Happy Coelacanth Day!

Happy to highlight an essay I wrote together with @marcdemanuel.bsky.social, @natanaels.bsky.social and Anastasia Stolyarova, trying to think through what sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

She let me know that they recently received guidance that, ONLY for the January EI deadline (1/27/2026) and the February ESI deadline (2/3/2026), PIs can submit MIRAs even if their previous application (R35, R01, R15, R21, and R37) is still considered under review.

I was today years old when I learned that there is a superb (freely available) documentary from 1961 on early zebrafish development by J.V. Durden. collection.nfb.ca/film/embryon... (1/2)

FYI - if you already have a pending MIRA application, you need the summary statement in hand by Jan 27th to hit this first FOA deadline.

Neuro grad students! Applications for the 6th annual - Rising Stars in Neuroscience - due Jan 9! Don’t miss this chance to present research, sharpen science communication skills and connect with peers & faculty. Plus you’ll get to experience stunning Utah! medicine.utah.edu/neurobiology...

We have a new preprint on bioRxiv from postdoc Delai Huang and colleagues. It's not about peacocks. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm hiring a postdoc through Utah Math. Deadline Dec 15. If you work in math/comp bio (SciML, stochastic modeling, single-cell data), please apply! Vibrant math bio community & unbeatable outdoors. Mention me in your cover letter & reach out with any questions. www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/27...

***Important*** BIO will host a Virtual Office Hour (VOH) on Thurs, Dec 18th, 2025, 1 - 2 pm ET. In this VOH, we’ll be joined by leadership to outline updates to NSF’s review process & share news relevant to all areas of research funded by BIO. Register here: nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/regi...

Applications are open for @dev-journal.bsky.social 2026 Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs applying for group leader positions: Mentoring Profile raising Leadership training Network building Spread the word... www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

Part 6: For decades, the zebrafish has helped scientists unlock the mysteries of genetics, development, & disease. But the fish that power most discoveries have spent generations inside lab tanks. This video captures footage of zebrafish in their natural environment in Nepal. youtu.be/cCZhZpPALqw

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

An engineer wanted to make a quiet high-speed train. “The question then occurred to me — is there some living thing that manages sudden changes in air resistance as a part of daily life?” The answer: the kingfisher. See my story today for more tales of bioinspiration. Gift link: nyti.ms/4otNQyl

Now published! Our paper on: (1) Accurate sequencing of sperm at scale (2) Positive selection of spermatogenesis driver mutations across the exome (3) Offspring disease risks from male reproductive aging [1/n] www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cat flea, homage to Hooke. Micron in Moleskine. 🔬🖊️

💥OUR LAB IS HIRING!!💥 We are hiring a research assistant/lab manager to assist with managing our axolotl colony and enabling some kick-ass science! Looking for high levels of organization, collaboration, problem solving and curiosity. Application link: tinyurl.com/3tpvphpm #SciJob #JobAlert

1🧵 Excited to share my first PhD paper, published in @dev-journal.bsky.social What if fish gills —often overlook —hold secrets about development, patterning, and function? We uncovered how early patterning shapes adult gill architecture. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... #DevBio #Zebrafish

Come be my colleague in the department of neuroscience at OSU. We are hiring for an open rank tenure track faculty position in several focus areas. neurojobs.sfn.org/job/39081/te...

Just keep thinking about fish

Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415... with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social

Proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation “would cause immense and largely irreversible damage to the successful American scientific enterprise,” write Jerry Kaplan and Dana Carroll in an op-ed.

Happy to announce our paper comparing embryonic gene expression between C. elegans and C. briggsae, work led by Christopher Large with Rupa Khanal and in collaboration with Junhyong Kim and Bob Waterston. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are excited to announce the winner of the Chi-Bin Chien Award, Dr. Victoria Deneke! See more about Dr. Deneke and the CBC Award here: www.izfs.org/news/congrat... @impvienna.bsky.social @vdeneke.bsky.social

To dissect the gene regulatory networks used to build organisms, we need Perturb-seq-like tools that work in whole animals. For this purpose, we developed MIC-Drop-seq, a tool that couples high-throughput CRISPR in zebrafish embryos with single-cell RNAseq. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Department of Human Genetics at the University of Utah is sponsoring the Rising Stars in Genetics and Genomics symposium! - We are seeking nominations bu June 1. - September 18-19, 2025 - Please share with the star postdocs that you know. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Happy to share a new preprint from my lab! We characterize the on/off kinetics, light dosage-dependence, and more for a suite of optogenetic signaling activators in zebrafish embryos 💡 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is an exciting time for reproductive research in fish, let's get together and talk about it at the Reproduction session!🪺 If you are on team germ cells and gonads, please RT and send in abstracts @marymullins.bsky.social @yanivelkouby.bsky.social @erezraz.bsky.social @zebrafishrock.bsky.social

Featured article: The lives of cells, recorded go.nature.com/4g2gRwG by Amjad Askary, Wei Chen, @choijunhong.bsky.social, Lucia Y. Du, @elowitzlab.bsky.social, @james-gagnon.bsky.social, @schierlab.bsky.social, @seidels.bsky.social, @jshendure.bsky.social, @tanjastadler.bsky.social & Martin Tran

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

So, everyone knows the story about the time the 5th Dalai Lama wrote the Editor to complain that Ernst Haeckel hadn’t cited his work from 200 years earlier? Right? Right? Coming soon…. #devbiol #SciHist #TheLongBibliography

Hello everyone, the MBL Gene Regulatory Networks for Development course still has openings for its 2025 offering, Apr 6-18. We’d love to receive some more applications! The deadline is Jan 3, but if you start the application by then and get us the letters later, we will be happy to consider you!

New preprint out now! The history of some RNA virus lineages that infect vertebrates might date back to our invertebrate ancestors. Read more here: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, scored unremarkably on the musicality-related polygenic index, ranking between the 9th & 11th percentile based on modern samples. In our paper we explain why this is no surprise & how it offers a nice example for teaching complex genetics.

Today is the final lecture of my 7th (and possibly last) time teaching undergraduate Cell Biology. Over the years 2,554 students have finished my class! 20+ years ago, this class convinced me to be a biologist, and I hope I passed that spark along to some of my students 🧬🔬🦠🧑‍🔬

I took this picture of the night sky over this neat rock formation while camped out in the eastern Sierra back in October. I loved how the milky way seemed to erupt from the rocks. #landscapephotography #astrophotography #nature #photographer #nikon

I loved working on this future-focused review with an absolute Murderer's Row of smarties in the DNA recording field. Hope we can all meet in person some day!

This short graphic novel about Fish Sex Determination from Sophia Breslin, John Postlethwait, & Thomas Desvignes @notothentoma.bsky.social is AMAZING! blogs.uoregon.edu/fishsexdeter... 🧪🐠🧬

How does the testis age? Our first paper on this topic is now out in Development. Spermatogonia become less able to contribute to sperm production in older males, and in some cases we see really wild gene expression, like pluripotency genes and even ovary genes! doi.org/10.1242/dev....