Great news!

My department, Duke Neurobiology, is searching for a new chair. Ad below. Come work with me, @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social @ennatsew.bsky.social @jorggrandl.bsky.social @jnklab.bsky.social @sbilbo.bsky.social @neurocircuits.bsky.social and many other amazing folks! @dukemedschool.bsky.social

Check out this story! Atlantic writer Alexandra Petri visited my lab and played with some fruit flies and human organoids as she wrote about experiencing things that were affected by government cuts. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Here you go! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Check out this story! Atlantic writer Alexandra Petri visited my lab and played with some fruit flies and human organoids as she wrote about experiencing things that were affected by government cuts. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Nice summary on our paper on mechanisms controlling development and evolution of the cone-dominant ground squirrel retina, which is now in final form at eLife. www.lifescienceeditors.com/2026/01/06/h...

G+D together with JHU worked to put together this cool video describing our latest work! Check it out!

I'm so excited that @christ3na.bsky.social 's paper describing temporal control of photoreceptor development in human organoids is out at Genes and Dev and we got the cover! genesdev.cshlp.org/content/40/1... genesdev.cshlp.org/content/40/1...

Nothing like a paper acceptance right before New Years! The Johnston lab will be sharing some of our best work ever in 2026! Next update coming on Jan 1!

🧬👁️ Our Science Advances paper is published! snATAC-seq analysis across lamprey to human retina uncovers deeply conserved cis-regulatory codes in all six retinal cell types — even with extensive enhancer turnover. Immensely grateful to my coauthors and collaborators. 🙏 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recent Hopkins Hub article highlighting our work on optic nerve regeneration in axolotl. Congratulations to Ted! hub.jhu.edu/2025/12/11/s...

Mosquitoes, a photo gallery:

Excited to announce that the newest paper from my lab on the Drosophila visual system is out today! Modulating the levels and activity of the retinal determination network is sufficient to induce the specification of distinct tissue fates in Drosophila url: journals.biologists.com/dev/article-...

It was an honor being interviewed about our new color vision project by the 'Eye on Vision' WYPL Memphis radio show! 🪰👀🧪 @umassboston.bsky.social eyeonvision.blogspot.com/2025/11/hmx-...

Just a heads up: I just got a phishing attempt pretending to be from the #VisualSystemDevelopment #GRC. It looked pretty convincing at first glance, so be careful!

No more paylines at the NIH grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

My department at Dartmouth Medical School is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor. We are looking broadly for a biochemist or cell biologist. Please share this add! apply.interfolio.com/171438 @dartmouthbcb.bsky.social @futurepislack.bsky.social

Now out in Cell! Congratulations to all involved, especially @chiarafornetto.bsky.social For a breakdown, see the bluetorial from when we posted the preprint: bsky.app/profile/neur... Funding: @erc.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social

Today’s speaker in our DRN external seminar series is Dr Ryan MacDonald @macdonaldlab.bsky.social (University College London) Sponsored by the Physiological Society @physoc.bsky.social Host: Emily Noël @noelresearchlab.bsky.social All welcome!

Chd4 remodels chromatin to control retinal cell type specification and lineage termination Read this #LifelongDevSI #OA Research Article by Sujay Shah, Pierre Mattar and colleagues doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Fantastic new paper from @pierre-mattar.bsky.social lab!

TT faculty job opening in #Neuroscience! We are looking for a colleague to join us in our fantastic Biology Department and Neuroscience Program at Brandeis. We are a group of *very* collaborative, supportive, and productive scientists (& humans!) so please apply academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30961

In the 2nd preprint from @mlodziklab.bsky.social, Weber et al. show that LRP5/6/arrow, the Wnt/bcatenin signaling specific co-receptor, is also required for Wnt/planar cell polarity establishment, a challenge and eye-opener for the Wnt field. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new article on our National Eye Institute (NEI) - funded project on the mechanisms underlying color vision! @umassboston.bsky.social 🪰👀🧪 www.umb.edu/news/recent-...

Check out our paper from @christ3na.bsky.social in G+D. DIO3, which degrades thyroid hormone/TH, is expressed in progenitors and turns off in neurons. As the progenitor:neuron ratio decreases, DIO3 decreases and TH increases, triggering photoreceptor generation. genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Our faculty job market series continues today on the topic of zoom interviews! Come hear Tyler, Heather, and Duc share their thoughts/advice today at 3pm ET / 12p PT. There will also be time for Q&A. Registration link in flyer - hope to see you there!

