The final version of our new paper, "Fog signaling is dispensable for Drosophila tracheal invagination", @devbiol.bsky.social is now available online: authors.elsevier.com/a/1mx902mzTo...

Paper alert! 📢 Our paper, “Fog signaling is dispensable for Drosophila trachea invagination,” has been accepted in @devbiol.bsky.social! Huge credit to first author @vvishakha.bsky.social (now a postdoc at the NIH).

An uncorrected proof is here: doi.org/10.1016/j.yd...

Huge congratulations to the talented student Ben Almond on his successful honors thesis defense! Excited to see him head to Albert Einstein Medical School—bright future ahead! @lsu-honors.bsky.social

Loved catching up with old friends and meeting new ones at #DROS26!

Fly Bayou group at #DROS26! It was great to see many of them in person after monthly virtual meetings.

Excited to share our work at #DROS26!

I’ll be giving a talk today at 11 AM in the Patterning, Morphogenesis, and Organogenesis session.

Also come check out posters from our lab: Elizabeth (F 2-4 pm), Debbie (S 1:30-3:30 pm)

The best way to start a conference in Chicago: deep-dish pizza. 🍕 #DROS26 @genetics-gsa.bsky.social

Lab lunch to celebrate a successful semester and year - good food, great people! Looking forward to an exciting new year ahead!

The version of record of our paper is out! 🎉
We show that sulfation is essential for organizing the apical ECM (aECM) during tubulogenesis in Drosophila, and identify ZP domain proteins as key components of the non-chitinous aECM of the salivary gland. 🧬
elifesciences.org/articles/108...

Got the nicest email from a former student who took my Dev Bio class a few years ago and went on to med school. Moments like this remind me why teaching is so meaningful.

Thanks, Neha!

Thanks also to all the co-authors, including Rutuparna Joshi, Ying Xiao, and @vvishakha.bsky.social. I couldn’t be prouder of this team and the creative, collaborative spirit that brought this project to life. Also grateful to the NSF and NIDCR at NIH for funding this research.

And kudos to Jeffrey Matthew @matthewjeffre.bsky.social, co-first author, who expanded and completed the work with great care and rigor. He is now a postdoc at UPenn, studying regeneration.

A very special shout-out to Luke Woodward, our first author, who began this project as an undergraduate and delivered exceptional results—both in quality and quantity. He is now pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, studying heart development.

We show that the sulfation enzyme PAPS synthetase (Papss) is required for organizing the non-chitinous aECM of the Drosophila salivary gland. We also identify and characterize zona pellucida domain proteins as some of the first known components of this non-chitinous aECM.

In this study, we uncover the critical role of #sulfation —a key post-translational modification of proteins and proteoglycan side chains—in organizing the apical extracellular matrix (aECM) during tubulogenesis. While the #aECM is essential for tissue development, it is still poorly understood.

This work was first reviewed by @reviewcommons.org, which has become my favorite way to have a paper reviewed. After a full revision, we transferred the manuscript to @elife.bsky.social, where it is now officially published.

Our new paper, “Organization of the apical extracellular matrix during tubular organ formation”, has been published in
@elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Supracellular control and coordination of tissue morphogenesis, through supracellular actomyosin assemblies, that is what my lab @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social @pdncambridge.bsky.social and I like to dig into at the moment! Fascinating and beautiful! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

Several of my students also had the opportunity to present their own work and received great feedback. They were so excited and came back with much more enthusiasm and motivation!

We held the 2nd Fly Bayou Symposium in New Orleans last week—so great to reconnect in person and hear exciting research! What began in 2020 as a small local network has grown to 36 labs across 14 states. Grateful to see this community thrive and support each other! 🪰

Excited about this new virtual seminar series on the apical ECM!

Multiscale patterning of a model apical extracellular matrix revealed by systematic endogenous protein tagging Barrier epithelia are shielded from the external environment by their apical extracellular matrices (aECMs). The molecular complexity of aECMs has challenged understanding of their organization in viv...

Up on biorxiv! The tour de force protein tagging atlas for the #Celegans cuticle #aECM - from Jordan Ward @gotworms.bsky.social and Andrew Chisholm labs. So many beautiful images of cuticle collagen substructures !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Also congratulations to our talented undergraduates, Maggie Wheat (summa cum laude) and Cailyn Lee (College Honors) on their graduation! Can't wait to see what the future holds for them!

Congratulations to Dr. Jeffrey Matthew @matthewjeffre.bsky.social! Jeffrey is one of the most talented, dedicated, and kindest people I've ever known. He will start his postdoctoral research in regeneration at the Rompolas lab at UPenn, and i have no doubt he will thrive. Geaux Jeffrey!

Great news!! Congratulations, Meera!

End of semester lab lunch. It feels like each semester goes by more quickly every year!

Amazing! Big congrats, Igor! Well deserved.

Huge congrats to talented undergraduate Cailyn Lee in the lab on her well-deserved award from the LSU BioSci department. She will start her masters in medical sciences at Tufts this fall and is applying for MD/PhD. So proud and excited for her!