BMP signaling during gastrulation pre-patterns the dorsal spinal cord https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.18.726076v1

New preprint! We show that cell fate can be predicted from a snapshot of combinatorial signaling — and the underlying map is a single angle in signaling space. Work by first authors Bassit Fijabi and Seth Teague and collaboration with @davidbrueckner.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Elegant work from @heemskerklab.bsky.social @davidbrueckner.bsky.social and co

“These results demonstrate that body elongation in cichlids necessitates integrated, multivariate changes in axial morphology [and] highlight the importance of morphological integration in facilitating coordinated evolutionary responses in anatomical systems.” New from @bertaverd.bsky.social et al🐠

Glad to see this out in its final form! www.nature.com/articles/s41... What changed since the preprint? Wonderful experiments disentangling the effect of receptor binding vs tissue porosity on Nodal diffusion, plus one of the smoothest review experiences! Thanks @natcellbio.nature.com & reviewers 🙏

Arc Institute’s “MULTI-evolve” learns a classical additive model, not epistasis. Preprint (w/ Gian Marco Visani and Aayush Verma): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Blog: dewitt-lab.github.io/posts/2026-0...

Comprehensive Lineage Tracing Maps the Landscape of Cell Fate Decisions in Mouse Embryogenesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.07.722278v1

Here is the paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Although cohesin-sensitive, long-range enhancer activation is equivalent in nature to proximal activation. Cooperativity can arise from different levels of activation inputs operating on a non-linear response function. @eliasfriman.bsky.social @uoe-igc.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🥁🎉The Psychosis Collective proudly presents our first preprint 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐳𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬-𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝘈 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴 starring Le He & Harriet Feldman www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We wanted to understand how antipsychotics work. Thread🧵

Zebrafish Academy 2026 - CDB Fish Floor once again opened its doors to budding A-level biologists for a week-long work experience program. With a revamped program and even more practical sessions, this years’ cohort got a real taste of life as a zebrafish researcher! www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...

Truly honoured to receive the @bsdb.bsky.social Marie Johansson prize! A testament to Marie’s legacy and the mentors/collaborators I was lucky to work with. Such a privilege to grow in the #DevBio community that's supported me since the start of my career. Looking forward to more exciting science!

We are thrilled to introduce our 2026 Schmidt Science Fellows — thirty-two incredible scientists set to embark on the next step of their interdisciplinary journey with our support. schmidtsciencefellows.org/news/the-202... @schmidtsciences.bsky.social

Join us in Heidelberg for your PhD! If you are excited about CRISPR genome engineering and would like to develop and apply new methods to investigate Wnt signaling in different model systems, than this project is for you. More info here: my-hbigs.uni-heidelberg.de/site/index.p... 🧪🧬🔬

Honoured and overwhelmed to receive the 2026 Waddington Medal. Science is a team effort, and I've been fortunate to work alongside exceptional people asking hard questions. Thank you to the BSDB and to everyone who has been part of the journey. bsdb.org/2026/03/24/2...

Are you fascinated by self-organised patterning processes? The brand-new Stuart lab at EMBL Barcelona is looking for a lab manager! Hannah @htstuart.bsky.social is a fantastic scientist and mentor. Building the lab with her will be a lot of fun! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/EMBL/job/Bar...

Very happy to see this out. 👏 @yinanwan.bsky.social Bogdan Bintu and team. Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis | free link Science www.science.org/eprint/5MHTM...

Excited to share this new work from Ana Raffaelli, in collaboration with Ewa Paluch's lab and involving several of my colleagues at Cyclana Bio. In this paper, we show that basement membrane mechanics instructs developmental signalling and fate patterning. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our latest with @torres-sanchez.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article-... Breaking isn’t always a bad thing! Think of birth, seed release... We highlight how living tissue not only tolerates fractures but actively fracture to grow, shape, reproduce, or adapt – across species and scales.

Mechanistic tradeoffs between local and long-range signaling activity in natural and synthetic morphogens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.06.704427v1

Registration and submissions for poster presentations will remain open for a few more weeks: meetings.embo.org/event/26-hom...

Feb 1 deadline approaching for our @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social QBio summer course on Physical Principles of Morphogenesis in Plants and Animals. @streichan.bsky.social @maurazimmermann.bsky.social @maizel-lab.org @yusuke-mori.bsky.social @akankshi.bsky.social @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social

Excited to share Alison's @alisonkickuth.bsky.social paper from the lab out in @nature.com this week! We uncovered how a mechanical ratchet mechanism drives cytokinesis in early #zebrafish embryos. Read more in this thread 🧵 and at www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

Very happy to share our 'Evoscape' paper, now published in PNAS ! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Meeting schedule now online for @bsdb.bsky.social 2026 spring meeting: Molecules to Morphogenesis! ***Abstracts due in by January 16*** Join the outstanding line up! Submit your abstract for a short talk, flash talk, or poster presentation: 👇👇👇 bsdb.org/meetings/

Pleased to say that Jonas Hartmann (bs-less) and I have finally released DySTrack (“diss track”) - Dynamic Sample Tracking. It’s a Python-based, modular tool that brings smart microscopy to everyday imaging on commercial systems. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/6]

🎉 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/...

