Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on.

(Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Happy Halloween from the Schroeder lab!

We discovered that an alternative “microexon,” encoding just five amino acids, leads to functional divergence of Arp2, a subunit of the actin nucleator Arp2/3. And it’s the first time we’re showcasing our in vitro skills, with purified recombinant Drosophila Arp2/3!

A microexon in Arp2 alters tissue-specific Arp2/3-generated actin structures The Arp2/3 complex nucleates essential branched actin networks in most eukaryotes. Interestingly, the subunit Arp2 encodes two splice variants that differ merely by five amino acids in the D-loop, whi...

After a long break from social media, I’m finally on Bluesky and have a preprint alert from my lab!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...