A sight to be seen - both the cloisters and the moles!

Today's Spotlight features Dr Vilaiwan Fernandes - Lister Fellow and rising leader in developmental biology. Vilaiwan's research explores how brain cells grow, connect, and organise themselves during development, helping us better understand how healthy brains are built. linktr.ee/ucllifescien...

Today!

This week! It's an hour earlier this time (3pm CET/2pm GMT/9am EST), don't miss it!

Join us next week!

Today! Join us on Zoom at 16:00 CET/15:00 GMT/10:00 EST. ucl.zoom.us/j/9146368438...

Coming up this week! Join us on Thursday for two exciting talks!

get in before it's too late!

Join us on Zoom for exciting talks! 👇

2 weeks till the deadline! Join our department @ucl-cdb.bsky.social as a Research Fellow to start your lab! Reach out if you want more details.

Drosophila, metabolism, germline - what's not to like?

Yet another example of why #Drosophila is such a great organism to work with! And it's all due to painstaking curation by dedicated experts @flybase.bsky.social

Zoom Metabolism in Development meetings continue with our very own @diegosainzdelamaza.bsky.social and @lempradllab.bsky.social next week! Register to get the zoom link here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🚨Seeking developmental or cell biologists🔬!🚨 Our department @ucl-cdb.bsky.social is looking to support scientists seeking to establish their lab with a fellowship. Deadline: 30 Jan. Apply here: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

We’re back with the Metabolism in Development & Physiology online seminar series 🎉 Thu 11 Dec 2025, 16:00 CET Speakers: Heather Christofk (Professor, UCLA) Yuanlingzi Tian (PostDoc, University of Glasgow)

Reminder to apply - talk applications accepted continuously, there is no deadline. We will be seeking speakers throughout all of next year, so if you have a story on metabolism in development you're excited to share, here's the perfect place:

Our lab is actively looking for posdocs and there is NOW an Open Call for Postdoc contracts (3 years) here: www.aei.gob.es/en/announcem...

Excited about your research on #metabolism in #development? We are too! Send in your abstracts to give a talk in these seminars.

New PhD opportunity studying oocyte biology. Excited about this new direction in the lab.

🔜Only one week to go 🎉! Looking forward to hosting the inaugural talks of our “Metabolism in Development & Physiology” seminar series. Join us by registering here: forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...

Please sign up for the mailing list here to get the Zoom link: forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...

Join us for a new zoom series on metabolism and development. This will be a monthly feature with PIs and trainees presenting. Sign up here (forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...) to get the Zoom link and join the mailing list.

Thanks for writing this - all of us in development need to hear this!

Interested in morphogens and how they can robustly specifiy different cell types with single-cell resolution? Check out this preprint combining experiments and modelling by our colleagues and partners in crime @ucl-cdb.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic meeting! Thanks @events.embl.org for hosting, @embo.org for funding this and to organisers and all attendees for thought-provoking and exciting science!

Looking forward to this! Great chance to catch up with everyone and all the amazing Drosophila research going on!

So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Lovely work by @martinestermann.bsky.social and colleagues from the Capel lab! Together with our recent work (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), this really makes a strong case that lactate is crucial to supporting male germ cells in vivo - from flies to mammals.

🆕🧪‼️ 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...

Somatic cells compartmentalise their metabolism to sustain germ cell survival https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.22.666113v1

Essential reading! How often do we really need to change plastic pipette tips? We've been washing and reusing tips in our lab too, led by Inês Baldaia who really led on making sure that tip washing doesn't interfere with data.

Imagine a world without Flybase... Let's all help out if we can!

Last week to submit abstracts! Looking forward to #EDRC2025 and amazing #Drosophila research in Alicante! @fly-eds.bsky.social @fly-jedi.bsky.social

Remember that early bird registration closes on the 15th of May and abstract deadline is the 28th of May. Book early for the best prices and a chance to present your work at #EDRC2025

Thanks @dev-journal.bsky.social for featuring our paper - led by Rodrigo Garcia and Linus Schumacher in Edinburgh. So much exciting #germcell biology at the #GRC meeting!

Calling all fly researchers! Submit your abstracts before 28 May! Looking forward to seeing all the great #drosophila research going on at #EDRC2025 in Spain @edrc2025.bsky.social @fly-jedi.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social

Been looking forward to reading this since Amelie presented her poster at the #CSHL #germcells meeting!

Ideally, we'd like authors to cite a recent FlyBase publication. There's a blue box with the text "Citing FlyBase' on our homepage that takes you a page detailing how to cite us wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

New paper from the lab! We study how gene expression is controlled post-transcriptionally to determine stem cell fate. plos.io/3Dw1W07 a 🧵:

A role for translational control in stem & differentiating cells. @amoyellab.bsky.social &co show that signals from the #StemCell niche induce changes in translational rates (via eIF3d1 phosphorylation) to control stem cell fate in #Drosophila testis 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3Dw1W07

Love it!

Want to establish your lab in London to study important questions in cell and/or developmental biology? Our department @ucl-cdb.bsky.social is looking to sponsor independent research Fellows. Details here: bit.ly/4jzae7u and informal enquiries welcome. Come join us!

This is a big problem! @royalsociety.org many of us would be happy to support efforts to change this and make the UK an attractive place for scientists to come.

How does regulation of stem cell proliferation interplay with multistate dynamics? I'm chuffed to have my first PhD student Rodrigo García-Tejera's second article (with me) published in @dev-journal.bsky.social, great collaboration with @amoyellab.bsky.social and Ramon Grima.

There's still time to apply! Come join our lab and study how somatic metabolism influences germ cell development.

We're hiring a postdoc! Come join us and work on understanding how somatic cells support the germline. This project aims to understand metabolic compartmentalisation between somatic and germ cells and how it contributes to fertility. Apply here www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

We're hiring a postdoc! Please forward to people you know who are looking for positions. Interested in studying how metabolism is wired to support fertility? 🔬🪰 Come join us! Ad to go live next week, but informal enquiries encouraged.

New lab preprint! Very excited to share this work, led by Ruoxu Wang. We study how stem cell fate is controlled post-transcriptionally and find a new regulator of translation initiation: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...