Reminder! Application deadline Friday 8th May

Had so much fun at @bsdb.bsky.social a few weeks go and am very excited about all the upcoming stories I saw. Check out the #preprint list I've collated from the meeting, now on @prelights.bsky.social👇

prelights.biologists.com/prelists/bsd...

And please do let me know if there are any I missed 👀

Congratulations to the @dev-journal.bsky.social 2025 Outstanding Paper nominations, & special mention to the winner by Yang et al doi.org/10.1242/dev....

For the top three nominations and an interview with the winners see:

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Yup, exactly. The bit I showed in my post isn't even the best bit.

Data. A mouse model of glioblastoma leads to inevitable death within 50 days. Delivery of HSV+TK plus IL2, driven by a strong and specific synthetic superenhancer, allows almost all mice to survive even after nearly 150 days. From Fig5 of Koeber et al 2026

Just look at this graph (Fig 5A,B from Koeber et al).

Amazing.

Congratulations to the Pollard lab and all authors.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow, this is wonderful!

I illustrated my way through the @bsdb.bsky.social Spring Meeting a couple weeks ago - here's my illustrated summary of the conference! I sketched (almost) all the speakers and glimpses of the science that made it such a great few days.

"Why is publishing so expensive?" It's a question I hear all the time, so we at @biologists.bsky.social thought we'd try to dispel some of the myths around publishing economics & provide transparency around our costs. Today, we publish editorials in all 5 of our journals - links in the thread below.

"We want to see the academic publishing industry change in a way that benefits science, not just profits"

Why we won’t be funding open access publishing any more - Cancer Research UK - Cancer News The open access movement was bold and promising, but ultimately disappointing. Now is the time to stop and call for a new way to make publishing work…

Cancer Research UK is fed up of paying too much for open access publishing so they are completely stopping funding this activity:
news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

The ABC of my fave things in this paper:

* ABOLISHING both silencing AND leakiness of SynNotch (check out the DTA-based demo of this 😍) while preserving high efficiency, in pluripotent & differentiating cells

* BOOSTING signal during #PUFFFIN neighbour-labelling

* CITING Robbie Burns (1786) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Chief Executive Officer | Inspired Selection

A unique opportunity to lead the most wonderful company in scientific publishing (I might be slightly biased here). The Company of Biologists are searching for a CEO.

www.inspiredselection.com/jobs/jo00000...

2026 Waddington Medal Winner - James Briscoe - BSDB - British Society for Developmental Biology We are very pleased to announce that this year’s Waddington medal winner is James Briscoe. His fundamental discoveries have helped shape our understanding of of how morphogens work, and he has played ...

Huge congratulations to James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social for receiving the 2026 BSDB Waddington Medal, recognising an extraordinary career of discovery, mentorship, and leadership in developmental biology.

bsdb.org/2026/03/24/2...

Pictures of james briscoe, one avec mullet

And the @bsdb.bsky.social Waddington medal goes to... @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social. Could not be more highly deserved, I'm so delighted to hear this 👏

Absolutely beautiful work from @matt-mala.bsky.social and Aisling Fairweather with valiant input from undergraduate student Yana Slavova.

This excellent paper deserves an excellent #paperthemetune Anyone got any suggestions?

The Right Way, by Prince Far i from the album Crytuff Dub Encounter Chapter One

Wow! Congratulations! May I invite you to celebrate with a delicious slice of Prince Far ITEC?
#PaperThemeTune
pressuresounds.bandcamp.com/track/the-ri...

It's out! Happy to present ITEC, a semi supervised algorithm with an extremely low error rate that can track cells in files of any size (think Terabytes!). We used it in many organisms, including zebrafish, to study how organs form and linked it to gene expression www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... +🧪

This is such dreadful and shocking news.

Absolutely terrible news. I knew Alan as he was a long-serving Director @biologists.bsky.social. Our research interests were very far apart but I loved chatting with him about running, gait analysis and GPS. He was a data nerd just like me. So sad. My thoughts are with his family.

Just heard about this on the blooming six o'clock news! Wow! Amazing! Wow again! Did I mention that this is amazing! Hooray!

Poster for Stem Cell Summer School 2026. The info on the poster can also be found by following the link to our website.

We are delighted to announce that we are now open for applications for 2026 summer school

Dates: 11th - 18th September 2026

Deadline for applications: 8th May

See our website for info on how to apply.. and to check out our stellar speaker list!

www.stemcellsummerschool.org/apply

🧪

Interesting move from CAS (if true, struggling to verify).

It's free to publish in @dev-journal.bsky.social and Read & Publish agreements between @biologists.bsky.social and institutes worldwide mean that many authors can also publish Open Access research in Development without paying an APC.

When you share an office with the queen of the #axolotls (aidarodrigo.bsky.social) you also get to share the birthday joy! 🥳 Happy 2nd birthday to the OG axolotls (treats baked by Laura Arbanas and @cellysally.bsky.social’s daughter)

The lipidomic architecture of the mouse brain - preLights Lipids get the space they deserve: Fusar Bassini et al. pioneer a MALDI-MS imaging and computational analysis, bring membrane lipids and their spatial organization to the spotlight and provide evidenc...

At the Centre for Regenerative Medicine #UoE, ECRs discuss preprints + now publish their discussions on #preLights!

First #preprint they highlight brings membrane lipids & their spatial organization to the spotlight. @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social

#preLight ⬇️
prelights.biologists.com/highlights/t...

PUFFFIN: an ultra-bright, customisable, single-plasmid system for labelling cell neighbourhoods.
www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

Excited to announce that our #PUFFFIN plasmids are finally available on @addgene.bsky.social to make PUFFFIN neighbour labelling even more accessible. You can find the plasmids here www.addgene.org/Sally_Lowell/ and our paper here link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Big thanks @cellysally.bsky.social!

We are delighted to announce that @giuliapaci.bsky.social from @ucllifesciences.bsky.social has been awarded the 2026 BSCB Postdoctoral researcher medal

You can read about Giulia's work on how tissues withstand mechanical stress here:

bscb.org/postdoctoral...

Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom 😬

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0e...

Read our interview with Drenka on how she used a grant from our Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing to organise an engaging virtual workshop with low environmental impact, whilst maximising inclusivity: www.biologists.com/stories/remo...

There's still time to apply to be a 2026 @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence fellow

For those about to apply for their first independent academic position, the programme offers

- mentoring
- leadership training
- profile rising
- networking

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...