I usually hate quotes, except those by this French humorist: “Intelligence is the only means by which man can measure the extent of his own misery.” Pierre Desproges

What if you got to work with some of your best friends on a science project? I can't publish how fun this was, but I can show you the data (🧵)! Last week, we posted our second neutrophil swarming paper to bioRxiv and I wanted to post my favorite videos here~
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy to share this work is now in Science Advances! Congratulations to the outstanding Areej Said-Ahmad for leading the work, and to the rest of the team!

Distinct mechanisms decommission redundant enhancers to facilitate phenotypic evolution | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🎉 Great success for our 2nd SFBD-SBCF science outreach day in Ivry-sur-Seine, with the support of the city!
Over a thousand children came to take part in our workshops, led by around fifty researchers from institutes in Paris and Gif-sur-Yvette! Thank you all for your enthusiasm! 🔬🧬

Genomic rearrangement of the Hox cluster in a dung beetle species with derived cephalic horn morphology

#DBfeature #InHoxWeTrust 🪲

Divergent Hox cluster arrangement in horned beetles retain conserved embryonic and adult expression patterns.

by Erica Nadolski, Isabel Manley, Sukhmani Gill, Armin Moczek @ericanadolski.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/ycxabrh5

A new mechanism for “RNA memory”! This time in Planaria! (Here's a video of a Planarian with mulitple heads, one of the heritable phenotypes we studied).

This work summarizes >10 years of research and is an amazing collaboration with the labs of Jochen Rink and Omri Wurtzel labs. Read thrad below👇

🚨 Why can’t mammals regenerate limbs like frog tadpoles or salamanders?
In our new paper in @science.org , we show that species-specific oxygen sensing acts as a gatekeeper for initiating limb regeneration 🐭🐸
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #EvoDevo

One of the wildest things I learned about planarian flatworms: you can isolate their pharynx (throat) and it will autonomously engage in feeding behavior.
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

A new strain of transgenic Platynereis. At this stage, this is still a great joy. Hopefully, several more will follow soon ...
I hope other teams are making progress with this notoriously resistant species. Let's make Platy the marine D melanogaster ! #platynereis #wormwednesday #evodevo

Predictions of the relative probability of conception with and without female ejaculation and prediction of the possible frequency of female ejaculation as a function of context.

Ok, serious face.
Female ejaculation ("squirting") might make it easier to get knocked up.

Maybe.

It's a hypothesis at this point, but in this paper, the authors outline reasonable rationale and outline some testable experiments. 🧪

Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Est ce que j'ai fait craqué et fait une série de memes @pintofscience.fr #ProjectHailMary ?

Peut-être 😅

I2BC is recruiting group leaders in several disciplines.

Don’t miss the chance to launch your team at Paris-Saclay.

Information : www.i2bc.paris-saclay.fr/wp-content/u...

Applications and enquiries : call2026@i2bc.paris-saclay.fr

Deadline: April 22, 2026

Or velvet worm ? Nice!

Behold Millipede

You Got The Love - Rufus | The Midnight Special YouTube video by The Midnight Special

Rufus is a band formed in Chicago around 1970, fronted by the sublime Chaka Khan after she moved on from her Black Panthers militancy days. They were a major force in shaping the funk sound of the 70s.
<You Got the Love> 👉 youtu.be/IA5L2X6kx1U

Rufus & Chaka Khan - Once You Get Started • TopPop YouTube video by TopPop

Seeking a substitute for Angine de Poitrine addiction rehab, I’m foraging for live soul/funk gems from the past, resurrected by the magic of the internets. So let’s get Rufus-ized. Not #MusicForNerds , #MusicForNormalPeople . #GetDown!
<Once You Get Started> 👉 youtu.be/7fgKhuqNtxw 👇

Germ cells have their own versions of core transcription factors and fertility depends on them.
We're hiring a PhD student to figure out how! 📢
Fly genetics + proteomics + genomics. Fully funded.
Aarhus University 🇩🇰
Deadline May 1 👇

Please share with anyone who might be interested!

Lisa’s picture (@lisma-ulb.bsky.social), named “Where Science meets Art,” shows a transgenic line of the annelid worm Platynereis dumerilii. These worms were kindly provided by Guillaume Balavoine (@balavoinelab.bsky.social).

#PlatynereisDumerilii #Annelid
Photo credit: Yourong Frank Wang

Neural crest cells beginning their long trek out of the neural tube in a quail embryo. Beautifully captured by the fantastic @siewzhuan.bsky.social 🧪🐣🔬

Please check out our new preprint! Using single cell analysis paired with HCR to visualize transcript localization we have identified cell and tissue-specific expression of various genes encoding tubulins, kifs, and dyneins during neural crest development!

Flyer for symposium: https://ctrlepiedit.sciencesconf.org/

Very excited to announce the FIRST symposium on epigenome editing! These tools are becoming widely used in mol bio, ag & therapy. It's time to bring leaders together to discuss this rapidly growing and exciting field. And why not in Paris! Please register & share! (1/2) ctrlepiedit.sciencesconf.org

In animals with large genomes, finding cis-regulatory elements can be very challenging. Enhancers can be located tens/hundreds of kb away from their target promoters. We face this challenge in Parhyale, with >3 Gbp genome.
We just published a preprint describing how we are tackling this problem. /1

Oui. En fait, c’est groovy!

Doctoral Researcher in Macroevolution and Phenotypic Diversification of Dung Beetles Doctoral Researcher in Macroevolution and Phenotypic Diversification of Dung Beetles

Applications are open for a 3-year funded PhD position at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, focused on dung beetle evolution. Deadline: March 16. … jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-Doctoral-Re... #gradstudent

In this review we map the journey to animal multicellularity and define three extinct ancestral stages:
🔹 LUAA: Last Unicellular Animal Ancestor.
🔹 FACA: First Animal Common Ancestor.
🔹 LACA: Last Animal Common Ancestor.
Check it out: bit.ly/4azuLVY @embojournal.org

Institut Jacques Monod Seminar
Friday, Feb 27
Institut Jacques Monod

Gautam Dey @gautamdey.bsky.social (EMBL, Heidelberg) Evolution and diversity of mitosis

Exciting evolutionary cell biology: bridging genomics, experimental evolution, and stunning imaging across diverse protozoans
buff.ly/uCSfjgQ

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Banger cormorant eye footage today 🪶

Québécois madness !

I resisted the growing hype for ten days before clicking, but now, I must share. It is so ... joyful. #musicfornerds #anginedepoutine youtu.be/0Ssi-9wS1so