'(...) if trainees are spending years as a graduate student at quite a formative time in their lives, you want to create an environment where they can learn and flourish. A good mentor doesn't tell you exactly what to do, they just show you and lead by example, which I think is quite important.'

HHMI released the official 2027 Gilliam Fellowship details, and a lot changed. Deadline's earlier this cycle: Oct 27. Int'l & MD-PhD students now eligible. Stipend up to 50K. New postdoc pathway adds up to 7 yrs of support. No Journal names!!!! www.yaelcourtney.com/resources-an...

Does anyone have a protocol for arresting Expi293 cell cycle progression? We’ve tried some stuff and it hasn’t gone well…

What a game…

Congratulations to the 2026 KidneyCure Grant Recipients! 34 new investigators join 22 continuing grantees in a cohort of 56 researchers. More than $4 million in research funding supports their work advancing kidney research and improving patient care. 🔗https://www.kidneycure.org/pages/qa.aspx

Anyone else having this problem? NCBI has imposed such draconian CPU usage limits that BLAST has become unworkable. Do I need to go to AWS to get BLAST to work now?

Honored and delighted to be elected an EMBO Member. A huge thank you to our amazing team, this recognition wouldn't be possible without you. Perfect day to celebrate together during our lab outing! 🎉 - Virginie

Excited to share our review article on cilia disassembly, published in @jcellsci.bsky.social. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/.... We highlight how disassembly of cilia occurs, ...

Thi Nguyen's paper on ciliary PKA activity is now published at @plosbiology.org: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... She developed a ciliary PKA activity sensor, then, inspired by recent work from @benmyerslab.bsky.social and Susan Taylor's labs, showed that SMO inhibits PKA within cilia. 1/6

Ooh! Ctenophores have organizers that probably use TGFbeta/Activin! Tickles both the develolmemtal biologist and the evolutionary biologist. Hilde Mangold would have loved this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With a motivating push from @christlet.bsky.social I made a new Fiji plugin, CurveMorph. The idea was to create a tool for kymograph generation along the dynamic (bending/shaking) filament shapes (microtubules, cilia, neurites, etc). The logo was made using the plugin. github.com/UU-cellbiolo...

What if damaged human kidneys could one day repair themselves? At MDI Bio Lab, Iain Drummond, Ph.D., and his team have identified inflammatory signaling pathways in #zebrafish capable of triggering the production of new, functional nephrons without injuring the kidney itself. 🧪 🐟🎸 #NephSky #RenalSky

P.S.: If you are excited about how mechanics regulates cellular physiology, please reach out! My lab is actively looking for curious and creative students/postdocs to join our growing team and discover exciting new biology with us. cri.utsw.edu/faculty/henr...

Congratulations Thi Nguyen, @konjikusicmia.bsky.social, Lorenzo del Castillo and Roshank Irannejad on this new paper! I'm proud of you all. Thank you, Dagmar Wachten, for editing. Everyone else, please send thoughts, comments, critiques and questions: plos.io/4v7vdnp

Vertebrate #Hedgehog signaling is transduced by transmembrane protein Smoothened (SMO) on the primary #cilium, but what is its mechanism? @reitergroup.bsky.social &co show that SMO & ciliary GPCRs regulate ciliary PKA activity to activate the Hedgehog pathway @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4v7vdnp

Congratulations, @konjikusicmia.bsky.social. It makes my heart well up to have this cohort named in memory of Zara, an extraordinary scientist.

FASEB Cilia and Centrosomes. Abstract submission deadline is TODAY! Come share your exciting science with the community! events.faseb.org/event/cilia-...

Important new work from Chia-Hsiang Chang, @nachury.bsky.social and colleagues identifying the composition of neuronal cilia in an unbiased way. Lots of surprises herein: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congrats to @unger-lucas.bsky.social, @luizaghila.bsky.social, ‪@cheralab.bsky.social‬ and colleagues on this new, interesting paper identifying a role for the transcription factor HNF1A in supporting ciliation (and thus Hedgehog signaling) in the developing gut: genesdev.cshlp.org/content/40/1...

Physicist Rosalyn Yalow co-invented a super-sensitive test (radioimmunoassay) that uses tiny amounts of radioactive tags to detect exact levels of insulin in blood & won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (the 2nd woman ever to win in this category). She died #OTD in 2011. #WomenInSTEM

Zhengmao disarming a hefty LN2 canister. He cut the right wire. #MacGruber would have been proud.

Updated GRC Developmental Biology 2027 flyer/poster with the latest roster of invited speakers. 🌱🐟🧬🐭🪰🧪🧫 Come join us to discuss the latest in #devbio at the Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort, Jan 17-22 ! #GRCDevBio2027

I think this complex is very cool! Excited to see this in print @jennkong.bsky.social! 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Only two more weeks to submit abstracts for the FASEB Cilia and Centrosomes. Abstract submission deadline is June 8. Submit an abstract and come share your exciting science with the community! events.faseb.org/event/cilia-...

Some tubulin (including centriolar microtubules) gets glutamate added post-translationally. This modification is evolutionarily ancient. New work from Irma Sánchez, Brian Dynlacht and colleagues @dynlachtlab.bsky.social identify an 8-component complex that does it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out this synopsis from Harry @yliu160.bsky.social on his new paper on the regulation of centriole architecture. And congratulations to Harry on starting his own lab @stonybrooku.bsky.social! You should work with Harry on all things centrosomal and ciliary!

