“At 15, he was ranked last out of 250 students in a notorious biology report. His teacher wrote: “He will not listen but will insist on doing his work in his own way. I believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing, this is quite ridiculous.”

Nature research paper: The evolution of facultative symbiosis in stony corals go.nature.com/43bS70Q

Oben: Die Rue de Rivoli in Paris heute. Unten: Die Rue de Rivoli 1983. Und nein, die Autos fahren nicht einfach woanders. Sie haben sich in Luft aufgelöst, weil die Autofahrer zu Fahrradfahrern geworden sind. Liebe alles daran❤️

A Nobel-winning scientist of great modesty and humour, John Gurdon died on 7 Oct. Not only did he make a discovery that laid the foundations for stem cell research, he also created one of the best environments for research at the Wellcome/CRUK Gurdon Institute wellcome.org/news/sir-joh...

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

Sanjay's amazing story is available on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Congratulations to @sanjay-n.bsky.social, @ulrichtechnau.bsky.social and everyone else 🎉

Just came back from a great meeting in Tutzing on the biology of basal Metazoa. Excellent talks, fantastic posters and very kind and vital community. Thanks also to our keynote speaker, Cassandra Extavour. She was the highlight of the meeting. Thanks everyone for contributing.

Finally, Andi Denner finished his PhD. Congratulations for a a long and successful thesis work.

Happy to be presenting our story on Nematostella self-organization :) tune in if you like to hear what organizes the organizer in cnidarian gastruloids! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

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

We knew that cnidarians have stunning regenerative capacities. But the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the self-organization of gastruloids of Nematostella surprised us. A story of cell sorting and Notch signaling. Please check out the work of Sanjay's PhD work: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Join our campus! The Vienna BioCenter PhD program offers 20+ fully-funded positions: Open call now! Read more: www.vbcphd.at Our working language is English #viennabiocenter #vbcphd

📰 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...

Close inter-lab collaborations with shared PhD students and postdocs are the future! Julia is the hero of this work, she is currently looking for postdoc labs …

Finally, the excellent postdoc work of Emmanuel Haillot is out, where he dissected the integration of Wnt, MAPK and Notch signaling in defining mesoderm and endoderm identities in the diploblast Nematostella. Strikingly similar to sea urchins. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

All academic institutions will soon realize we are in this together, facing an autocratic ruler who wants to destroy academia, science, and public health (together with media and courts - pick up a history book). There is only one solution - stand up, speak up, and, critically, collective action.

Very happy that the first article from my postdoc work in the Tomancak lab is now published @PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... We studied the self-organization of actin in aggregates made from Hydra cells. Thread below (1/9)

Not at all a coincidence that this type of clean-energy comms - which presents a positive case in forceful terms rather than trying to dance around the issue - is coming almost exclusively from non-US firms. The comparison tells us a lot about why the IRA failed. More below: 1/9

What is the evolutionary origin of neuronal regulation by Ligand gated ion channels? In a collaboration with the lab of Stefan Gründer we show that several inhibitory pLGICs predicted to be GABA-A receptors were actually Glutamate-activated Chloride channels. See www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Role of klf2 in innovation of the Pmar1-HesC double-negative gate in echinoderms. Read this Research Article by Nina Levin, Natalia Gogoleva and the team: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Great opportunity! The Uni Vienna has launched a call (APART) for 4-funding for outstanding postdocs from a US institution. The host lab has to nominate by 1 August a candidate for further selection. Anyone interested in our work please contact me by email with CV/motivation letter. Hurry up!

It's finally here! Great start of the summer. We got our latest preprint from @chemamd.bsky.social in @qmulsbbs.bsky.social @qmulse.bsky.social, showing evidence of developmental system drift in the specification of dorsoventral (belly vs back) axis in annelids 🪱🪱🪱 #DevBio #EvoDevo

@rokofler.bsky.social uncovered a treasure cove in Drosophila populations here. Remarkable and highly relevant findings on horizontal transfer of all kinds of TEs, irrespective of their transposition type.

