Not today, parasitic #wasps!✋🚫 #Stinkbugs use a fungus-carrying organ on their hind legs to coat their eggs in #fungi🍄🦵 This provides a physical defense against #parasitic wasp oviposition🛡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Faculty positions in animal morphogenesis that may be filled at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in one of my favorite Departments" Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Toronto. 1/n jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-... jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Are you interested in a PhD in the area of "Mechanisms of translational control during embryogenesis?" Apply now for a PhD @mpi-cbg.de! Overview of all participating RGLs: imprs.mpi-cbg.de/5761/researc...

#FossilFriday ‘Black Beauty’, one of the smallest-known specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, displayed at The Royal Tyrell Museum in Calgary, Alberta. wp.me/p3ihHu-1MX

Quick Drosophila question: I’m planning to integrate a construct on the second chromosome but would like to avoid the attP40 landing site. Any suggestion for a good alternative attP site on chromosome II? It’s for a skeletal-muscle–related project. Thanks! 🙂 Rui

Our latest issue is out!👇 www.cell.com/current-biol... On the cover: Nautilus ≈ 🐙+🐚 (Maybe — like the Nautilus — our journal is a living fossil, believing in the interest and inspiration our readers might draw from the diversity of biological systems, questions and approaches we try to feature🙏 )

Very excited to share an excellent review from @teresa-urli.bsky.social, published one week before her PhD defense! We did a deep dive into the fascinating biology of the variant Polycomb complex, PRC1.6 (1/5) journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Chart from last year... No big change in % of US applicants, or? . marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

📰 New paper alert! In a collaborative project with the lab of Clemens Plaschka at the IMP, the lab of Julius Brennecke has revealed how PIWI proteins kickstart transposon silencing in reproductive cells. The findings are published in Molecular Cell: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. A study in Nature reports a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus, an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species. go.nature.com/3V68MP0 🧪

Microtubules in Asgard archaea (h/t @lanzen.bsky.social) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... #jcampubs

I hope everyone on the other side of the Earth is enjoying the total lunar eclipse! Except for flat Earthers.

Yesterday me and my lab celebrated #20years @mpi-cbg.de. There is a lot to say about that but the pictures from the event tell it better. Thanks city of #Dresden for the nice fireworks. That was unexpected. 10 more years or so? #LoPaTs 💕

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

🚨 New from our lab: Here we explored how aging contributes to harmful protein aggregation in diseases like Huntington’s & ALS. The culprit? An overlooked aging factor — EPS8 and RAC signaling. #Aging #Longevity #Proteostasis #ALSResearch 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Private tour of the Louvre is a special treat. They were vacuuming the Sphinx. You may not have seen a Sphinx being brushed, so I am sharing.

Our new preprint is out ! We uncover how adult Drosophila muscles respond to injury through a coordinated dialogue between hemocytes, tracheal cells, and muscles. Check it out and please share @igdrennes.bsky.social

The chromatin remodeller CHD4 controls both nucleosome integrity and transcription factor binding to promote activity of active regulatory elements and to prevent activation of silent enhancers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.29.672645v1

Excited to see this published with additional data following our preprint a while back. Cool combination (in our biased view) of controlled TF expression and machine learning to decode chromatin sensitivity. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

Land of Port wine (Alto Douro Vinhateiro)

Our department is advertising two academic positions. Come join us in beautiful Reykjavík. I can promise a very positive collegial atmosphere! #assistant_professor #physiology #cell_biology #physiology #neuroscience euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/368529

"And it wouldn’t matter if CO2 were higher or lower than it is today, or whether the Earth was warmer or cooler as a result. It’s the rate of change in CO2 that gets you to Armageddon." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Drosophila COMPASS Complex Subunits Set1 and Ash2 Are Required for Oocyte Determination and Maintenance of the Synaptonemal Complex www.mdpi.com/2221-3759/13...

Sex-reversal in birds (genetically male/female but appear female/male) is surprisingly common. Best detail: A genetically male bird called a laughing kookaburra had recently laid an egg. (1/2) By @phiejacobs.bsky.social on @science.org

Evolution is more like a tinkerer than an engineer. New things happen not by perfect engineering but by working with what's already available and repurposing existing objects through recombinations and modifications. This is a classic lesson for any kind of innovation, including that of new ideas..

I just got the notice that all the FlyBase people at Harvard, including me, will be laid off on October 12. I'm devastated.

Interested in pursuing a PhD to study the epigenetic functions of the meiotic synaptonemal complex? This research position offers an excellent entry point! The application deadline is 15 September. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/365827

To have this paper appear the same day that RFK Jr is canceling all mRNA vaccine funding is further indication that irony is not dead, even though we might all be soon.

A remarkable paper. Davisson and colleagues describe an in vitro reaction running under plausible prebiotic conditions that efficiently and stereoselectively aminoacylates a model tRNA. This suggests a path through which nature may have chosen L vs. D amino acids! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“Sleep, like ageing, may be an inescapable consequence of aerobic metabolism.” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

To better treat cancer, we need to understand its underlying biology. Despite decades of research, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. One is why certain key tumor suppressor or oncogenes lead to cancer predominantly in single tissue: e.g. Rb in the retina, or APC in the colon 1/n 🧪

🆕🧪‼️ New lab preprint! We study how germ cells (the cells that give rise to gametes, in this case sperm) are supported by somatic (non-germ) cells of the gonad. This matters for our understanding of reproduction - without germ cell development, animals are sterile. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

A huge project has analysed more than 1,000 claims about the immunity of Drosophila fruit flies in scientific papers published over some 50 years go.nature.com/4lxhwJB

The Angel of Death (a winged skeletal creature) drops some deadly substances into a river near a town, symbolizing typhoid. Watercolor, 1912, by Richard Tennant Cooper. Typhoid was prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before people had regular access to clean water.

Delighted to share our latest on longitudinal methylation dynamics preceding cancer. Epigenetic signs of AML appear in blood DECADES before Dx. 👉 Early cancer detection 👉 Methylation drivers 👉 Epimutation rates 👉 CpG lineage tracing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Now online! Adaptive radiation and social evolution of the ants

Today is June 25. On this date in 1903 Marie Curie defended her doctoral thesis on radioactive substances at Université de la Sorbonne in Paris, becoming 1st woman in France to receive a doctoral degree. Image shows the thesis cover.

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Exciting fundamental discovery! Early embryos fight bacteria WITHOUT immune cells Zebrafish, mouse, and human embryos use epithelial cells (trophoectoderm)—not immune cells—to engulf and destroy 𝘌. 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘪 and 𝘚. 𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘶𝘴 Hoijman Lab Barcelona 🇪🇸 𝘊𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘦 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How did life begin & why does it matter? A new ASM report, supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, explores the origins of microbial life & how understanding it can help tackle some of humanity’s biggest questions around climate, biotech & more. Press release➡️ asm.org/press-releas...

The fascinating work spearheaded by Kirsten Senti on the diversification and adaptation of endogenous retroviruses in the host gonad 'ecosystem'' is officially published.

If heterochromatin is really a liquid-like condensate, why is it not spherical? We investigated whether mechanical interactions between a condensate and a fiber network can explain the variety of morphologies seen in phase-separated nuclear compartments www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...