Want a sneak-peak at the Santa Cruz Dev Biol meeting? Check it ⬇️! >20 slots for talks chosen from abstracts! New PI Keynote to be selected from abstracts! Dedicated new PI Session! Scott Fraser workshop! Career Workshop! Plenty of time for co-lab building! 🔥😱😍🔥 🐟🪰🪱🐭🔬🧬 scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

Evan Miller (UCB) will be speaking today 3pm in the Mahley auditorium in the Gladstone Building about fluorescent dyes to probe neuronal function. Come join us!

Please come join me in Washington, DC August 2-6th for the FASEB SRC on Cilia and Centrosomes meeting! Over 40 talks will be selected from abstracts. We are also excited to launch our first North American Ciliopathy Summit, held at the same venue on August 2. events.faseb.org/event/cilia-...

Inspired by the Dutta et al preprint, I have been perusing the tardigrade (H. exemplaris) genome. Tardigrades have a Hedgehog pathway?!? Hedgehog: A0A1W0WP82 Patched: A0A1W0WP64 Smoothened: A0A1W0X458, A0A1W0X490 Sufu: A0A1W0WRT0 Am I late to the party? I'm glad Bob Goldstein is visiting soon.

Our flagship conference celebrating everything centrosomes and cilia returns this year and it promises to be another exceptional scientific event in the beautiful city of Lausanne, 1–4 September. 👉 Abstract submission+registration deadline 1 June Don’t miss the opportunity to share your research 🤩

Whoa. Check out this tardigrade eye, comprised of just four cells, one of which has a cilium (CI) that expands into a labyrinth (orange, outer segment equivalent?) with ciliary Opsin. See preprint from Soumi Dutta, Vladimir Gross, Georg Mayer and colleagues: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#DBfeature Centriolar protein PIBF1 is required for craniofacial and forebrain development: its variants results in ciliopathies, craniofacial anomalies & semilobar holoprosencephaly by Lylyan Pimentel, Samantha Brugmann, et al @brugmannlab.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our preprint about Togaram1 mouse knockout brain phenotypes is on bioRxiv! This is a model of Joubert Syndrome ciliopathy caused by loss of Togaram1 (aka Crescerin1 aka FAM179B). Primary #cilia defects in neural stem cells. Neurogenesis, mitotis, apoptosis, morphogenesis phenotypes! #cellbio

New preprint! "A stereotyped glial attachment determines the morphology and function of neuronal cilia" doi.org/10.64898/202... We find that C. elegans neuronal cilia attach to glia, we identify a protein required for cilia-glia attachment, and we show that glial attachments alter cilia signaling.

Save the Date! The 14th Structural Birth Defects Meeting will be September 21-23 @childrensphila.bsky.social Keynotes: Erica E. Davis @luriechildrens.bsky.social @feinberg.northwestern.edu & Jeremy Reiter @reitergroup.bsky.social at UC San Francisco. Abstracts & registration open May 1. #14thSBD

I am excited to share our most recent work collaborating with @centriolelab.bsky.social and @stearnslab.bsky.social to look at the ciliary base of mammalian multiciliated cells w/ cryo-ET, XL/MS, and U-ExM www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It’s done!! Molecular architecture of the ciliary base in mammalian multiciliated cells! A study 13 years in the making 👴, thanks to collab with @stearnslab.bsky.social + @centriolelab.bsky.social & visionary work by @computingcaitie.bsky.social, who integrated native #cryoET with #XLMS & #UExM 🧪🧶🧬🔬

Park, Liu, Sun, Roll-Mecak et al. present the crystal structure of an RPGR–TTLL5 co-complex, which reveals TTLL recognition paradigms for non-tubulin substrates and sheds light on disease mechanism for retinal dystrophies caused by TTLL5 and RPGR mutations. rupress.org/jcb/article/... #Cilia

Congratulations to the legendary scientist Judith Kimble!!! We stand on the shoulders of giants. #womeninSTEM #celegans

Sweaty palms…

Had a long month of news? Settle down with our comforting review describing how membrane proteins get made in mammalian cells. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

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...

ZMAP: A single-cell meta-atlas of zebrafish embryonic development reveals a consensus hierarchy of cell identities https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.23.713599v1

An obit for Mike Bishop. Among his many accomplishments, pioneering work on Hedgehog signaling with Pascal Thérond. I asked him for his highlights once and he told me about throwing the first pitch at a Giants game. A true giant himself. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/o...

We are looking for a new group leader to join the IGH (Montpellier, France). I can’t wait to meet my future colleague! Apply :-) More infos here: igh.cnrs.fr/join-igh-as-...

Happy birthday to 🇨🇦Canadian medical researcher & #biochemist Maud Menten (1879-1960). 👩🏼‍🔬🧪🐡 #histsci Not only was she an author of Michaelis-Menten equation for enzyme kinetics, she invented the azo-dye coupling for alkaline phosphatase, 1st example of enzyme histochemistry, still used in imaging of

The US NIH is stepping back from 'top-down' science. My latest analysis for @nature.com shows that funding calls have plummeted by 90%, funneling billions into broad, 'investigator-initiated' ideas, rather than targeted, agency-driven ones. A massive shift for the American biomedical enterprise.

BREAKING: @delauro.house.gov announces at a House Oversight hearing with NIH director Jay Bhattacharya that OMB approved the agency's apportionment last night. That means the agency should have access to its appropriated funds — 42 days after its spending bill passed.

Annual reminder: if you’ve been accepted to multiple graduate programs and are still deciding, please let the ones you’re definitely not going to know as soon as possible! -Someone who got into his PhD off the waitlist the day after the deadline