What a year it's been at the DB unit @embl.org! 2025 brought us hard work, exciting discoveries, and numerous initiatives that advanced our science. As we wrap up this year, we want to wish everyone a restful and joyful winter break. We'll be back in 2026, ready for new challenges. See you then! 🎉

Now published as version of record at @elife.bsky.social ! Layers of Immunity: Deconstructing the Drosophila effector response. The tools are now deposited in the VDRC (link ⬇️) elifesciences.org/articles/107... shop.vbc.ac.at/vdrc_store/d... #Drosophila #IDsky #SymbioSky #Infection #Immunology

Apply for our Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs in #devbio and #stemcell research during the transition to their first group leader position: www.biologists.com/grants/devel... Application deadline: 2 February 2026.

We are pleased to announce a new preprint by @mlweilert.bsky.social: “Widespread low-affinity motifs enhance chromatin accessibility and regulatory potential in mESCs” (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). See summary and longer recap below: (TLDR; low-affinity motifs matter as pioneers!)

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... Our latest now online at EMBO Journal. Read if you are interested in how epimutations mediate antifungal resistance & how this might result in heteroresistance in human & cereal crop fungal pathogens. Big Thx & congrats to Andreas Fellas, Pin Tong & Alison Pidoux

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

Now online! Thermodynamic principles link in vitro transcription factor affinities to single-molecule chromatin states in cells

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

High-resolution single-cell analyses reveal evolutionary constraints and evolvability of sexual circuits in Drosophila | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We are looking for a postdoc to join our team! If you're interested in translating a cutting edge genomics technology (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) to real-life applications in hematology, this is for you. We offer a unique working environment ON THE BEACH: recruitment.crg.eu/content/jobs...

✨This week at the DB unit seminar @embl.org, Noa Ottilie Borst, a PhD student in the Crocker group @justinmcrocker.bsky.social presented her work on cell-type-specific interallelic interactions, and how they simultaneously allow for robustness and evolutionary innovation.

🚨 TODAY: Abstract submission for #Dros26 closes at 7:59 pm EST, so make sure you've completed your submission by then: buff.ly/OGr96Zx Don't miss out on the opportunity to present your work to 1,200+ scientists from across the globe doing important work in Drosophila.🪰

Can confirm. I am okay and more motivated than ever to speak up. Nothing scares this administration more. Their power lies in our silence.

The European Drosophila Society #flyEDS extends the condolences on the passing of Antonio García-Bellido, considered the founder of the Spanish school of #Drosophila genetics and an influential figure in developmental biology research worldwide. May he rest in peace.

I am very excited to announce the opening of the submission site for the upcoming Conférences Jacques Monod on Developmental Biology, May 18-22, 2026 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc... @lionlchristiaen.bsky.social and I have an exciting program of speakers and slots for selected short talks, etc.

If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back. I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support

Check out our new preprint on the evolution of enhancer loss. Turns out there are 50 ways to lose a function. We found four of them. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

After all these years, It eventually got the frame it deserves. Respect 🪰

Model organisms as platforms for training scientific minds www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A good day to remember John Gurdon’s school report from his biology master at Eton

The DB unit also celebrated Anne Ephrussi at this wonderful symposium! Anne was our unit head from 2007-2021. Congratulations on a remarkable career, Anne! 🎉

Congrats to my friends in the Boettiger lab for this really beautiful live imaging work. A big leap forward in understanding the dynamic side of genome organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very proud of our paper on "scrambling-by-hopping" LADs, which was just published: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Congrats to Lise Dauban and the rest of the team – this was a real tour-de-force!

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene by the @basvansteensellab.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very excited to see this work in press! I think there is a reason to believe that this is a common means of stabilizing large-effect polymorphisms in general and might be an important reason for why diploidy is so common. news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

Join this year's CSH Asia Systems Biology of Gene Regulation & Genome Editing meeting in beautiful Suzhou, China, Oct 20-24. Let's bring the international communities together! Abstract deadline Sept 19! Infos and registration at csh-asia.org?content/2767. Please repost!

