super exciting new system for studying and manipulating branching! 🌳🌳🙆‍♀️

so fortunate to work with everyone on this mission, especially paul who made the magic happen✨

Stress-relaxing granular bioprinting materials enable complex and uniform organoid self-organization - Nature Materials A tunable granular biomaterial matrix is developed to support long-term bioprinting. Stress relaxation at high strains and long timescales is shown to be important for tissue self-organization in inte...

organs develop in a dynamic environment where their boundaries are constantly changing shape, relaxing, compressing, etc. in synchrony with the embryo.

see how this inspired us to create a material for optimal organoid bioprinting & self-organization!

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

Proteins often bind targets using avidity, the combined interaction strength of multiple weak binders. Now we’ve harnessed this principle for compact, *single*-component optogenetic tools for translocation. Lead by phenom PhD student @dennishuang.bsky.social #synbiosky🧵

📝 tinyurl.com/aviatar

so excited to have this finally out!!! many cool tools to consider for the organoid enthusiasts and beyond🤩

🚨New preprint(1/2)! We show that RTK fusion oncoproteins broadly suppress EGFR signaling. How? Sequestration of adapters as the shared principle.

Led by superb PhD student Carol Gao.

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

Implications for drug tolerance/resistance, and includes one big surprise🫧.👇

*New preprint alert* uncovering a mechanical pacemaker that synchronizes nephron formation with branching of the kidney's epithelial tubule tree. Read below to learn about this twisty journey lead by Sam Grindel and Sachin Davis in the lab. [Movie by Nils Lindstrom]

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

#Cellbio2025 come see the latest from the lab, including on opto/thermogenetics, condensates, RTK fusions, stress granules, biosensors of clustering. Talks and posters today and tomorrow!

#CellBio2025 come check out the workshop on applying optogenetic tools in cell biology! Today (Sunday) at 5:30p in Rm 121.

Note that this session does *not* appear in the app for some reason

#cellbio2025 please stop by my talk (Mon 4:35 evolution) and poster (Mon 12:45 #B479 optogenetics) tmr!
Title: Intraprotein domain competition dictates pulsatile response of photoreceptors shaped by temperature and evolution.
BcLOV4 as a model.
I’m also looking for postdoc opportunities!

if you are attending #CellBio2025 please check out the posters from our lab @hugheslabpenn.bsky.social. The lab will have a great showing this year featuring my talented colleagues @lsprahl.bsky.social @danielalber.bsky.social and many others!

PAK4 dynamics at actively remodeling vertices 🌟 ⚡👀

Check out our recent preprint
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📢Call for papers. Submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – The Extracellular Environment in Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Guest Editors: Alex Hughes and Rashmi Priya

📅 Deadline: 1 March 2026

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex...

#DevBio

Thank you!! kidneys are truly beautiful 😻 they are doing all the work

Excited to have it online @natcomms.nature.com many many thanks to @lsprahl.bsky.social, Karen Xu, Jason Burdick, Rob Mauck and other talented people involved!

Very excited to share the first preprint from the lab:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
We investigated neural crest migration all the way from head to tail of the Zebrafish embryo and we found their nuclei suffer dramatic deformations.
Want to know of they cope with feeling squeezed? 🐟🐠🐟

Our own @azyhuang.bsky.social is a student this year representing the kidney fanatics

Are you interested in synthetic and systems biology approaches to study #spatiotemporal processes in cancer? Join NCI for virtual workshops on May 13, 15, & 20 (next week!) from 12:00–4:30 PM ET:

registration: events.cancer.gov/nci/syntheti...

#SynSysBio4SpatialCancerResearch

How can an individual protein show adaptation? The light- and temp-sensitive BcLOV4 gives a pulse of translocation during a step input of light. Answer in our preprint: *intra-molecular* feed-forward regulation. bit.ly/3Rg9veD
A @bugajlab.bsky.social collab with @nmrkaygee.bsky.social 🧵

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics
@naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor!

How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?

Sampling the space miso CREDIT Maggie Coblentz

Sampling three misos after fermentation CREDIT Maggie Coblentz

Miso made in space tastes nuttier!

Researchers successfully make miso at the #InternationalSpaceStation, confirming that making fermented foods in space is possible. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

@medialab.bsky.social Maggie Coblentz
@novo-nordisk.bsky.social Joshua D. Evans
@cp-cell.bsky.social

lineage landscapes and single cell data

1. Struggling to integrate single-cell datasets? Finding it hard to resolve clear differentiation trajectories? Reveal the underlying structure in your data with CONCORD.

Kidney multiome-based genetic scorecard reveals convergent coding and regulatory variants Kidney dysfunction is a major cause of mortality, but its genetic architecture remains elusive. In this study, we conducted a multiancestry genome-wide association study in 2.2 million individuals and...

🎇Our new paper in @ScienceMagazine
: Kidney Multiome-Based Genetic Scorecard Reveals Convergent Coding and Regulatory Variants.
@Hongbo919Liu science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Woohoo! Our latest preprint, from @madhura0327.bsky.social, is out today on bioRxiv!

YAP regulates periosteal expansion in fracture repair.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy holidays from the Hughes lab ✨ #fluorescencefriday

yayyyyy

Of course it is out the day after my conference talk 🤣😅 at least it’s available for anyone who wants to see pretty figures

These dancing cells and I are in San Diego for #CellBio2024 this week! Come check out my talk during the "Building Biological Tubes" subgroup on Sunday, December 15 at 9am to hear me present some progress towards controlling epithelial organization in kidney tissues and organoids.

Those at @ascbiology.bsky.social #CellBio2024
conference tomorrow, check out @azyhuang.bsky.social Aria Huang's work on 'truly' 3D, live explant cultures of mouse embryonic kidneys for studying cell dynamics and congenital disease!

inaugural bluesky introduction: science(maybe) meetings happened in 2024