#DBfeature Elongation of the nascent avian foregut requires coordination of intrinsic and extrinsic cell behaviors By Olivia Powell, Emily Garcia, Vanshika Sriram, Yi Qu, Nandan L. Nerurkar tinyurl.com/52pecyc5

super exciting new system for studying and manipulating branching! 🌳🌳🙆‍♀️

Alex Hughes Lab@hugheslabpenn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

@lsprahl.bsky.social and Ronald Canlla in the lab just published a detailed study on remote-controlled epithelial budding morphogenesis. We can direct budding, tubule elongation, and perhaps branching in human kidney organoids via a light-activated RET receptor. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

so fortunate to work with everyone on this mission, especially paul who made the magic happen✨

Amartya Tashi Mitra@binturong98.bsky.social · 4mo ago

It was such a blast to be involved in this with @azyhuang.bsky.social and others! Special thanks to Paul Maier, the microscopy guru

organs develop in a dynamic environment where their boundaries are constantly changing shape, relaxing, compressing, etc. in synchrony with the embryo. see how this inspired us to create a material for optimal organoid bioprinting & self-organization! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stress-relaxing granular bioprinting materials enable complex and uniform organoid self-organization - Nature Materials

A tunable granular biomaterial matrix is developed to support long-term bioprinting. Stress relaxation at high strains and long timescales is shown to be important for tissue self-organization in inte...

nature.com

Proteins often bind targets using avidity, the combined interaction strength of multiple weak binders. Now we’ve harnessed this principle for compact, *single*-component optogenetic tools for translocation. Lead by phenom PhD student @dennishuang.bsky.social #synbiosky🧵 📝 tinyurl.com/aviatar

so excited to have this finally out!!! many cool tools to consider for the organoid enthusiasts and beyond🤩

Alex Hughes Lab@hugheslabpenn.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Check out our new @natbiotech.nature.com review on how to build kidneys & other epithelial organs using principles from embryonic development. Led by Emma Warrner and @azyhuang.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/e3fy0

🚨New preprint(1/2)! We show that RTK fusion oncoproteins broadly suppress EGFR signaling. How? Sequestration of adapters as the shared principle. Led by superb PhD student Carol Gao. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Implications for drug tolerance/resistance, and includes one big surprise🫧.👇

*New preprint alert* uncovering a mechanical pacemaker that synchronizes nephron formation with branching of the kidney's epithelial tubule tree. Read below to learn about this twisty journey lead by Sam Grindel and Sachin Davis in the lab. [Movie by Nils Lindstrom] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#Cellbio2025 come see the latest from the lab, including on opto/thermogenetics, condensates, RTK fusions, stress granules, biosensors of clustering. Talks and posters today and tomorrow!

#CellBio2025 come check out the workshop on applying optogenetic tools in cell biology! Today (Sunday) at 5:30p in Rm 121. Note that this session does *not* appear in the app for some reason

#cellbio2025 please stop by my talk (Mon 4:35 evolution) and poster (Mon 12:45 #B479 optogenetics) tmr! Title: Intraprotein domain competition dictates pulsatile response of photoreceptors shaped by temperature and evolution. BcLOV4 as a model. I’m also looking for postdoc opportunities!

if you are attending #CellBio2025 please check out the posters from our lab @hugheslabpenn.bsky.social. The lab will have a great showing this year featuring my talented colleagues @lsprahl.bsky.social @danielalber.bsky.social and many others!

PAK4 dynamics at actively remodeling vertices 🌟 ⚡👀 Check out our recent preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PAK4 promotes vertex remodeling to maintain epithelial integrity and barrier function

Cell-cell junctions are essential for epithelial integrity and barrier function, but the mechanisms regulating their remodeling remain unclear. Here, we investigated the role of the junctional kinase ...

biorxiv.org

Babli Adhikary@babliadhikary.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Our study sheds new light on how p21-activated kinase 4; PAK4 is recruited to epithelial junctions by Afadin, drives dynamic vertex remodeling in both cells and embryos.

📢Call for papers. Submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – The Extracellular Environment in Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells Guest Editors: Alex Hughes and Rashmi Priya 📅 Deadline: 1 March 2026 journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex... #DevBio

Excited to have it online @natcomms.nature.com many many thanks to @lsprahl.bsky.social, Karen Xu, Jason Burdick, Rob Mauck and other talented people involved!

