to consider STEM fields. I would volunteer to give one of the Saturday morning workshops they do as part of a 12-week programme. One year I organised a workshop on pulleys. I borrowed some material from my high school and we ran this workshop together. So, that’s how it started and then eventually, as I got more involved with the Salvadoran community, I started reaching out to universities to also give motivational talks, to share my story. Then the next step was the fellowship that I created with my postdoc advisor Andi. But as you can hopefully see, the projects started very small, but through the years I built bigger and bigger initiatives.

Can you tell us a little more about the Austria-El Salvador Research Fellowship that you founded?

The idea originated from a yearly mentoring meeting I was having with Andi. We were talking about the Vienna BioCenter Summer School, which is open for students from all over the world to apply to come for a summer research internship at the Vienna BioCenter. It’s an amazing programme, but the realities are that students from lower income countries do not have access to the same opportunities as applicants from other parts of the world. This means that they usually don’t make the cut for the normal programme that we run here. I suggested to Andi that we could try to fill this gap by inviting one person for the summer, see how it goes and take it from there. Since I am very connected to the community in El Salvador, it was easy for me to broadcast the application within El Salvador and then find a student who would be motivated to come join us for a summer. We extended an offer to a student called Eduardo. He was here for three months and I was his direct supervisor. One thing that really stood out was that he was always so eager to come to the lab, and so grateful and amazed by the facilities. He loved the library and would go in the evenings to read books, access that we take for granted. It was really fascinating and inspiring for me as a mentor and made me really start appreciating the resources that we have here. Even though he had never had any research experience, he quickly picked up a lot of concepts. Eduardo is a very talented scientist, and it was a treat to mentor him. I also became aware of a lot of barriers within developing countries that kind of inhibit the progression of science. I’ve heard a lot of stories of having to use makeshift reagents and delayed services to developing countries, which means that science moves a lot slower because you just don’t have access to the same resources. For Eduardo, the fellowship was his first research experience, his first opportunity to try out the techniques he had read about, and it allowed him to be immersed in science. He has also taken his knowledge back to El Salvador. He has started a molecular biology club within his university, where they read papers together and they are creating a scientific community of students back home. It’s a small thing, starting with just one person, but I think in the long run it could really have an impact in how biology develops in in low-income countries, and in El Salvador, in particular.

The bulk of the funding for the fellowship was from the Vienna BioCenter, but I also made a GoFundMe page to have additional funds to use to cover Eduardo’s travel, as well as a small stipend to cover living costs during the three months. I think it is important to remember that if we’re going to bring someone from a low-income country, you cannot expect that that person will be able to cover a roundtrip flight from across the world. We really wanted to be as accommodating as we could and consider the reality of the applicant, including funding travel, visa, but also being aware of access to opportunities when considering the strength of the application. As we move forward in creating an inclusive scientific environment, we have to consider, are we missing out on talent because of barriers to access these kinds of opportunities?

I saw that you also ran a do-it-yourself workshop for teachers in El Salvador, how did this course work and did you intentionally target teachers rather than students?

The do-it-yourself microscopes is a workshop that was developed by Bob Goldstein at UNC Chapel Hill. The premise of his programme was to offer this workshop to teachers, in his case in North Carolina. I came across Bob’s work in a conference where he had a stand with these microscopes. I talked to him about the idea of bringing this workshop to a low-income or an underprivileged country. I thought it would be a perfect fit to introduce both teachers and students to science because it was very affordable, the microscopes are easy to make, but nonetheless, give you access to the microscopic world. I think that all of those factors make it a perfect outreach tool for low-income countries. I saw the value in Bob’s programme to target teachers so that they could expand their knowledge and amplify that effect to their students, so we decided to implement this programme in El Salvador in a very similar fashion. I translated all the material, but Bob has this ‘Ikea-like’ drawing of how to build this microscope, so you don’t need a lot of text. I was also lucky to partner with a local university and we recruited around 40 to 50 teachers from across the country. It was such a good workshop; everyone came out so happy and so proud that they built this microscope. It was fun watching people’s first reaction, when they put say a leaf under this microscope, and all of a sudden, they could see the cells. A lot of these teachers had never seen that, not even in a textbook. The teachers wanted to take the microscopes into to the classroom, but they also wanted to show their families because they were so excited by it!

