A very energetic talk about energid from my second year student Chase Yezzi at the fly meeting #DROS25

My brand new colleague @Joecampanale.bsky.social presenting follower cells doing rear wheel drive in collective cell migration at my favorite fly meeting workshop Development Mechanics organized by @rodrigofg.bsky.social Adam Martin and @tanentzapflab.bsky.social

Weng lab members are presenting one talk and four posters at #DROS25. Come to see our new research from ventral furrow mechanics, to anterior midgut, to polarity protein Baz, to energid compartment. If you don’t know what “energid” is, come to Chase’ talk Friday 9AM BallroomA/B - because you should😎

Tenure was never the goal. Doing interesting science and raising future scientists are always the goals. Still, receiving a beautiful cake and sharing it with the lab during our energetic lab meeting, is a sweet feeling😌 Thank you everyone who believed in me.

Definitely in a good way - it’s a lot of content!

Happy holidays!! And I’d like to report that my lab spent 4 hours journal clubbing on your paper 🤣

My daughter got the cactus which turned out to be the missing link in our squishmellow gradient. Everything falls into places👏

Had the most hilarious holiday gift exchange thanks to the diverse choices of gifts. After some chaos and crisis, everything, from bathroom wire organizer to resurrection plant, seems to find its rightful owner. Pleasant surprise after crisis is what we scientists strive for😉.

Migrated with the old twitter posts but they appear as new posts here without replies. A bit confusing but a backup is always good...

Thank you for making this a welcoming place!

Also thank @UNLVGPSA for the support!

Brought my younger students Chase, Durlin and Yasong to SCDB to see the “bigger world”. Thank you @scdb2024 for the travel awards and of course the fantastic meeting! So much to learn no matter which stage of career you are in!

Very proud of this work. Many lab members worked on it including undergrads and postbac technicians, and postdoc Kun @gu_lingkun2024 brought it to a new direction and the eventual publication.

Published: our study on a new Drosophila gene Moat shows strong polarity-based junctions allow weak myosin to promote productive apical constriction, leading to ectopic folding of ectodermal anterior midgut (ectoAMG). The ectopic folding requires Baz/Par3.

molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10.10…

It took a long time to get the award notice: our lab has received the NSF CAREER award! I thank those who provided guidance and more than anything I thank my lab for providing all the data. It may seem that the PI supports the lab but it’s the lab that supports the PI with data.

I’m beyond excited to have Joe as my new neighbor!!!

x.com/JosephCampanal…

9/n Our model may be a general developmental strategy: embryo could upregulate adherens junctions to promote pronounced shape changes in cells with only low levels of myosin, or downregulate adherens junctions to restrict cell shape changes to cells with strong myosin.

8/n The ectopic apical constriction is not restricted to ectoAMG but also occurs in flanking mesoderm, leading to uncoordinated and prolonged infolding of ventral furrow.

6/n The ectopic infolding of mutant ectoAMG is distinct from the wild type invagination of the same tissue in both time and morphology.

4/n We showed that this high levels of Baz/Par3-dependent adherens junctions in mutant embryos lead to ectopic expansion of apical constriction and infolding behaviors from cells with high levels of contractile myosin to neighboring cells with low levels of contractile myosin.

3/n We took advantage of a novel gene moat we recently identified. Loss of moat leads to abnormally high levels of Bazooka/Par3-dependent adherens junctions, providing a testing ground for the role of adherens junction levels in cell shape changes.

JOB: a postdoc position to study transcription control of neural stem cells in Cheng-Yu Lee’s lab at U of Michigan, funded by a 4 percentile R01. I’m biased but he’s one of the most caring and supportive mentors - I thoroughly enjoyed my grad years! Email or find him at #TAGC24

So glad to have Debbie Andrew from @JohnsHopkins as our seminar speaker. She is not only a brilliant and productive scientist but also a kind and interesting soul!

We just have an Assistant Professor position open! Cell and molecular biology broadly defined. It’s a bit late so I’d appreciate if you can help spread the words!

nshe.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UNLV-Ext…

Lab lunch on the exact same day as last year! Had to make a figure to highlight the new members. A special star for Chase being the upgrade and wearing the exact same outfit. They keep the lab productive and motivate me to work hard and be their best role model! I’m grateful.

My brain is burnt trying to piece together Hartenstein’s fate map, Foe’s mitotic domains and our own observation… got to respect their extremely systematical and meticulous characterization of embryogenesis with mere “primitive” methods. Amazingly they are still largely correct.

Enjoyed the intense science, met old and new friends, survived Powerpoint crushes during my first Gordon conference talk as a PI😂, walked the peaceful bog, got up at 3 am to be back in the lab before the weekend. Thank you @KrisDemali and @peiferlabunc for this meaningful week!

Silver & Golden: Knights secure first Stanley Cup Vegas captain Mark Stone opened the scoring in the first period and added goals in the second and third, as the Golden Knights defeated the Panthers in Game 5 to secure the franchise's first Stanley Cup in its sixth year of existence.

Do you know there is a professional hockey team in the desert? It entered the final in its first season, reached the playoff every season after, and now won the Stanley cup in its sixth season. You cannot help but be happy for the team and the city.

espn.com/nhl/story/_/id…

Kurt not only brings REU students to research labs but also to grocery stores when needed. He’s just that cool. This is so valuable for UNLV where so many students have no idea they have the option of being a scientist, including Chase who’s joining my lab as a grad student!

x.com/regner_kurt/st…

Thanks @blankenship_lab for the thought provoking seminar! Made me think of springs and friction - I miss that. Then we discovered the scientists’s approach to hiking: we don’t know where we are going, but we have a general idea and we figure out the rest XD