Honoured to have been awarded the 2026 British Society for Developmental Biology Lewis Wolpert Medal - means so much; as i was Lewis’s last PhD student,recognition for continuing his legacy of public engagement & impact of our research on Thalidomide & Primodos survivors.
bsdb.org/2026/03/24/2...
One of our favourite tabs is Resources: we're listing all of our datasets, codes, beginning to upload and make accessible raw imaging data and lab protocols. Please check it out, we hope this is useful!
niakanlab.com/resources/
Found this unbelievably accurate “integrated stem
cell model” by JA Thomson in 1996 of marmoset ESCs 🐒
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8828827/
The simplest protocol one can think of built quite remarkable structures !?!?
Patterning of cell identities in the posterior E8.5 mouse embryo. Co-expression of mesoderm marker TBXT (blue) and neural marker SOX2 (green) identifies cells in the neuromesodermal (NMP) progenitor region at the intersection of their respective gene expression gradients. TBX6 (red) marks paraxial mesoderm and also marks sporadic mesoderm-committed cells emerging within the NMP region. LAMINB1 (white) marks the nuclear envelope of all cells. Credit: Matthew French.
Measuring properties of individual cells in relation to their neighbors in 3D tissues is challenging. @cellysally.bsky.social &co develop a computational toolkit to facilitate this, analyzing developmental patterning in mouse, chick & #Drosophila #embryo @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4lQMeNu
Can peer review be done faster, without compromising on quality? Biology Open has embarked on an exciting experiment to find out - Editor-in-Chief Dan Gorelick @danielgorelick.bsky.social explains.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt5h...
Join us! This will be a great meeting.
Our protocol with all the details you'll need to detect and quantify phospo-SMAD proteins in your (human) embryo, is finally out today @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social.
Thanks again to my wonderful co-author @toddfallesen.bsky.social and the @niakanlab.bsky.social.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
If you’re a PhD or postdoc developmental biologist in the UK who cares about the field and the community, please nominate yourself to join the BSDB committee. Great opportunity to get involved, have real input and give back to the community @bsdb.bsky.social #biologists100
Excited to share how we use neighbour labelling to investigate cell fate decisions in neuromesodermal progenitors. Find me at Poster 165 @biologists.bsky.social #biologists100.
🧪Attending your first scientific #conference? Thinking about what to pack, or just looking to make sure you prepared all the essentials? Have a look at The Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Conferences I got to publish for @the-node.bsky.social, out now! ☺️☺️ thenode.biologists.com/the-beginner...
Text reads: The ability of cells in early human embryos to become more specialised does not depend on a process previously thought necessary from work in stem cell models.
Have you been following the work of the HDBI - the Human Developmental Biology Initiative? A lay summary of a recent paper from researchers involved in the HDBI is now available, written by the paper's first author @asbrumm.bsky.social
hdbi.org/human-epibla...
#Embryos #HumanDevelopment
A lay summary of this work is now available: hdbi.org/human-epibla...
Special thanks once again to Kathy @niakanlab.bsky.social and Richard Acton at @babrahaminst.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Here we explore the role of #Wnt and #Nodal signalling during mammalian gastrulation using #gastruloids. Building on the work of many labs, we propose that antagonistic signalling-dependent #modularity in the PS establishes the early mammalian body plan.
Special shout-out to Michele Marass, our outstanding steward through the turbulent waters that is the review process.
I’m grateful for the continued support from
the Niakan Lab, and our collaborators
in the labs of L. Vallier, P. Rugg-Gunn, and C. Hill, who made this work possible. 9/10
These data suggest differences in the signalling requirements regulating pluripotency in the pre-implantation human epiblast compared with existing human embryonic stem cell culture. 8/10
Transcriptional analysis of A8301-treated human blastocysts indicated that NANOG transcription did not decrease under NODAL signalling inhibition, in contrast to naïve human embryonic stem cells in t2iLifGo conditions pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34463252/ 7/10
A8301 treatment throughout human blastocyst development from 5 to 7 days post fertilisation did not impact the number of cells expressing epiblast markers NANOG, SOX2, KLF17 or primitive endoderm marker GATA4. 6/10
We next characterised three NODAL signalling inhibitors, yet only A8301 reliably inhibited SMAD2/3 phosphorylation and nuclear accumulation. The required high concentration of A8301 also inhibited BMP signalling, found in the primitive endoderm of human blastocysts. 5/10
We found that NANOG expression emerges in the inner cell mass of human blastocysts at 5 days post fertilisation, in the absence of NODAL signalling activity. NODAL signalling then becomes active throughout the pluripotent epiblast and extra-embryonic primitive endoderm. 4/10
To characterise NODAL signalling activity, we optimised an immunofluorescence protocol to detect the intracellular effectors SMAD2/3, which become phosphorylated and accumulate in the nucleus upon ligand binding. See also Kruger et al doi.org/10.1242/dev.... 3/10
In vitro, NODAL regulates pluripotency, by promoting NANOG expression, as shown by Ludovic Vallier, AnnaOsnato and others. We thus wondered whether NODAL signalling activity was active in pre-implantation human development and involved in human pluripotency in vivo. 2/10
In my PhD work, published last Monday, we show that both NODAL and BMP signalling are active in the human blastocyst, but NODAL signalling is not required to initiate or maintain the human pluripotent epiblast. 1/10
Thank you so much @cellysally.bsky.social - great slogan!
I'll cross-post my Twitter thread below.
