Duke Cell Bio and symposium attendees

Team Turtle

Ceri and Blanche with a little mouse gift

What a weekend!! Capel Lab trainees past and present gathered to celebrate Blanche’s incredible career. We danced, we laughed, we cried, and marveled over so many shared memories of the beach, working in the lab, and all the incredible science we accomplished with Blanche’s mentorship and guidance.

The Orange Cat Brain Atlas is here. 🧠🐈

Today, we published the first comprehensive cellular map of the orange cat brain. The new atlas reveals a single, specialized neuron responsible for behaviors like staring at walls, knocking objects off tables, and the 3am "zoomies."

New preprint!! 🚨 Did you know that many vertebrate species determine sex based on environmental conditions rather than chromosomes? Some turtles, like Trachemys scripta, rely on temperature. We learned more about how this happen molecularly.👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

🥁

Ceri holding a tall wooding stick that has height measurements on it

Growth curve with individual measurement points showing age (years) on the x-axis and height (inches) on the y-axis. Max growth marked in red.

I love a winter holiday project (e.g. NYT mega crossword) and this year's activity was measuring and analyzing the measurements my Dad took of my height from age 6 to 19! My max growth marked in red.

hint: wild-type specimens from the same species at the same age.

guess the bones!!!

Greedy little chondrocytes

@homeobox.bsky.social dream collab

🥁

Of course now I wonder *how* mid-tail vertebral growth is amplified in A. auratus...

Cellular and genetic mechanisms that shape the development and evolution of tail vertebral proportion in mice and jerboas - Nature Communications Vertebra lengths differ from the neck to the tail tip and differ between species, evidenced by extreme differences in mouse and jerboa tails. Here, Weber and colleagues identify cellular mechanisms an...

Just checked my data and Ramp2 is also disproportionately differentially expressed in the longest jerboa vertebra. Tail evo devo is so fucking cool!!!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Look at those tail crescendos!! Another amazing example of disproportionate elongation of mid-tail vertebrae, and they note it is distal to the more functionally-constrained proximal tail.

Oui

The regulation and evolution of proportion is a classic challenge in biology. This is exciting work into the genetic and developmental basis of proportionality using a very cool model. Congrats Ceri! 👏🧪🧬🐭

Hey maybe jerboas are also big and dangerous sons of bitches!

🥹🥹🥹🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thank you to all the authors and network of colleagues and mentors who have helped make this work happen. I can't wait to keep digging into vertebra development, axial skeletal diversity, and tail biology!!

Cellular and genetic mechanisms that shape the development and evolution of tail vertebral proportion in mice and jerboas - Nature Communications Vertebra lengths differ from the neck to the tail tip and differ between species, evidenced by extreme differences in mouse and jerboa tails. Here, Weber and colleagues identify cellular mechanisms and candidate genes that shape vertebral proportion.

Here, we use the jerboa and mouse to understand the temporal growth dynamics that establish adult vertebral proportion, the cellular drivers of differential growth, and candidate genetic mechanisms that determine and diversify vertebral proportion.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We find that their long tails are acquired by far greater elongation of individual vertebral elements in the mid-tail region. This pattern, called a 'crescendo-decrescendo' of tail vertebral lengths, likely enhances their ability to inertially maneuver. See: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

This project started during my postdoc interview when I asked @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social "jerboa tails seem longer. Have you looked into that?". It turns out the jerboa tail is approximately 1.5x longer than the mouse, normalized to body length, but with 3-4 *fewer* vertebrae than in mice.

Vertebral skeletal diversity in mammals is remarkable. How do the differences between vertebral size and shape develop and evolve? See how we tackled this question in our paper published in @natcomms.nature.com today!

I love degus!! They have sweet little medium tails, and a few features that I'd love to study. That 90 day gestation is LONG but it looks like they're born precocial so I may not always need to wait 3 whole months...

I'd love to study tree squirrel tails but that particular side quest has been benched for the time being.

By short(er) I mean anywhere from shorter than the length of the body (nose-anus) to a stubby little guinea pig tail. I'm already looking at mouse tails (1x its body length) and jerboa tails (1.5x body length).

Bsky brainstorm! I'm looking for a short(er)-tailed rodent amenable to embryological research (timed pregnancies, decent litter size, easy to get/breed enough to sacrifice dams, etc).

Out today. 🙏 again to everyone for this wonderful piece of work, in particular to Aurelie @aurhin.bsky.social Chase @chasebolt.bsky.social and Brent @homeobox.bsky.social. 🙏 also to the Harris lab @fish4walking.bsky.social and @neilshubin.bsky.social @biology-unige.bsky.social @college-de-france.fr

This is SO cool and was such a fun read this morning. Congrats to the whole team!!!

Side hustle level-up! My book, IN THE BEGINNING, will be published by @harperonebooks.bsky.social in 2027! It's about the human embryo, how it gets built, and what it means for where we come from and where we're going.
@harpercollins.bsky.social (1/2)
@socdevbio.bsky.social
#devbiol
#scicomm