On the topic of neurodevelopment and disorders and chaired by Development Editor, Debby Silver (Duke University). Wednesday 7 August – 16:00 BST Marcella Birtele (University of Southern California) ‘Non-canonical function of the top ASD-associated gene SYNGAP1’ Onur Iyilikci (Yale University) ‘Regulation of sociability by ‘hunger’ neurons during early development’ Fay Cooper (University of Sheffield) ‘Can hPSC-derived neural crest be used to treat Hirschsprung’s disease?’ Register to attend At the speakers’ discretion, the webinar will be recorded for viewing on demand. To see the o ..read more

In this SciArt profile, we meet Friedrich Bliem, who has a background in cell biology and scientific illustration and has been creating “Art in Science” paintings for decades. Can you tell us about your background and what you work on now? I am Austrian and have spent a total of 24 years in the USA, UK and Australia, where I was raised. As the son of a freelance artist, I practiced the skills of drawing and painting from an early age and in my teens focussed on later enrolling in the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Music had also been a passion and I co-founded the successful Austrian mus ..read more

On the topic of plant development and chaired by Development Editor, Dominique Bergmann (Stanford University). Wednesday 31 July – 16:00 BST Martina Cerise (Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research) ‘In plants, the organization of the apical stem-cell niche changes dynamically during the floral transition’ Vicky Spencer (Gregor Mendel Institute) ‘‘How to build a plant: Small meristems have big consequences’ Gwendolyn K. Kirschner (The James Hutton Institute) ‘Control of the root gravitropic set-point angle in barley’ Register to attend At the speakers’ discretion, the webina ..read more

Welcome to our monthly trawl for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints. The preprints this month are hosted on bioRxiv and arXiv – use these links below to get to the section you want: Developmental biology Patterning & signalling Morphogenesis & mechanics Genes & genomes Stem cells, regeneration & disease modelling Plant development Evo-devo Cell Biology Modelling Tools & Resources Developmental biology | Patterning & signalling Metabolic control by the Bithorax Complex-Wnt signaling crosstalk in Drosophila Rajitha-Udakara-Sampath Hemba-Waduge ..read more

The LAG-R framework (Laboratory Animal Genetic Reporting) has just been published in Nature Communications with Lydia Teboul, head of our Molecular Cell Biology team at the Mary Lyon Centre at MRC Harwell and Guillaume Pavlovic, Head of Unit, Genetic Engineering and Model Validation Department at the Institut Clinique de la Souris– PHENOMIN– IGBMC, as corresponding authors. The LAG-R framework is a set of guidelines to support more complete documentation of the genetic make-up of animals that are used in research, with the aim of bolstering reproducibility, reliability, and overall scientific ..read more

What is this? The video depicts the formation of the so-called lateral line in a transgenic zebrafish that I took when I was a student in Tatjana Piotrowski’s lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research (Kansas City, MO, USA). Cells of the lateral line use collective cell migration —sort of a cellular ‘Conga’ formation— to move from the head of the animal into the trunk and deposit volcano-shaped structures called neuromasts. Where can the lateral line be found? Fishes (bony, such as the zebrafish; and cartilaginous, such as sharks and rays) and amphibians (such as frogs and salamanders ..read more

From a tiny primordium to a fully developed gynoecium In this post, I invite you to join me on the journey through our recent article titled “Two Orthogonal Differentiation Gradients Locally Coordinate Fruit Morphogenesis.” This story started when I joined the lab of Daniel Kierzkowski at the Institut de Recherche en Biologie Végétale (IRBV) at the Université de Montréal as a visiting PhD student in January 2020. My main goal was to learn how to perform live imaging in plants and analyze the output data. Daniel invited me to contribute to his project related to fruit morphogenesis, and I belie ..read more

Basement membranes (BMs) are thin, specialized extracellular matrices that surround most tissues and organs (Jayadev and Sherwood, 2017). These meshworks serve as scaffolds for cell adhesion, influencing cell signaling, cell migration, proliferation, and differentiation (Sherwood, 2021; Yurchenco, 2011). Moreover, dysregulation of BM remodeling lead to disturbed tissue and organ development or disease (Sekiguchi, R and Yamada, K. M., 2018). Recent publications indicate that establishment of BM heterogeneity might be important for tissue and organ sculpting (Agarwal et al., 2022; Harmansa et ..read more

Since the sequencing of GFP in the 1990’s, interrogation of biological questions using transgenic model organisms expressing genetically engineered fluorescent molecules has exploded across many biological fields.  Living organisms are superiorly suited to these inquiries as they’re the native environment of the mysteries being explored.  A myriad of biological tools, designed to elucidate these perplexities of nature, have been developed, but most exciting amongst them are the burgeoning systems of optical tools for use in live organismal studies.  To address the necessity for ..read more

In this interview, we caught up with Indulekha M S, who joined the Indian Society of Developmental Biologists (InSDB) as their Community Manager at the end of 2023. Indulekha giving a talk about InSDB to the students at TIFR-Hyderabad What is your background and what made you decide to join the InSDB as their Community Manager? I did an integrated bachelor’s and master’s of science from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Trivandrum, Kerala. I majored in biology and was working in a drosophila genetics lab at the time. Initially, like most of my peers, I wanted t ..read more