We’re excited to expand our partnership with @reviewcommons.org in a new collaborative model reshaping scientific publishing to streamline peer review, reduce redundancy, and improve the author and reviewer experience. Read more: buff.ly/h6SfMXF And meet our Editorial Board! 👋

ELECTION DAY #Philly billypenn.com/2025/10/29/p...

Just tried q.e.d. by @odedrechavi.bsky.social et al. with a few papers including by myself & others where I knew a claim within was flawed based on a misunderstanding of the signal. 1) it was impressive. I see what the hype is about. 2) it hallucinated. www.qedscience.com Overly long #SciPub🧵 1/n

Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake go.nature.com/3X5lbUg

Oof, Richard Scarry was a formative part of my youth and this is brutal. There is an election on Tuesday Nov 4. Vote to change this.

Thank you Congressman Neguse for laying it plain.

From the lab of Maxwell Heiman discussing the interesting topic of apical ECM and the function of sensing organs and how these ECM proteins can both mechanically and biochemically modulate the organ's functions. doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

The ECM is no longer in the back seat when it comes to development. Check out our special issue "Dynamics of the extracellular matrix in development, cell physiology and disease" with 8 selected articles to learn more: A 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

VOTERS, There’s an important Election Day coming up on Tues Nov4, including here in #Philly billypenn.com/2025/10/29/p...

A Rutgers University report released Monday reveals that corporate investors are gobbling up about 25% of all residential units in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Philadelphia, raising concerns about increased evictions, higher rents, and reduced homeownership.

🪰 folks! Despite Harvard lawsuit outcome, FlyBase NIH grant was not released. FlyBase now runs on the public, like NPR, PBS etc. If we don't step up, it can go away! Donations site on flybase.org homepage. Note: it links to IU stock center, but its for FlyBase, see instructions. pls give+share! 2/2

Cool Halloween events happening in the dead #Philly Macy’s www.operaphila.org/whats-on/eve...

PHILLY/ PA: Vote on November 4, and vote YES on all three PA Supreme Court judicial retentions! 🗳️✅ #PACourtsMatter #PAVotes #StayInformed #ProtectPACourts

Beware #Philly bike commuters: Problems on the Schuylkill river trail www.phillyvoice.com/schuylkill-r...

Abandoning Merit for Compliance: Unpacking The Compact for Higher Education substack.com/@joshuasweit...

Eliminating DEI & hiring your friends www.science.org/content/arti...

We were all relieved that this didn’t happen on 9/11.

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

And the next one: dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44318-025-00585-z . Super-fun collaboration with @partchlab.bsky.social & @gotworms.bsky.social to find similarities between developmental and circadian clocks – supported by @fmiscience.bsky.social Facilities and, financially, @snsf.ch and @erc.europa.eu . 1/n

Latin American worm meeting in beautiful Merida Mexico, February 24-28, 2026. Abstract deadline is October 31. meetings.embo.org/event/26-worm

Photo Essay: Millions of Americans Join No Kings Demonstrations Across the County to Protest Trump | “Big rallies like this give confidence to people who have been sitting on the sidelines but are ready to speak up,” @chrismurphyct.bsky.social told @apnews.com. MORE PHOTOS: bit.ly/475cEoQ

Photo Essay: Thousands of Democracy Defenders Protest Trump at #NoKings Rallies Throughout Bucks County | Doylestown, Morrisville, Perkasie and New Hope were among the locations where local residents protested Saturday because they love their country.

PHILLY I stepped out to walk across Philly last night and get a sense of things. City Hall always captures me here, Philadelphia has maintained its European layout and much of its early architecture.

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

#Philly #NoKings #AntiFascist

Buck’s county PA #nokings

Watch Lucas' amazing artistic/musical rendition of C. elegans larval development and our work on developmental timing and molting here youtu.be/-hGHYRvw87w and read on his inspiration and challenges below

🎉Congrats to Freeman Hrabowski Scholar @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social on receiving the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award! His research will explore how sense of touch contributes to communal behaviors.

Nobel Prize given for showing the importance of investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth. Basically the opposite of what the US is doing. 😭

We were just having this conversation @meera-sundaram.bsky.social! Using C.elegans as a model in your lab as a PhD student, I learned to think about biological systems as integrated networks. This has shaped my approach to studying the nervous system, attempting to link the body and brain.

Basic, curiosity driven, sometimes very exploratory, research is the seed corn that leads to the biggest scientific advances www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/s...

Reaffirming the value of model organisms in training scientific minds @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social exactly what we were talking about re your #Celegans background setting you up for creative work in other systems! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For those in #Philly share.inquirer.com/uMddWX

I think the R01 is basically a non-starter at NIGMS now. Data from NIH Reporter for new and competing awards, comparing number of R01s issued relative to R35s (MIRA). This has major ramifications for basic science and basic science investigators that are not yet in the MIRA pool

Thread: A year ago yesterday was a very happy day for me. I had lost my prostate. It was good riddance, as it was riddled with cancer. I’m now cancer-free — and thankful for the tax-funded technology that saved my life.

The Onion always has the best headlines

cc: University presidents

The title says it all ⬇️

Hear! effing Hear! [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

The 2025-2026 #aECM club schedule is now posted on our website, where you can also find the link to sign up for access. I’m looking forward to lots of great talks and discussions! sundaramlab.com/blog/aecm-cl...

This year's Lasker Awards went to scientists who studied the wiring diagram of life, a new state of biological matter, and a potent treatment for cystic fibrosis. Here's my story with Gina Kolata. Gift link: nyti.ms/4mZlH1F

Apical extracellular matrix regulates fold morphogenesis in the Drosophila wing disc https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.06.674631v1

New preprint! How are developmental cycles coordinated across cell types? It turns out that, like Geppetto's cuckoo clocks in the GIF below, individual cell types are each performing their own little crazy routine, but all in sync with each other.

The goal of a PhD is not to learn some facts or read a few papers or learn a bunch of techniques. The goal of a PhD is to learn independence, problem solving, how to finish things you start, resilience, & gain the ability to adapt & think creatively. Learning these things is hard.

If you liked this article, you might be interested in the new #aECMClub starting Fall2025 -a virtual seminar series to highlight work on #aECM across different organisms. 🪱🪰🐟🐁👳‍♀️🌱🦠 Sign up here: 👉https://forms.gle/Y6UjbnXPH1pDHAE97

In this 1892 lecture, the poet A. E. Housman advocates for basic curiosity-driven discovery research: www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poe... I've copied some of my favorite parts below. 1/10

Maybe it's time we rethink the idea that development is a cell centric process? In this beautiful review, María-del-Carmen and @stramerlab.bsky.social discussed how the ECM underlies and influences many morphogenesis processes from wing unfolding to mammary gland development. doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

highlight of two recent fantastic comparative inter-species single-cell atlases, by @live-large.bsky.social from @jisaacmurray.bsky.social, and Itai Toker from Oliver Hobert's lab www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

More than a billion tons of #chitin are produced on Earth each year. This study shows that the soil #bacterium #Streptomyces venezuelae thrives on chitin from #insect #exoskeletons, using a potent mix of chitinases and a dedicated chitobiose importer @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/45sg4S5

This is the first manuscript I am choosing to have reviewed by Review Commons. It’s an experiment! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...