Hey, craniofacial and development folks! Check out a new preprint from me and @crumplab.bsky.social about the developing jaw. Here, we show how major signaling pathways establish distinct compartments along the oral-aboral axis. I'm excited to share it with you all!
Real-time single-molecule imaging in zebrafish embryos uncovers non-canonical translation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01...
Not that long ago, in vivo mouse enhancer design was a dream. Today, it's a reality! Using transfer deep learning to design de novo synthetic embryonic enhancers active in the heart, limb, and CNS. Great collab with @alex-stark.bsky.social lab! @ucibiosci.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social
Welcome to the fish world! We've been considering moving to staygold for many of our constructs, so this is very helpful.
single confocal images comparing mNG vs. mStayGold
We need to build lots of new transgenic lines that are both very bright and photostable, so I was excited to test membrane fusions of the three published mStayGold variants compared to mNeonGreen. We injected mRNA into zebrafish embryos and imaged at 24hpf. 2/7
🎄 Day 1 of the 24 Days of Development ✨🧬
This study shows how different fixation methods (PFA vs. TCA) change what researchers can visualize in chicken embryos using HCR or IHC. 🔍🐣🔬 doi.org/10.1016/j.yd...
Figure 6 - Changing the Wnt:sox2 ratio prevents the dorsal midline NMP to notochord transition. (A-B‴) Transplanting wild-type (WT) rhodamine dextran-labeled cells into the midline progenitor region of host embryos shows transplanted cells contributing to both the floor plate and notochord (A-A‴; red boxes in A and A″ show regions in A′ and A‴, respectively; n=7; all show donor contribution to both notochord and floor plate). When the sox2 level is elevated in transplanted cells, using the HS:sox2 transgenic line, cells stay in the dorsal midline progenitor zone but fail to generate notochord (B-B‴; red boxes in B and B″ show regions in B′ and B‴, respectively; n=11; 11/11 show contribution of donor cells to the floor plate, 7/11 show complete lack of donor cells in notochord after heat-shock induction, 4/11 show a minor amount of notochord contribution at the very posterior tip of the notochord; see Fig. S7).
Midline tissue formation in zebrafish development
This Research Highlight showcases the work from Robert Morabito, Benjamin Martin (@blmartin.bsky.social) and colleagues @stonybrooku.bsky.social :
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
Lots of great discussion about developmental variability here at #GastrulationReloaded! Super important to consider, and current tools have the power for this.
Related to this recent paper showing that mild phenotypes are more variable than severe ones. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Black and white portrait of John Gurdon, 1971
John Gurdon, former Group Leader and Head of @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social has died.
Despite calling himself a "total non-intellectual” his work to reprogramme somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells transformed the field of developmental biology.
More: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/john-gurdon-...
#LMBNews
A huge shoutout to all the dedicated grants management specialists at the NIH who are working around the clock to push grants out before the Sep 30 deadline. And also to the POs responding to frantic emails.
Not an easy job under the best of circumstances and right now it's the pits.
Thank you!
A giant in molecular biology and virology has passed. RIP David Baltimore.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s...
Skeletal preps and microCT imaging of mice skulls that are heterozygous or homozygous for Kat6b deletion
#DBfeature
Loss of KAT6B causes premature ossification and promotes osteoblast differentiation during development
by Maria Bergamasco, Jacqueline Ogier, Alexandra Garnham, Lachlan Whitehead, Kelly Rogers, Gordon Smyth, Rachel Burt, Anne Voss, Tim Thomas
tiom33.short.gy/DB520,141-154
Happy to share a new preprint from my lab! We characterize the on/off kinetics, light dosage-dependence, and more for a suite of optogenetic signaling activators in zebrafish embryos 💡 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Gage Crump
Congratulations to Gage Crump, professor and vice-chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research @keck.usc.edu on receiving the 2025 USC Provost Mentoring Award! @crumplab.bsky.social @stemcell.keck.usc.edu stemcell.keck.usc.edu/gage-crump-r...
Congratulations to Camilla Teng, for winning the "Platform presentation SDB prize" for post-docs at the Northwest SDB meeting, which sounds like it was a fantastic meeting! Camilla will be on the faculty job market soon, so look out for her! @socdevbio.bsky.social @ctbatucsf.bsky.social
The outer ear is a mammalian innovation but where did it come from? In our study in Nature, Mathi Thiruppathy and colleagues find that the outer ear arose from modification of an ancestral gill program first originating in marine invertebrates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/n
Time to recycle this xmas brittle star HCR ⭐
Happy holidays all!! ❄️🎁🎄
Stay tuned for some more brittle star data coming soon 😎
#fluorescence #microscopy #HCR #holidays #imaging
How can some vertebrates naturally recover from deafness?
In work in PNAS, Tuo Shi finds that enhancers for sensory genes remain open but silent in sister cells of zebrafish and lizards, allowing these to make new inner ear sensory hair cells upon damage. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Congratulations to newly minted PhD Tuo Shi. Some exciting news from Tuo is imminent. Stay tuned!
This from Liberali and Schier (2024) @priscaliberali.bsky.social @schierlab.bsky.social is just some of the things basic research in Developmental Biology alone has allowed since 1974. Fund basic research. Push back against anti-science nonsense pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38906136/
Looking for something fun to read? Here’s a #popsci piece I did on the crazy history of cilia and left/right patterning in embryos. Remember #devbiolwriteclub Bluesky Boot Camp starts Monday Dec. 2! Please RS (re-skeet?)
nautil.us/the-anatomic...