Lab lunch to celebrate a successful semester and year - good food, great people! Looking forward to an exciting new year ahead!

The version of record of our paper is out! 🎉 We show that sulfation is essential for organizing the apical ECM (aECM) during tubulogenesis in Drosophila, and identify ZP domain proteins as key components of the non-chitinous aECM of the salivary gland. 🧬 elifesciences.org/articles/108...

Got the nicest email from a former student who took my Dev Bio class a few years ago and went on to med school. Moments like this remind me why teaching is so meaningful.

Our new paper, “Organization of the apical extracellular matrix during tubular organ formation”, has been published in @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Supracellular control and coordination of tissue morphogenesis, through supracellular actomyosin assemblies, that is what my lab @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social @pdncambridge.bsky.social and I like to dig into at the moment! Fascinating and beautiful! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

We held the 2nd Fly Bayou Symposium in New Orleans last week—so great to reconnect in person and hear exciting research! What began in 2020 as a small local network has grown to 36 labs across 14 states. Grateful to see this community thrive and support each other! 🪰

Excited about this new virtual seminar series on the apical ECM!

Up on biorxiv! The tour de force protein tagging atlas for the #Celegans cuticle #aECM - from Jordan Ward @gotworms.bsky.social and Andrew Chisholm labs. So many beautiful images of cuticle collagen substructures !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations to Dr. Jeffrey Matthew @matthewjeffre.bsky.social! Jeffrey is one of the most talented, dedicated, and kindest people I've ever known. He will start his postdoctoral research in regeneration at the Rompolas lab at UPenn, and i have no doubt he will thrive. Geaux Jeffrey!

End of semester lab lunch. It feels like each semester goes by more quickly every year!

Huge congrats to talented undergraduate Cailyn Lee in the lab on her well-deserved award from the LSU BioSci department. She will start her masters in medical sciences at Tufts this fall and is applying for MD/PhD. So proud and excited for her!

Excellent presentations from our amazing undergraduate researchers, including my student Cailyn Lee, on their exciting research at #LSUDiscoverDay.

Some good news for my lab in this difficult time for science. I'm so grateful that our NIH grant has been funded. Council meeting was canceled in Jan, but resumed privately(?) and decision was made recently.

Fly Bayou groups at #Dros25 @genetics-gsa.bsky.social ! Great to see many people in person. From a small, local joint lab meeting, we've grown to >30 labs in 11 states. Amazing fly community!

Exciting science and networking at #Dros25 @genetics-gsa.bsky.social in beautiful San Diego! Please check out the presentations from our lab on the cell cycle control and apical ECM during tubular organ formation.

Today, a broad coalition of scientific professional societies who represent over 92,000 scientists are speaking out against the politicization and demonization of Federally funded science and government scientist jobs. It was an honor to help the Union of Concerned Scientists with this! 🧪🌎

Huge congrats to my student Jeffrey on defending his Ph.D! It's been a true joy to mentor him & see him grow as a scientist. So proud of his accomplishment & excited to see what's next for him! @lsuscience.bsky.social

🌟 New Article Alert! 🖋️ Our latest work is live in bioRxiv 📰✨. Here, we dive into chitin deposition focusing on the peritrophic matrix and the specificity of chitin synthases. 🔗 Read it here: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... #Blog #NewArticle #Chitin #Drosophila #IBMB #Drosospain #SEBD

Really appreciate Jonathan Lambert pointing out that NSF grants are congressionally mandated to weigh how grants broaden participation in science, putting the administration's executive order against DEIA in conflict with, and potentially undermining, congressional legislation

NIH and now NSF. Effectively the entirety of science funding in America is on hold.

First official post! A new paper out about #cytokinesis in #epithelia www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... Explore our journey as we uncover how regulators of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions modulate cytokinesis efficiency, while revealing new roles for the Dystrophin-Dystroglycan complex.