How can we, as a community, better support and promote scientists from low- and middle-income countries?

We’ve touched on some aspects already, and I think that we are in a very unique position to be able to provide opportunities to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a community, we should support open calls, specifically to recruit people from low-income countries, or we could reserve spots within our existing programmes to include talent from disadvantaged backgrounds. And we need to think about the barriers could prevent people from participating in such programmes. The exercise of putting yourself in other people’s shoes could really transform the way that we run a lot of our research programmes and we are currently discussing how we could implement this here at the Vienna BioCenter. We are discussing how, within our current summer programme, we can reserve spots for students from low-income countries, and what would we need to provide to really support the students participating in the programme.

It’s exciting to think that something can start with a small project, inviting one person into the lab, but then if that could be amplified to say 20% of institutes offering a few weeks in the lab, there would be a huge number of scientists benefiting from this kind of experience.

Yes, that’s a really good way of thinking about it. It could be applied to any research institute across the world and could really have an impact. But I think it is good to start with a small ‘experiment’ and then really pitch for implementing something bigger. That’s my hope. I hope that for next summer we can already reserve ~20% of the spots on our research programme for students from underprivileged backgrounds with the idea that we recognise that talent is everywhere, and that science also benefits from a diverse talent pool. And so, in that effort, we have restructured the programme to allow for this enrichment.

You’ve spoken about Andi Pauli and Bob Goldstein as mentors. Do you have any mentors or role models either in research or science communication and outreach?

One person that comes to mind was someone that I intersected with during my time at Duke. I was really lucky to be part of this programme called the Biocore Scholars programme, and this programme is led by an amazing scientist, advocate, and communicator, Sherilynn Black. Sherilynn created this graduate student programme that’s designed to build a supportive community for PhD students of diverse backgrounds. I applied to be part of this programme and remained in the programme throughout my PhD. It became my scientific home during my PhD. It was a cohort of really diverse students that were in the programme to come together and support each other and collectively move through our PhD experiences. I really owe my PhD to this community. It has made me passionate about community building within scientific spaces that allow people to thrive. If I could be a fraction of Sherilynn Black, I will have made it in life!

What’s next for you, both short term and longer term?

In the short term, I’m really enjoying my postdoc here at the Pauli lab. I love mentoring students and I think that the scientific world is the perfect ground for building communities, for mentoring people and for coming together and communicating our science broadly. In the long term, it’s hard to say, but I would be looking for something that allows me to continue this role of creating community, communicating science, and mentoring students. I think that my future role could take shape in many ways for me.

Where do you think developmental biology will be in ten years?

During my PhD, I was introduced to the field of quantitative biology and the additional insights that quantitative methods can provide into the dynamics and the regulation of biological processes within developing organisms. I’m curious to see how this field is going to keep evolving. And not only that, but how interdisciplinary projects that use concepts from physics or concepts from computer science, can bring new insights to biological questions that have been studied for a long, long time. At the SDB meeting, for example, we started seeing how people are using AI to be able to predict differentiation cascades – I think that that is truly fascinating. And combining that with detailed data sets of transcriptional states of cells can really propel the developmental biology field forward. So, those are the things that I’m really excited about, but whether that actually ends up being the crux of developmental biology in 10 years, who knows, but that’s something that I look forward to reading about!

When you’re not in the lab, what do you do for fun?

I really love going on walks. I have a sister that lives with me here in Vienna and every weekend we pick a different district or a different neighbourhood in Vienna to walk around. I think it is a great way to know a city. I also love travelling, and one of the biggest advantages of being in Central Europe is that I have access to a lot of beautiful cities, just amazing historical places. When I travel, I enjoy getting to know the culture and the food of different countries. Those are two of my big ones, but I also really enjoyed dancing, so that’s something I like to do on the weekend.

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