I walked past a group of students running a stall to raise awareness about library closures and ways to support libraries. Mixed emotions. Sad that they have to fight for this, but deeply inspired by their passion.

As a big soccer fan, I'm so glad to see so many soccer subreddits calling for a stop to linking 'news' from that other place.

Still time to apply for @uoregon.bsky.social Summer Program for Undergraduate Research — a paid 10-week research opportunity this summer for undergrads in the life sciences. Details in the flyer below. Please share.

Have you ever wondered what role motile #cilia and cerebrospinal fluid (#CSF) play in brain development and physiology? If yes, please check out our latest article now published in Cell Reports and spearheaded by the newly minted Dr D'Gama www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today, I saw daybreak twice. On a short flight I saw the sun come up; a beautiful orange sky. Then we descended and the sun disappeared. The stars came back out. I was at the gate waiting for my next flight when I saw daybreak number 2. I guess the earth really is round!

I'm a soccer fan (Arsenal). Recently, the Premier League ran an anti-homophobia campaign where captains wore rainbow armbands. Some refused or altered the message. A common response from fans has been "keep politics out of football [soccer]". Let's unpack why this isn't a serious argument. (1/6)

There is a human tissue that builds itself up and breaks itself down every 28 days (on average) using non-scarring wound healing and instead of studying that and learning everything we can about it we think it's gross and look for other less relevant models to understand wound healing.

I created this stater pack with women in ecology and evolution. If you want to be added you can comment or DM me, but also please suggest the names of those I am missing 🧪🌎🌐 go.bsky.app/8jFH7cS

Shark embryology, Wnt signaling, left-right brain asymmetry. There's a lot to enjoy in this new paper. Congratulations to the authors. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For #FluorescenceFriday, here's the spinal canal of a zebrafish embryo filled with #cilia (cyan).

"The overriding ambition (of Biology research) should be to capture meaning, rather than simply catalogue complexity" — from Paul Nurse's charming book What is Life?

Scoliosis is a common condition in which the spine curves to the side and rotates, often onsetting during adolescence. In our lab, we generate zebrafish with scoliosis-like spinal curves to try to understand the causes of this disease.

I always liked this quote in defense of basic science: "To feed applied science by starving basic science is like economizing on the foundations of a building so that it may be built higher. It is only a matter of time before the whole edifice crumbles". — George Porter

Many congratulations to Professor Judith Eisen @uoregon.bsky.social for winning the Streisinger Award for "sustained and foundational" work in the zebrafish field. Well deserved!

Arturo Rosenblueth was a pioneer of cybernetics and, along with Norbert Wiener, had this to say: "The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance". Let's remember that metaphors are useful for thinking and discussing science, but they are not reality.

Please check out our recent perspective paper, “Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology.” Huge thanks to the 50 scientists who came to California to discuss the future of #DevBio and contributed to the paper, and thanks to NSF for $! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

🧪 My department is hiring! Tenure track faculty position in genetics. Researchers using any eukaryotic model, including fungi and plants are encouraged to apply! We are a broad biology department with strengths across all kingdoms. Join us! Apply by March 1 tinyurl.com/y4evds8p

Postdocs going on the academic job market this year: there's still time to apply to Development's 'Pathway to Independence' programme: mentoring, training & networking to help with the transition to a PI position. Application deadline 31 Jan: journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

I always liked this quote in defense of basic science: "To feed applied science by starving basic science is like economizing on the foundations of a building so that it may be built higher. It is only a matter of time before the whole edifice crumbles". — George Porter

Random thought: Playing a game, one person says a word and the next person makes a new word by changing only a single letter: E.g. Rain — Raid — Paid — Pain — Gain — Grin — Grit — etc. Can all 4-letter words in the dictionary be connected like this? Do some miss out? How many?

The Biology Department at the University of Oregon @uoregon.bsky.social is hiring a department head. Apply by Feb 12th if interested, and share with others who might be. Reposts appreciated. careers.uoregon.edu/en-us/job/53...

It's very cold and strikingly beautiful in Eugene, Oregon, today.

I watched The Wizard of Oz over Christmas, and last night the sequel, Return to Oz. I'm not sure what I expected from the sequel, but it certainly wasn't this terrifying Foucauldian nightmare about childhood mental illness at the turn of the century A "children's" horror movie!

Paid 10-week summer research opportunity for life science undergraduates at University of Oregon @uoregon.bsky.social. Our American Heart Association-sponsored prepares fellows for life science careers, and includes mentored research, training workshops and networking opportunities. Please share!

12 asymmetric animals, bonus number 13: the Dahu The Dahu is a goat-like creature from Southern France. Amazingly, Dahu legs on one side (either left or right) are longer than its legs on the other side… this means the Dahu can only walk around mountains in one direction!

Okeydoke let’s do this thing 📢Preprint klaxon 📢 (h/t @mads100tist.bsky.social for that alert) I’m excited to share this work featuring cool data from a succession of 3 undergraduate researchers + contributions from collaborators at Harvard & Emory Med schools: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

12 asymmetric animals, day 12: slugs Land slugs breathe air through a pore called a pnemostome, an opening which connects to the animals single lung. This breathing pore is always on the right side, as exemplified here by the European red slug.