Come join us! Applications to the GCDB Biology Doctoral program at IU are due December 1st. @iubiology.bsky.social @alizeemalnoe.bsky.social @rhcalderon.bsky.social @lesleynweaver.bsky.social @hoosierflyman.bsky.social @tennessenlab.bsky.social @flyeyelab.bsky.social @briancalvi.bsky.social

See this? This = implanting mouse embryo. Usually this happens inside its mother and is invisible to us, but we can actually watch implantation ex vivo with the hope of understanding why implantation goes awry in embryos of older women. A 🧵...

Check this paper from @simonomisz.bsky.social in our lab! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... Human retinas/organoids go through 2 apoptotic waves. Organoids also have a necrotic wave. Blocking apoptosis promotes RGC survival to day 200 (usually die!). Apoptosis promotes normal neurogenesis/maturation.

Kinetic organization of the genome revealed by ultraresolution multiscale live imaging www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#FluorescenceFriday: a weekly reminder that behind the data, there are moments of pure wonder. This is why we do what we do. And the #retina is so uniquely beautiful!

A big thanks to the NEI for supporting my new R01 and MCW for highlighting the research focus. We’ve already made some interesting discoveries and I’m excited to see how the research progresses for years to come. www.mcw.edu/mcwknowledge...

We’re excited to share that, after receiving many requests each year from the research community for Oligopaint DNA & RNA FISH probes, we’re piloting a service to design & prepare probes for labs. Please share with colleagues who may benefit! ericjoycelab.com/oligopaint-f...

Damaged retinal ganglion cells can lead to blindness. MCW’s Dr. Joel Miesfeld is conducting #research into the development of these cells to better identify ways to help them regenerate after damage. Learn more: www.mcw.edu/mcwknowledge... #Ophthalmology #VisionHealth #MCWKnowledge

🎉 New preprints from the lab! (1) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprints from the lab!! (2)

Very proud of former Kumar lab PhD student, Alison Ordway, for receiving a K99 award from the National Eye Institute on her work describing photoreceptor patterning in Drosophila and mosquito compound eyes. Keep your eyes out for Alison when she goes out on the job market.

Very excited about our new preprint, led by @gkafetzis.bsky.social /w @mikebok.bsky.social & @denilsson.bsky.social. We suggest that the vertebrate 'duplex' retina emerged from interconnecting two ancient median-eye microcircuits. Say goodbye to the 'simplex' retina - it probably never existed!

Our latest manuscript is out, and this one tackles the problem of cellular aging in the retina, using comparative multiomic analysis of zebrafish, mouse, and humans. What led us to work on aging after studying development and regeneration? Explainer follows./1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/7 Really happy to see my PhD work published in ✨Developmental Cell✨ today! We find human endoderm is specified by two developmental trajectories 🔀, and the choice between alternate routes is dictated by the combinatorial BMP4/Activin signalling. www.cell.com/developmenta...

I am excited for Ali Ordway, a postdoc in my lab, who just got award a K99/R00 award!! She is studying how photoreceptors are patterned in the eyes of flies and other insects!

Excited to share the latest paper from our lab! Excellent work from Cátia Gomes and Kang-Chieh Huang! Modeling human retinal ganglion cell axonal outgrowth, development, and pathology using pluripotent stem cell–based microfluidic platforms

Fly friends--join us at #Dros26

Latest from the lab, the beautiful work of Iryna Mohylyak and colleagues describing a temporal developmental transcriptional program for mitochondrial quality control and synaptic connectivity, with @jdejuan-sanz.bsky.social, Olga Corti and @steinaerts.bsky.social labs www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our work on the function of miR-51/miR-100 is out! miR-100 is widely conserved across eumetazoans but its function has been mysterious. Emilio Santillán found in worms it regulates signaling and extracellular matrix genes, some of which seem to be conserved targets! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share an important new pre-print from the lab led by incredibly talented postdoc @maureenbiologies.bsky.social, a neurotoxicologist who came to the lab with an ambitious goal of understanding the consequences of toxicant exposure in human neurodevelopment. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sharing our newest study led by the incredibly talented @federicamosti.bsky.social investigating new molecular mechanisms of human brain development. We discover a human-specific enhancer HAR1984 that influences chromatin looping to promote cortical size and folding! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

#DBfeature #Drosophila🪰 Decoding a Cell's Fate: How Notch and receptor tyrosine kinase signals specify the Drosophila R7 photoreceptor by Ronald Arias, Andrew Tomlinson sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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/...