Alex Hughes Lab@hugheslabpenn.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Aria Huang's @azyhuang.bsky.social paper is out on beautiful embryonic kidney 3D cultures that branch properly and enable live defect analysis. She also finds intriguing effects of adhesion and stiffness on explant size, shape, and nephron formation - boundary conditions matter! rdcu.be/eBSUK

Very excited to share the first preprint from the lab: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... We investigated neural crest migration all the way from head to tail of the Zebrafish embryo and we found their nuclei suffer dramatic deformations. Want to know of they cope with feeling squeezed? 🐟🐠🐟

Our own @azyhuang.bsky.social is a student this year representing the kidney fanatics

two men are standing next to each other with the words `` day 1 you got this '' written on them .

ALT: two men are standing next to each other with the words `` day 1 you got this '' written on them .

media.tenor.com

Marine Biological Laboratory@mblscience.bsky.social · last yr.

The 2025 Embryology course is underway at the MBL! As the students dive in, enjoy this throwback from the 2021 course by Rebecca M. Varney. These male C. elegans spicules were imaged on a Zeiss Micro 900 with laminin proteins labeled with green fluorescent protein. #sciencestartshere

Are you interested in synthetic and systems biology approaches to study #spatiotemporal processes in cancer? Join NCI for virtual workshops on May 13, 15, & 20 (next week!) from 12:00–4:30 PM ET: registration: events.cancer.gov/nci/syntheti... #SynSysBio4SpatialCancerResearch

How can an individual protein show adaptation? The light- and temp-sensitive BcLOV4 gives a pulse of translocation during a step input of light. Answer in our preprint: *intra-molecular* feed-forward regulation. bit.ly/3Rg9veD A @bugajlab.bsky.social collab with @nmrkaygee.bsky.social 🧵

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics @naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor! How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?

Miso made in space tastes nuttier! Researchers successfully make miso at the #InternationalSpaceStation, confirming that making fermented foods in space is possible. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... @medialab.bsky.social Maggie Coblentz @novo-nordisk.bsky.social Joshua D. Evans @cp-cell.bsky.social

1. Struggling to integrate single-cell datasets? Finding it hard to resolve clear differentiation trajectories? Reveal the underlying structure in your data with CONCORD.

🎇Our new paper in @ScienceMagazine : Kidney Multiome-Based Genetic Scorecard Reveals Convergent Coding and Regulatory Variants. @Hongbo919Liu science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Kidney multiome-based genetic scorecard reveals convergent coding and regulatory variants

Kidney dysfunction is a major cause of mortality, but its genetic architecture remains elusive. In this study, we conducted a multiancestry genome-wide association study in 2.2 million individuals and...

science.org

Woohoo! Our latest preprint, from @madhura0327.bsky.social, is out today on bioRxiv! YAP regulates periosteal expansion in fracture repair. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy holidays from the Hughes lab ✨ #fluorescencefriday

yayyyyy

Alex Hughes Lab@hugheslabpenn.bsky.social · 2y ago

Aria Huang's @azyhuang.bsky.social pre-print just came out on effects of adhesion and stiffness on global kidney explant size, shape and nephron forming efficiency. Along the way, she achieves beautiful 3D cultures that retain proper branching geometry, check it out! biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Of course it is out the day after my conference talk 🤣😅 at least it’s available for anyone who wants to see pretty figures

bioRxiv Developmental Biology@biorxiv-devbio.bsky.social · 2y ago

Engineering kidney developmental trajectory using culture boundary conditions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.10.627798v1

These dancing cells and I are in San Diego for #CellBio2024 this week! Come check out my talk during the "Building Biological Tubes" subgroup on Sunday, December 15 at 9am to hear me present some progress towards controlling epithelial organization in kidney tissues and organoids.

Those at @ascbiology.bsky.social #CellBio2024 conference tomorrow, check out @azyhuang.bsky.social Aria Huang's work on 'truly' 3D, live explant cultures of mouse embryonic kidneys for studying cell dynamics and congenital disease!

inaugural bluesky introduction: science(maybe) meetings happened in 2024