The lab turns 4 ⌛️🐭⏳👤 Science happened… More productive & fun than ever. Huge thanks to the amazing lab members who make it all possible!! (Light-sheet microscope movie by Berta Cava Cami)

Join us this week for the next exciting VGZT session! 🎉 🗓️ Thursday, February 5th ⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET Our speakers are 👉 Evgeny Kvon (@evgenykvon.bsky.social) 👉 Silas Boye Nissen (on X: @SilasBoyeNissen) See you on Thursday! 👋

👀 Check out @the-node.bsky.social where @alejotorrescano.bsky.social (first author) share #behindthepaper stories about our recent paper ⤵️ Behind the paper: “Spatially organized cellular communities shape functional tissue architecture in the pancreas” thenode.biologists.com/behind-the-p...

To some young people living in democracies, authoritarianism may seem like a long-forgotten part of their country’s history.

(🧵1/23) First month of 2026: complete✅! Many papers coming from CIRTN scientists, including works from the labs of Drs Bruin, Lynn, Estall, Ferdaoussi, Fullerton, Hull-Meichle, Pepper, Korbutt, Levings, Lim, Mulvihill, Rabasa-Lhoret, Riddell, Rutter, Tsai, Woo and Verchere! 📝

First-in-human studies provide hope that islet replacement therapies derived from stem cells will prove safe and effective in people with type 1 diabetes, but hurdles remain www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/e1x9M

We're testing AlphaGenome. It's a very valuable step forward towards the goal of identifying functional non-coding variants (FNCVs) causing human diseases. Congrats to @avsecz.bsky.social and the team for this landmark publication. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Online now! A comprehensive overview of pluripotent stem cell lines for clinical use.166 clinical hPSC lines available for licensing and distribution, including 11 used in clinical trials, with information on consent, regulation, and characterization. https://ow.ly/tQ2j50XMw30 ISSCR

What's larger, a protein or its templating mRNA ? > The mRNA is much larger. ⬛ 𝐀 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 -- 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬 -- 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡. The figure shows myoglobin protein drawn to scale next to its mRNA template. The coding sequence of an mRNA ...

For ~century, we’ve asked: why do proliferating cells ferment glucose even when O2 is around? I’m thrilled to share our latest work @natmetabolism.nature.com, led by @thebiokimist.bsky.social. By leveraging conditional essentiality in HPLM, we propose a provocative new answer to this classic Q. 🧵

🚨 Job Alert! 🚨 We have an opening at our Microscopy Core Facility in Turku 🇫🇮. If you love imaging 🔬 and helping scientists succeed, we want you! 👇 abo.rekrytointi.com/paikat/index... #Microscopy #ScienceJobs #CoreFacility #Imaging @turkubioscience.bsky.social

Most iPSC lines come from European donors. Now, two teams in Africa are studying neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration using iPSCs and organoids from African donors. By Lauren Schenkman www.thetransmitter.org/cellular-neu...

If you are looking for a position in a microscopy facility, we will also be recruiting very soon, be in touch as well :)

In the summer months, when food is plentiful, 13-lined ground squirrels excrete urea as a waste product. In the winter, while hibernating, they collaborate with their gut microbes to make use of urea’s carbon to form acetate, a source of energy. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/UvNl50XTxlR

Our work on the evolution of the regulatory genome of echinoderms is now out in @natecoevo.nature.com. Led by my former PhD Marta Magri, Danila Voronov & Saoirse Foley. Great collaboration of Arnone, Hinman & Maeso labs, started long time ago with our missed José Luis Gomez-Skarmeta: rdcu.be/eXX8l

Bluesky is definitely a place for science, research and citing papers. We hope it will continue to close the gap as rapidly as it has with legacy social media. Research, science and dank memes need many homes on the internet. Bluesky provides one of the more inviting ones. Happy New Year.

Extremely well-written article on the first 230 years of vaccines, and on the technological advances (microbiological cultures, microscopy, genetic engineering) needed along the way to make all the modern vaccines possible!

Beta hydroxybutyrate alters beta cell identity and function in human islets https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.24.696385v1

(please share) Immediate #postdoc job opening in the Millman lab at WashU Med (St. Louis, MO). Want to develop next-generation pancreatic islets for the study and treatment of diabetes? Email your CV to apply sites.wustl.edu/millmanlab/

Excited to share the final version of our study on Nematostella cell type regulatory programs. Part of our @erc.europa.eu StG project, this was a challenging 5-year effort extraodinarily led by @aelek.bsky.social and @martaig.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I will be recruiting two postdocs early next year. - One image analyst - one biologist interested in working on lymphatics! Reach out if you are interested 👍

💡How does nutrition regulate cell cycle in stem cells? Check out our new paper from @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social lab & @msarscentre.bsky.social, out now in @plosbiology.org (plos.io/48J2o6P) #SeaAnemone #Nematostella #StemCell #CellCycle #Quiescence #TORsignalling 1/12

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

Can one map the genome-wide binding (1) and its protein partners (2) simultaneously from the same sample? Yes, one can. with CUT&ID ✂️🪪 Spearheaded — singlehandedly — by @annanordin.bsky.social No need of transgenesis, cloning and overexpression. Check it out, it's fast and its works.

Our latest now published in @natcomms.nature.com, where we found a new role for mitochondrial programming of SC-β cell fate through PPARα. We're excited for the potential to target mitochondria to improve SC-islets to treat #T1D! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reminder to use the right P2A sequence to produce separate proteins - the images are from a GPCR-P2A-mCherry construct using a P2A variant without (upper row) and with (lower row) a preceding GSG linker.

