Primordial germ cells experience increasing physical confinement and DNA damage during migration in the mouse embryo Mammalian PGCs face a challenging journey to the gonads, and experience DNA damage as they navigate through confined spaces.

Cool work from the McDole lab just published. Primordial germ cells have to endure some pretty tight spaces on their journey!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thank you!!

Thank you for this important paper! Using biobanks of thousands of people to check what effects archaic coding variants might have. Finding certain variants in healthy modern humans helps clarify which might have real consequences to human evolution, and which do not.

I see what you did there 😉

This is a great article and you can read it free here! A fresh perspective to understanding language with an interdisciplinary and integrative approach.

Just got @philipcball.bsky.social’s book, can’t wait to dig in!

Cool paper and cool thread! Makes me wonder, what’s going on in a whale or dolphin brain where there’s essentially no layer 4 🤔

Super excited for the start of #EESorgan 2025! One of my favorite parts of coming to EMBL is the walk to the ATC through the forest. Can’t wait for 4 days of awesome organoid science!

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3

SETBP1 variants outside the degron disrupt DNA-binding, transcription and neuronal differentiation capacity to cause a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder - Nature Communications Different types of SETBP1 variants cause variable developmental syndromes with only partial clinical and functional overlaps. Here, the authors report that SETBP1 variants outside the degron region impair DNA-binding, transcription, and neuronal differentiation capacity and morphologies.

New paper alert! Rare DNA changes in the SETBP1 gene are linked to speech problems & diverse syndromes affecting brain development. Work led by ace postdoc @maggiemkwong.bsky.social uncovered impact of different gene variants, coupling clinical/speech evaluation to molecular & cellular readouts.🧬🗣️🔬🧪

The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program application deadline is approaching: October 10!

Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!

training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/

#PhD #LifeSciences

Interested in the mechanisms of neurogenesis, and how they might converge/differ across species, regions, and life epochs? Check this out, wonderful location and great science! Please RT

neuro-unige.ch/news/csf-mee...

No, I don’t have it! I know, I really MUST read it!

Cool, thanks for sharing! Another good example of this is the change in timing of expression of ZEB2 in human versus ape neural progenitors. It’s about timing of its expression but the protein itself isn’t different. I think this is much more common as an evolutionary mechanism.

🚨 Excited to share the latest preprint form the lab ➡️https://tinyurl.com/32d3be9f

Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience

➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism?

Check out what we found!
🧵1/n

Opinion | We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health

Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world.

Gift link.

Amazing work! The Silver lab is on a roll!

This new preprint looks pretty interesting. Human neurons take up to 4 decades to fully mature!

I can’t wait to try this! It’s such a huge issue in the field, and we haven’t been happy with any of the solutions out there so far. Thanks Yoav!

Non-canonical enhancers control gene expression and cell fate in human pluripotent stem cells Enhancers are key gene regulatory elements that ensure the precise spatiotemporal execution of developmental gene expression programmes. However recent findings indicate that approaches to identify en...

Delighted & excited to share our latest preprint on non-canonical enhancers in human pluripotent stem cells, the result of a fantastic and fun collaboration with @guenesdoganlab.bsky.social‬:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 below

This is amazing. Really interesting science made accessible to non experts. I recommend tuning in if you can, even for a little while

The Weather & Climate Livestream Join us starting May 28th, as meteorologists and climate scientists from across the US share their research and answer your questions.

Hi friends - In the face of unprecedented cuts to the basic research science funding, climate scientists are staging an 100-hour live stream of why science matters. There will be many talks on all sorts of things (I'm Saturday at 12:30 PT). Please share widely! wcstreamathon.netlify.app. 🌊🧪

Still openings, check it out!

Exploring landscapes of brain morphogenesis with organoids Summary: This Spotlight summarizes the themes that emerged from a recent workshop organized by The Company of Biologists on ‘Thinking beyond the dish: taking in vitro neural differentiation to the nex...

FWIW, not every single SCB talks that way. @djabaudon.bsky.social and I discussed what the differences (not failures) of organoids can teach us about what cells are capable of if given the opportunity (if in vivo constraints are removed) in this article many years back: doi.org/10.1242/dev....

New Faraday Fellowships for international applicants moving to the UK

Up to £4 million per researcher over 5-10 years

Fast-track option for mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK

This is so cool! It’s beautiful to see exactly the kind of elegant genetic locus swapping experiments I’ve been hoping to see in the field 🤩 Nice work Debby and team!

Check out this impressive work from the Jabaudon lab exploring an age old question: how does the forebrain grow more than the rest of the brain?

So many exciting papers and preprints in the past few weeks. This one is quite the tour de force!

Exciting work from the Albert lab on unique signatures of human basal radial glia. And look at those beautiful organoids with their basal progenitors! 🤩

Interesting new work from the McDole lab on the extreme stress primordial germ cells have to endure on their journey to the gonads during embryonic development. It’s wild that a new generation is even possible after all that!

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