Thank you to @cp-devcell.bsky.social for selecting our story to feature on the cover of today’s issue of Developmental Cell! Thank you to Zoë Ruiz for the wonderful art work! Read more here: www.cell.com/developmenta...

📣 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):

Boris Shraiman points a physicist’s eye on biological quandaries news.ucsb.edu/2025/022264/... 🧪

The lab’s first pre-print! We investigated how growth-inducing Erk activity waves are regulated in regenerating zebrafish scales. We discovered that Erk waves are followed by waves of expression of their own inhibitors, as predicted by excitable waves theory. tinyurl.com/26r2cmpj

Thank you to organisers Alex Dunn, @zevgartner.bsky.social, @adrianjacobo.bsky.social and Matthew Kutys and everyone who joined us for our Workshop on New Technologies for Studying and Reprogramming Development. #BiologistsWorkshops biologists.com/workshops

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...

New paper from the lab on a new Gateway compatible toolkit for transgenesis in eukaryotes, led by former technician Will Gillespie. Open access @dev-journal.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

How can we organize current theoretical approaches for developmental biology - from information to dynamical systems & GRNs - into a common framework? We propose to think along Marr's 3 levels: computational problem, algorithm, implementation Check out our review: arxiv.org/abs/2510.24536

Thrilled to share my main postdoc work with @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social We used genomic barcoding + scRNAseq in chick & human embryos to reveal a lineage architecture that reshapes how we understand neural tube development & cell fate decisions 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hierarchical lineage architecture of human and avian spinal cord revealed by single-cell genomic barcoding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684328v1

We are looking forward to spending the next two days discussing INTERESTING THINGS at our workshop on Generative Biology: new approaches to study developmental design principles #GenBio25 Thanks to my excellent coorganisers @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social & @dbenzinger.bsky.social & all participants

En route to Brighton—for the 1st time—for the @royalsociety.org Generative Biology meeting organised by @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social, @dbenzinger.bsky.social & @cellysally.bsky.social. Happy to chat about @dev-journal.bsky.social, @the-node.bsky.social & @biologists.bsky.social. Also have freebies!

Happy to share the last version of our story @currentbiology.bsky.social on the role of interfacial tension in mechanical cell competition led by @leovalon.bsky.social and Alexis Matamoro Vidal www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I wrote something on developmental biology and disability and put it up on the node last night: thenode.biologists.com/developmenta... I've been nervous to share because some of it veers a bit personal but they are thoughts that won't stay quiet. Would love to know what people think about it!

Really excited to share our latest work led by @mattiaubertini.bsky.social and @nesslfy.bsky.social: we report that cohesin loop extrusion creates rare but long-lived encounters between genomic sequences which underlie efficient enhancer-promoter communication. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A🧵👇

🚨 Excited to introduce FuChi (Fucci chicken), the first avian cell cycle reporter line. Thank you to all those who contributed to putting this paper together. I really think it showcases the power and beauty of the chick embryo as a developmental biology model. 🐥 🥚 🔬 @roslininstitute.bsky.social

Development does not happen in isolation! Material properties, geometry, stiffness, fluid flows...can all steer how development unfolds. If you’re exploring these kinds of questions, we’d love to see your work @dev-journal.bsky.social More info below ⬇️

Fresh from the press💥 We asked what happens when you evolve gene regulatory networks computationally at scale. Do general principles of GRN evolution jump out? Is the process predictable? Read on to find out @prxlife.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @ucl-ipls.bsky.social 👉 journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

1/3 After 6+ years at @crick.ac.uk I split my last cells and hung up my lab coat! Thank you to the brilliant community from fellow PhDs/Postdocs, LOAs, STPs, academic training team and to all past/present @santoslab.bsky.social members. My Crick journey would not have been the same without you all!

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beautiful work led by @oliveringe.bsky.social. It was great fun to be involved with this project. See Ollie’s paper and thread 👇

Our latest: We developed a chemo-optogenetic system for precise spatiotemporal control of morphogen production. Using dual light + small molecule control of Sonic Hedgehog production, we recapitulated neural tube patterning in vitro & measured spread of Shh 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...