‘Our Ancestors the Fish’, a course by Prof. @neilshubin.bsky.social, Univ of Chicago, invited Prof @college-de-france.fr. in Paris @psl-univ.bsky.social. Four conferences, free access, open to everyone, with Tiktaalik as a guest star. Friends, colleagues and fossils in Paris and around, please RT🥁

On the new acting CDC director. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

My lab cannot afford donating at the moment, so I donated privately. Even if you don’t work on flies we all owe so much to FlyBase. Consider donating, and importantly, let’s strive to make the more official funding bodies aware of how much is at stake.

+1 here. Reach us out early enough ! Getting funding and personal timelines aligned rarely happens over night !

Drosophila research without FlyBase would be untenable. Time for all labs who can afford it to step up.

A Summer reading recommendation: new primer in @dev-journal.bsky.social explains how dynamical systems theory unlocks the logic of developmental patterning Everything from bistable switches & oscillators to phase portraits & more with Python code to explore journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

🪰 Welcome to the EMBO Practical Course 'Drosophila genetics and genomics'! #EMBODrosophila Participants will gain hands-on experience and insights from leading experts in the field – let the learning and collaboration begin! 🙌🏼 @embl.org @embo.org @justinmcrocker.bsky.social

#MetabolismMondays Meet Anna Vigil, #PhD student in @justinmcrocker.bsky.social lab @embl.org @embldbunit.bsky.social, discussing her work on how #metabolism impacts cell fate, development & #evolution #Drosophila. #theNodeCorrespondents #ecr @the-node.bsky.social #DevBio

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Getting the message across from a distance: 🧬REX🧬 is a “Range EXtender” element that can turn short-range into looooooooooooong-range enhancers Great collaboration led by @gracebower.bsky.social and @evgenykvon.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... @biosci.lbl.gov @berkeleylab.lbl.gov

A decade of preprints in biology How @biologists.bsky.social has championed preprint adoption since 2014 Launching preLights, supporting Review Commons & introducing In Preprints in @dev-journal.bsky.social

Lobbyist who spent past 5 years advocating against regulations on pesticides has been chosen to head the EPA pesticides office. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

A Drosophila single-cell 3D spatiotemporal multi-omics atlas unveils panoramic key regulators of cell-type differentiation: Cell 1/2 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

HE’S BAAACK!

Mark your calendars for May 18-22, 2026- in Roscoff, Brittany, for the next iteration of the Developmental Biology Conference Jacques Monod!

2) This work reminds me of some stuff that @justinmcrocker.bsky.social did a while ago on synthetic enhancers in Drosophila:

Moving towards the end of #ShapingLife3 with the last Keynote speaker @justinmcrocker.bsky.social

We currently have a call for support that has gone out to European labs, to support FlyBase-UK. We are asking our colleagues from labs in the US and other countries to wait for a similar call to them that will go out in the near future, to support the US sites. We thank you for your patience.

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

"Musk’s sojourn in government has revealed severe flaws in his character — a blithe, dehumanizing cruelty, and a deadly incuriosity. This should shape how he’s seen for the rest of his public life." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

Join us one week from today for the 2025 Saltiel Life Sciences Symposium! This day-long event will examine the next-generation genetic tools that are unlocking new discoveries and understandings of human health and disease. May 29, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM myumi.ch/lsi-symposiu...

Leaving synthetic pesticides behind | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Nice write-up on our work from @embl.org, along with possible solutions.

From Shifting Skies to Toxic Tides #MetabolismMondays Meet Lautaro Gandara from @justinmcrocker.bsky.social lab @embl.org, studying how #metabolism and toxins shape development, resilience, & life itself using #Drosophila. #theNodeCorrespondents @the-node.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social

🚨 The application deadline for the #EMBODrosophila practical course is fast approaching 🚨 ⏰ Apply by 4 May and join us for a week of immersive learning with lectures from world-renowned experts and hands-on practical sessions 👉 https://s.embl.org/drg25-01-bl#EMBODrosophila 🗓️ 3 – 8 August 📍 EMBL Heidelberg