Fellow #zebrafish PIs: looking to get started with pIGLET and attending #SCZI2024? Rob Lalonde prepared pIGLET vector starter packs that @aburger2009.bsky.social and I will bring along! 🐽 Let me know if you're interested - looking forward to seeing everyone in Asilomar! 🐟

12 asymmetric animals, day 11: Honey badger Honey badgers are found in Africa, Southwest Asia and India. The subspecies signata, also called the speckled ratel and found in Sierra Leone, has asymmetric teeth, with an extra lower molar on the left side of the jaw.

12 asymmetric animals, day 10: P. microlepis This cichlid fish has an asymmetric mouth, twisted either to the left or right. Both left-sided and right-sided morphs live together in Lake Tanganyika.

12 asymmetric animals, day 9: cockeyed squid This deep-sea squid has a small right eye which faces downwards, scanning for bioluminescence below. The left eye, around twice the size of the right, bulges out of the head with a prominent yellow lens to see ambient sunlight.

12 asymmetric animals, day 8: Iwasaki's snail-eater This species of snake has asymmetric jaws, with more teeth on the right than the left. This helps the snake eat its major food source, snails with dextral (clockwise coiled) shells. For the snails, it's good to be sinister.

The impact of ancient DNA on our understanding of both human origins and recent history is one of the most amazing stories of our time. As technology continues to advance, new approaches offer new insights. A recent paper provides a cool example. 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

12 asymmetric animals, day 7: sperm whale The right nostril of sperm whales is part of the "phonic lip" used to make the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom. While the left nostril is on top of the head (still offset to the left) and is used as a blowhole.

Congratulations to Prof. Liz Robertson for being appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). Liz has made several significant contributions to mouse embryology and genetics including how to introduce mutations into the germline using engineered stem cells.

12 asymmetric animals, day 6: barn owl Barn owls show ear asymmetry, with the left ear opening being located higher on the head than the right. This asymmetry contributes to the owls remarkable ability to localize sounds.

12 asymmetric animals, day 5: fiddler crabs Male fiddler crabs have a large 'major' claw and a small 'minor' claw. The major claw is used for display signals and fighting. If a fiddler crab loses its major claw, it will grow a new one on the opposite side.

12 asymmetric animals, day 4: flatfish Flatfish have both eyes on one side of their head. Eyes begin in the normal place, then one migrates around the skull to join the other Some species have all left-sided eyes, others all right-sided while some show left/right randomization.

12 asymmetric animals, day 3: the wrybill. Another example from the world of birds, this New Zealand plover has an asymmetric beak which is bent sideways to the right. This is a directional asymmetry because all individuals of the species have a right-sided beak.

12 asymmetric animals, day 2: red crossbill. Red crossbills have asymmetric beaks in which the upper and lower mandibles cross each other such that the lower mandible sits to the left or right of the upper. The direction is random and so is referred to as an anti-symmetry.

12 asymmetric animals, day 1: the narwhal. Narwhals of the polar oceans have a large tusk. But it is not centrally located on their head; it grows from the left side. It is a modified upper left tooth that erupts through the lip and extends several feet. A curious canine!

Woohoo! Our latest paper, from PhD student Joseph Collins is out today in Developmental Cell! YAP and TAZ couple osteoblast precursor mobilization to angiogenesis and mechanoregulation in murine bone development. cell.com/developmental-…

Don’t let money go by. Supplements are one way to support individuals in your lab. www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/...

🚨🚨 Cool conference alert! Mark your calendars and start booking your flights to beautiful Dublin for the 6th European #Cilia2024 meeting. Check out the amazing program, with much more to come: cilia2024.ie I also hear they’ve got some decent beer over there…

First post, first Postdoc paper, first 🦓🐟 paper, first journal cover! 🥳 🎶On the fourth day of Christmas, Dev Cell gave to me: An improved Erk biosensor that detects oscillatory Erk dynamics driven by mitotic erasure during early development🎶 www.cell.com/developmenta...

Mark your calendars: SDB 83rd Annual Meeting: July 14-17, 2024, Atlanta, GA. www.sdbonline.org/2024mtg

First preprint from the lab! Do you care about environmental effects on reproduction? Cytokinesis? Maybe stem cells? We’ve got something for everyone! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37905121/

Development has announced the next call for applications for the 'Pathway to Independence' programme - aimed at supporting postdocs going on the job market. Application deadline 31 January 2024. Full details can be found at journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

TIME IS FLYING! (or worming/fishing/frogging/yeasting/mousing/planting) The early registration deadline for TAGC24 is only two days away. Register by Dec. 13 and save $100+. Also get a chance for a free/discounted room. Harmit Malik and I can't wait to see you in March! Register: bit.ly/46zzYcX

How can we reproducibly make high-quality transgenics in #zebrafish? Welcome pIGLET, two first phC31 integrase-based safe harbor sites & vector toolkit for broad transgenesis applications: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Congrats to Rob Lalonde & all! 🧵to meet pIGLET 🐽: