Fillip Port
@crisprflydesign.bsky.social
Scientist at the German Cancer Reseach Center in Heidelberg. We develop genome engineering tools for functional genomics. #CRISPR #Drosophila #openscience
Did you know that the cells of old animals contain much less mRNA than the cells of young ones? Let me share with you some results from an ongoing project in the lab, where we are finding that a progressive depletion of total mRNA abundance is a crucial part of aging 1/22
Cool holiday moment on the way to the beach. Main BBC News on the radio: "In a scientific breakthrough scientist have mapped all connections in a fly brain." 🐝💪🏼 @jefferis.bsky.social @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social @mmcosta.bsky.social @mrclmb.ac.uk Finally some pos news. Beach was also great.
Now out in Annu Rev Cancer Biol: "Beyond Mice and Men." We think of cancer as a disease of humans, as well as pets 🐈⬛ 🐕 & lab mice. But cancer is found across the animal tree of life, including clams and fruit flies. Comparative oncology has a lot to teach us. 🧵 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Beyond Mice and Men: Alternative Vertebrate and Invertebrate Models in Cancer Biology
While cancer looms large in the public and scientific minds, this can result in a quite narrow view of its range and manifestations. The centering of human clinical investigations and the popularity o...
annualreviews.org
Looking for model organism resources to follow on Bluesky? Here's a starter pack for you! go.bsky.app/Npxsd7h
Interested in using #Drosophila genetics & advanced imaging combined with modeling to study inter-organ transport and epithelial dynamics? We’re hiring a #PhD student @uni-muenster.de, based at the Multiscale Imaging Center and @sfb1348.bsky.social Graduate School. Apply here tinyurl.com/ypx74a5d
Why do you need an additional room for your lab? Well, the two cells we expanded last week completely fill our existing lab and we need a third replicate...
Ignacio Vega-Vásquez@igvegvas.bsky.social · last mo.(1/4) We are very excited to share our latest preprint from @sauer-lab.bsky.social: Mega Expansion Microscopy (Mega-ExM)! We combine iterative hydrogel expansion with whole-proteome NHS labeling and post-expansion immunostaining, reaching tunable expansion factors up to ~1500× in whole cells 🤯
Exclusive from Jason Mast and Brian Yang at @statnews.com who write "the disclosure raises concerns about the quality and transparency of China’s more lightly regulated pathway for drug trials." www.statnews.com/2026/08/05/c...
Once again, child dies in gene editing trial in China, rekindling debate on transparency and safety
With a second delayed report of a child's death in China, criticism is rising of a looser form of clinical trial. One expert: what "bothers me is the lack of transparency.'
statnews.com
🤯 Wow, this looks great. The combination of a sophisticated genetic toolbox and available connectome is so powerful for figuring out how animals do what they do. 🧪🪰
Yichen Luo 骆奕辰@camellyc.bsky.social · last mo.1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It's not often single author primary research papers are published in our field & it's even rarer when the author is a Nobel Prize winner Check out the new work by Eric Wieschaus in @dev-journal.bsky.social Flattening maternal gradients in Drosophila embryo journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
Maternal patterning in early Drosophila embryos: how much information can single maternal gradients supply?
Highlighted Article: Comparison of the patterning capacity of Drosophila embryos that have only one of the three maternal gradients known to control anterior posterior patterning.
journals.biologists.com
🚩 My 2010 PhD thesis is ‘70% AI’ I ran my 2010 PhD thesis through an AI detector. It flagged 70% as AI, then tried to sell me a ‘humanise’ fix. Either I am a time traveller, or these tools do not work. Link to my thesis in the comments to try yourself. #AIDetection #HigherEd 🧪 #AI
“Seven days after the girl’s medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction linked to the therapy…” This, in @science.org, is an important and tragic story. (It’s also an incredibly well reported one.) 🧪
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals
science.org
Join our team! The @bogdan_lab in Marburg is hiring a postdoctoral fellow and a doctoral student for studying innate cellular immune response to tumor cells and epidermal wounds in Drosophila. Apply: stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/4... stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/3...
(1/4) How is the timing of cell death regulated? We have developed a #liveimaging system to follow the dynamic cell death of #Drosophila hepatocyte-like cells (oenocytes) in intact pupae throughout metamorphosis. Watch some beautiful videos from our #preprint in this thread! #DevBio #CellDeath
Nice paper by the @hietakangaslab.bsky.social using multiplexed Cas12a mutagenesis to show that Salr acts as a negative regulator of growth and lipid storage. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
📣 📣 📣 📣 To all Drosophilists: the call for Workshop proposals at the 2027 European Drosophila Research Conference in Bonn (20-23 September 2027) is OPEN! Go to link below for instructions. Closing date: 30 September 2026. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 tinyurl.com/45y8trzd
Is the real issue less a guilty/not guilty verdict but - as in Tessier-Lavigne’s case - the fact this seems bound to occur in a hypercompetitive environment incentivizing fraud and a feudal system ill-equipped and disincentivized to address it?
Dalmeet Singh Chawla@dalmeet.bsky.social · 2mo agoNeuropathologist Adriano Aguzzi is not guilty of research misconduct or negligence, a probe of three dozen studies at the University of Zurich has found. My latest for @thetransmitter.bsky.social: www.thetransmitter.org/ethics/neuro... @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @charlespiller.bsky.social
After months of experiments, failed injections, unexpected results, and those rare moments when everything suddenly works - our manuscript is finally submitted. Read our newest story about a journey of tiny vesicles carrying big biological messages, now in bioRxiv. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
1/n What fraction of the human genome is essential for cells? Excited to share our preprint that explores this question by combining an unusual CRISPR system, phage promoters, and thousands of deletion launchpads. @sudpinglay.bsky.social @jshendure.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Fantastic recruitment for our local genome engineering scene. Welcome back to Heidelberg Jonas!
Jonas Koeppel@jonaskoeppel.bsky.social · 3mo ago22/n On a personal note, I’ll soon start an independent research group in the Genome Biology Unit at EMBL Heidelberg. If you enjoy this type of work and want to engineer genomes at the largest scale, please reach out! jonas-koeppel.github.io/koeppellab/ www.embl.org/groups/koepp...
Our Bachelor student Lara has lot's of talents beyond lab work (unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the amazing cake she made).
Our latest manuscript on (Harry Potter and) the effect of elevated temperature on embryonic development in flies. Even a small increase in temperature causes developmental defects, indicating problems in the face of global warming! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo - Nature Communications
Kale et al. show that nuclear divisions are defective at elevated temperature, leading to gastrulation defects and embryo lethality. Their work finds that F-actin – microtubule interactions during mit...
nature.com
Has anyone already claimed their money back they paid for fraudulent products?
Reese Richardson@reeserichardson.bsky.social · 4mo ago@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...
1/8 🚨 New preprint from the @sternberglab.bsky.social & @martinjinek.bsky.social labs! CRISPR-associated transposases (CASTs) insert large DNA cargoes at precise genomic locations — no double-strand breaks needed.
"Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained" www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails
Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.
nature.com
Got an obnoxious little finding you'd otherwise shelve? We did our first @micropub7n.bsky.social and it was a 10/10 experience! Find out why you should use caution if deploying Repo-GeneSwitch-Gal4 for investigating fly sleep. Led by @seakelly5.bsky.social & @keisukefukumura.bsky.social
Drosophila pan-glial inducible Gal4 line alters baseline sleep | microPublication
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