The transcription factor DEC1 links #circadian rhythms to human β cell maturation, highlighting the essential role of circadian control in generating fully functional SC- #islet organoids #stemcells www.cell.com/cell-reports...

GWAS has been an incredible discovery tool for human genetics: it regularly identifies *causal* links from 1000s of SNPs to any given trait. But mechanistic interpretation is usually difficult. Our latest work on causal models for this is out yesterday: www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short🧵:

🎉 Our deconstructed, stem-cell–based approach to studying signaling centers and limb-development cell types is out! 🥳 So nice to see it in its final form after the preprint— and huge thanks to the community for all the enthusiasm and interest since then! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The new issue @cp-devcell.bsky.social brings the final form of our opossum heterochrony work www.cell.com/developmenta... And it also brings two great papers from @oliveringe.bsky.social @santoslab.bsky.social and @tobyandrews.bsky.social @rashmi-priya.bsky.social 🙌 great #DevBio from @crick.ac.uk

I am very pleased to see our work, in which we describe a mutational hotspot at transcription start sites in the human germline, out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Great work from @castellanoed.bsky.social, @vseplyarskiy.bsky.social, Miguel Cortés Guzmán and Clàudia Serrano Colomé!

Several opportunities to join our group as a PhD candidate with bioinformatics or experimental background and interests in #microbiome, #Candida, or #evolution. 👉 IRB call: www.irbbarcelona.org/en/careers/y... 👉 Inphinit call: lacaixafoundation.org/en/doctoral-... 👉 EvoMG call www.evomg-dn.eu

Join us next week for another round of inspiring VGZT talks! 🤩 🗓️ Thursday, December 4th ⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET Our speakers are 👉 Luca Braccioli (@bracciolilab.bsky.social) 👉 Komal Makwana (on X: @Komal_Makwana4) See you next week 👋

Your periodic reminder that science is not done by a few selected "stars scientists". Science is done by hundred of thousands. Siloed money mean a few flashy discoveries and a lot of waste. Want to change things? Make funding accessible and stop funding calls with less than 2% success rate.

📣 I hereby make my Bluesky debut to announce that our work linking DNA binding affinities and kinetics 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘳𝘰 and 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰 for the human transcription factor KLF1 just got published in Cell! @cp-cell.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Key findings in a thread (1/6):

Our new paper is out now in Nature Communications! We uncovered the function of XBP1 in beta cells of a preclinical model of T1D and identified unique and shared gene regulatory networks driven by IRE1 and XBP1. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now out in @dev-journal.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

There's increasing evidence that in organoid/embryoids conditions of cells at start of experiments is crucial/ determines outcome. Much to be learnt still. Taking advantage of mouse #gastruloids, two groups explore this here. Important work to calibrate the field www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Bri2 BRICHOS domain inhibits cytotoxic IAPP amyloid formation and improves beta cell function in stem cell-derived islets under metabolic stress. #T1D #SC-islets #CellTherapy link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🔓

New IJDB issue! Our cover image features an immunostaining of neural crest cells and their derivatives in an Mllt1 E10.5 murine embryo from the paper by Zinck et al doi.org/10.1387/ijdb... Congratulations to the team of @aineurolab.bsky.social for their outstanding contribution!

The 100 yr pursuit for non-injectable #insulin ..Here based on mouse and mini pig data, “a skin-permeable polymer may enable non-invasive transdermal delivery of insulin, relieving patients with #diabetes from subcutaneous injections” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on induced proximity 🤜🤛 and functional genomics! Join our team in Toronto 🇨🇦 to tackle major challenges in oncology and neurodegeneration. www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Our new preprint is online! Viruses, bacteria and parasites use effector proteins to evade immunity and rewire host cell pathways. Together with @AlexanderStark8, we wondered if we could systematically map what these effectors, regardless of their origin, do in human cells. 1/8

New insights into islet ER stress responses, proinsulin biosynthesis, ERAD and ERD1 using β-cell-specific Hrd1-KO mice & rodent (and human islet) β-cells treated acutely with HRD1 inhibitor. jci.org/articles/vie... @jci.org

🧵(1/12) November is Diabetes Awareness Month, and we have many works coming out from the CIRTN labs focusing on islet biology and diabetes. For the beginning of Nov 2025, we have papers from Drs Thompson, Verchere, Chen, Dhanvantari, Hill, Hoesli, Kin, Levings, Lynn, Riddell, Rutter and Wheeler.

TE x ZFP = Evolution! Writing this with Olga @orpsf.bsky.social & Didier @trono-lab.bsky.social was a major highlight of my 🇨🇭sabbatical. Such a treat! 🍫Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy piecing it together.

Major new direction in the lab: hacking human cell biology with pathogen effectors (eORFs) - amazing collaboration with @miketilapia.bsky.social lab. Huge congrats to first authors Tomas & He & all co-authors! Check out the pre-print on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new #ScienceImmunology study finds that mice and humans have pancreatic islet-resident macrophages with elevated antioxidant profiles, which could shield β cells from oxidative stress. https://scim.ag/49cqs3M

It's always special when you find your own paper in the table of contents of the journal 😍 "The cis-regulatory logic integrating spatial and temporal patterning in the vertebrate neural tube" -> Now out in its final form www.cell.com/developmenta...