We've just been awarded a grant to study the cellular basis of regeneration – to track the progenitors of sensory organs in the context of leg regeneration, in our favourite crustacean tinyurl.com/parhyale, based on live imaging and cell tracking. The project involves some cool collaborations... 1/3

We are looking for new colleagues to come join us in Galway as group leaders (Junior and Senior). The Centre for Chromosome Biology is a great place and it is a good time to join. Please reach out if you want to chat about the opportunity! www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Happy to be involved in UNICIL, our new Wellcome Trust Discovery project coordinated by @micromotility.bsky.social We will study ciliary dynamics across scales and organisms. A long-term #postdoc position will be available at Heidelberg University […] [Original post on biologists.social]

I loved collaborating on this work. @amir-f.bsky.social and @kaessmannlab.bsky.social discovered that a microRNA (!!!) is key for dosage compensation in birds. The biology is beautiful, and the implications far-reaching. As with all great work, it generates fascinating new questions.

👏 Alwin Köhler, group leader and scientific director, has received an @erc.europa.eu Advanced Grant! His project will explore how nuclear pore complexes remodel nuclear membranes to form functional channels ➡️ tinyurl.com/3wcvexc9 #ERCAdG @univie.ac.at @meduniwien.ac.at

David’s @davidmoersdorf.bsky.social cool paper about the role of Chordin in BMP signaling in the sea anemone Nematostella is finally out www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cool paper! Congratulations to @chemamd.bsky.social, Emanuel Haillot and everyone else involved! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Zhu, @zhouqi1982.bsky.social et al. produce a chromosome-level genome assembly of the Amur rat snake (Elaphe schrenckii) using HiFi and Hi-C data (1.69 Gbp; N50 = 215 Mb; 97.4% BUSCO), an important resource for studying snake evolution. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf086 #genome #snake

Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Our chromosome-scale genome assembly of Nanomia septata, a siphonophore - doi.org/10.1101/2025... . Much larger than many other cnidarian genomes, fewer chromosomes, and highly rearranged. No smoking gun for how they achieve complex colony-level organization. Great work Namrata Ahuja and friends!

We're hiring! Our lab is looking for a postdoc to investigate the #evodevo of #cephalopod brains. Did you recently graduate, and do you want to join our EU #WEAVE project with the Simakov and @simon-sprecher.bsky.social labs? Find the application form👇Thanks for RT 🐙🦑 www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

New preprint from the @arnausebe.bsky.social lab! 💐 Here @crisnava.bsky.social, @seanamontgomery.bsky.social & collaborators develop a novel ChIPseq protocol, and demonstrate its huge potential to study the evolution of chromatin function and regulation across the eukaryotic tree of life.

We review self-organisation of organizers through the lens of Cnidarians (primarily Hydra and Nematostella) and propose an integrative Mechanochemical view for the same. Happy to be part of the 100 year Mangold-Spemann special edition @cellsdev.bsky.social @ulrichtechnau.bsky.social

Dr. Anthony Fauci urges Americans not to accept "Normalization of Untruths".

Impossible to «like» this thread but important to know. Wishful thinking that this man-made unnecessary crisis will boost societies’ understanding of and commitment to Science in the longer run, but lamenting the damage done to people in the meantime.

Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10

Saddened to hear of John Reinitz's death Reliably contrarian and argumentative but razor sharp, original and inspirational His approach to dev bio was a decade and more ahead of the field biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/news/john-re...

About 100 years the Mangold-Spemann organizer was published and this has been one of the most fruitful and inspiring concepts in Developmental Biology. But how can organizers self-organize? In this review we summarize the knowledge how cnidarians do that: doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

It would be very healthy for human species, If there is less Discouragement.

A hermit crab with a multi-zoanthid in place of its shell! 1182 m #okeanos #saveNOAA Solide seamount

A #deepsea bottom living jelly, Ptychogastria likely 1215 m #okeanos #saveNOAA Solide seamount!

The Americans are doing to Kseniia what the Russians did to Brittney Griner for having 0.7 grams of cannabis oil. Except no one is coming to negotiate her freedom and Harvard is sitting on their hands. I am so ashamed. Please share this story. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/s...

Finally out - our paper on shell field and spicule #EvoDevo in a variety of #mollusks such as #scaphopods, #cephalopods, #aplacophorans, and of course #polyplacophorans. Among others we show evolutionary highly conserved gene expression in aculiferan spicules onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

My group is hiring a new Postdoc to work on gene regulation and chromatin in Nematostella. Please RT! For more information see here: gahanlab.com tinyurl.com/34xke35d

Kick-off of the late afternoon session at the #DevStem2025 meeting. Sanjay Narayanaswamy @sanjay-n.bsky.social from @ulrichtechnau.bsky.social lab discusses germ layer biology in #Nematostella, exploring a powerful gastruloid system. For a primer on gastruloids, see doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...