Paper published!!! Tremendous work by Gordana Scepanovic, with key contributions by @negberry.bsky.social and @krothphd.bsky.social. We ask why is mTor signalling necessary for rapid wound repair. 🧪 #drosophila #devbio Share link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kS2e5Sx5g...

The Genetics Society of America @genetics-gsa.bsky.social is "advocating for science and for scientists. We seek to cultivate an inclusive, diverse research community that engages with the public...& serves as an authoritative source of information." Pls consider joining genetics-gsa.org/membership/

As the Trump Administration destroys the institutional progress we have made in diversity, equity and inclusion in science & education, each of us retains the opportunity to reflect and speak out. The piece I wrote four years ago is even more relevant today 🧪 www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/...

Write an email to your Senators and urge them to support the continuation of NIH scientific meetings. I just sent one to our senators. You can find NIH funding for your state here: www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

This is not good. My R03 grant was scored well and was supposed to be discussed at today's NIDCR council meeting. I was really hoping to hear good news after the council meeting, not that everything is postponed indefinitely.

A reminder to colleagues interested in Cell-Matrix adhesion & anything ECM related that registration is now open for the Fibronectin, Integrins & related molecules Gordon Research Conference. Incredible list speakers! incredible location! it will 🔥 🔥 🔥 Please join us! www.grc.org/fibronectin-...

🧪🧑‍🔬 We are actively recruiting graduate students in the lab right now at UM! If you are, or know a student looking to do cool research involving cell signaling, development, and 🔬, please share with your networks. For more information, checkout the link below. rfhs.myjboard.io/jobs/1054626...

~4 inches of snow and 10F (-12C) expected tonight in Baton Rouge. Physical campus is closed for two days in LSU. Hope everyone stays warm.

The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Feinberg School of Medicine seeks a full-time tenure track Investigator at the rank of Assistant Professor. Click here to learn more. www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/cdb/do... For questions, contact Vanessa Gonzalez [email protected]

Revising our introductory biology curriculum. Looking for examples of courses that provide critical skills, concepts, and authentic biology research opportunities in the lab. Hoping you'll share inspiration and models that have been/are successful at other institutions.

Cheers to another incredible year with the amazing lab members. I'm excited to see what the next year brings!

#fundedPhD My lab just moved to Howard University in DC and we are looking to recruit 1-2 grad students to support our NIH-funded projects on patterning and morphogenesis in the fruit fly

Journal club discussion today: finding a better red fluorescent protein tag for #aECM. mCherry has worked but isn’t as bright as we’d like. mScarlet is too slow to mature - a real problem for our dynamic matrix! Should we switch to using mScarlet-I3, which matures faster? Other suggestions?

This is a fantastic program and I highly recommend anyone going on the faculty job market to apply! As part of the first cohort I’m happy to chat about the program. Feel free to DM me if you want to learn more.

I am very proud of this paper, currently under revision. Very few labs have set out to define the function of membrane mucins outside the context of cancer. Here we defined the regiospecific function of membrane mucin MUC17 in the intestine. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #glycotime #mucin

While our bodies seem static, our cells are constantly changing shape or on the move during tissue homeostasis or wound repair & even more dramatically during embryonic development, during events like gastrulation. Defining how cellular machines mediate these events is a key task for our field 1/n

Hi Bluesky universe! Sharing with you my latest work. This study highlights the importance of the ZP protein Dusky-like in controlling the shape of the fly corneal lens (an apical ECM). A thread 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Only 3 days left to apply! Postdoc positions available in the Röper lab at the University of Cambridge! @PDN_Cambridge Discover the role that supracellular cytoskeletal assemblies and crosstalk play in sculpting organs in Drosophila or human organoids in culture! Links below!

First Bluesky post! Please check out the new preprint from the lab: Luke Woodward & Jeffrey Matthew's excellent work revealing the critical role of sulfation in organizing the ZP domain protein-containing apical ECM during organ formation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...