Spring in Barcelona is 2 weeks between shivering and sweating 🌸

Stellar work on stella 🖤

Our new paper is out: "The 3D architecture of the ctenophore aboral organ & the evolution of complex integrative centers in animals.

We reveal a remarkable cell type diversity, nerve net condensation, a multilayered circuit & gene expression profiles.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #ctenophores

Excited to share our new work on the 3D architecture of the ctenophore aboral organ!

We explored its remarkable cellular diversity and integration with the syncytial nerve net, uncovering connectivity and insights into the evolution of sensory complexes.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Suddenly ran into a sketch I’ve made for the placozoan peptidergic cells paper:

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

For the last 3 years, my personal world has been in flames - the loss of home, the loved ones, friends and the other things we often take for granted.
Roscoff feels like a personal refugium - a timeless place where one’s soul can hide & think about things that really matter.

Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution in C. elegans and C. briggsae The constraints that govern the evolution of gene expression patterns across development remain unclear. Single-cell RNA sequencing can detail these constraints by systematically profiling homologous ...

Despite all that is going on, we are still all working on our science. Our 2nd collaboration with @jisaacmurray.bsky.social‬ and Bob Waterston (UW) is out:

Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution in C. elegans and C. briggsae | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

this photo is published without a permission 🐙
@ruthstyfhals.bsky.social

A single-cell atlas of the bobtail squid visual and nervous system highlights molecular principles of convergent evolution - Nature Ecology & Evolution An analysis of single-cell transcriptomes from the retina and optic lobe of the bobtail squid characterizes the cellular basis of the complex visual system of this cephalopod and provides insights int...

🐙 🖤
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@embopress.org 🙂

Czechoslovak legionnaires posing next to their train.
2025, colorized
#tcteac

The Weedstock of Biology 🫡

All aboard! Going to the woods #tcteac

A while ago I got this pure meme material of an autograph

Now you can also read all about @idoiaeu.bsky.social beautiful work on catshark brain development and the enigmatic origin of cajal retzius cells in their preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

These negative synergies create a sensor of TF ratios. If one TF’s expression dominates, you get activation. If both are there, repression. A perfect design to ensure that target genes are expressed specifically at the right place. (9/n)

Excited we played a small part in this amazing work out now in @nature.com. We established a ctenophore culture from a single individual through self-fertilization to reduce heterozygosity levels. Named them "Arnau" & they lived happily for 2 years 😂 @joanjsoto.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Chromatin loops are an ancestral hallmark of the animal regulatory genome - Nature The physical organization of the genome in non-bilaterian animals and their closest unicellular relatives is characterized; comparative analysis shows chromatin looping is a conserved feature of ...

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A humanized NOVA1 splicing factor alters mouse vocal communications - Nature Communications The neuron-specific RNA binding protein NOVA1 has a single amino acid substitution unique to modern humans. Here, the authors characterize the evolutional specificity and the function of the substitut...

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

Paper out !!🥳big thanks to all authors @marliesoomen.bsky.social @diego-rt.bsky.social @kaessmannlab.bsky.social @jonathangoeke.bsky.social @lorenzamottes.bsky.social & 'bluesky-less'

Lots of interesting new TE (& genes) biology

Data fully browsable💻 👉 embryo.helmholtz-munich.de/shiny_embryo/

A whole-body atlas of BMP signaling activity in an adult sea anemone - BMC Biology Background BMP signaling is responsible for the second body axis patterning in Bilateria and in the bilaterally symmetric members of the bilaterian sister clade Cnidaria—corals and sea anemones. Howev...

Our atlas of BMP signaling activity in adult Nematostella is finally out! Fantastic, meticulous work and beautiful illustrations by @paulknabl.bsky.social
Thanks, @fwf-at.bsky.social for funding our work!
bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

sorry, also this one:

manuscript got rejected after 8 months of waiting for a review in Genome Biology. exactly the same happened to another person I know.
people manage to get babies in this timeframe.

Multiscale footprints reveal the organization of cis-regulatory elements - Nature We developed PRINT, a computational method that identifies footprints of DNA–protein interactions from bulk and single-cell chromatin accessibility data across multiple scales of protein size.

Congrats to the @jbuenrostro.bsky.social lab on this recent paper.

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

Unfortunately, it makes several misleading claims that we disagree with. We will address these technical & other issues with this work over the next few months.

Tubulin sequence divergence is associated with the use of distinct microtubule regulators Diverse eukaryotic cells assemble microtubule networks that vary in structure and composition. While we understand how cells build microtubule network…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A person holding a traditional preparation of mate with crushed dried yerba mate leaves steeping in hot water in a cup made of a gourd and a specialised metal straw

Yerba mate makes the third-most popular caffeinated drink in the world, but it’s unrelated to tea and coffee. The first reconstruction of its genome is helping us understand how multiple species have evolved to synthesise caffeine.
https://buff.ly/4jnWk82

Congrats!!

Just look at this cover 😍