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...

Motile cilia modulate neuronal and astroglial activity in the zebrafish larval brain

The brain uses a specialized system to transport cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), consisting of interconnected ventricles lined by motile ciliated ependymal…

sciencedirect.com

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...

Analysis of a shark reveals ancient, Wnt-dependent, habenular asymmetries in vertebrates - Nature Communications

The evolutionary origin of habenular asymmetries is elusive. Here they show morphological and molecular conservations indicative of an ancient origin in vertebrates and identify Wnt signaling as a cor...

nature.com

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/...

Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology

ABSTRACT. The field of developmental biology has declined in prominence in recent decades, with off-shoots from the field becoming more fashionable and highly funded. This has created inequity in disc...

journals.biologists.com

🧪 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...

Hexafluoro slows retinal degeneration and improves visual function in zebrafish models of Usher synd...

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

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! 🐟

Christian Mosimann@chrmosimann.bsky.social · 3y ago

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 🐽:

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.