Congrats to Hughes lab PhD student Ronald Canlla and all other ASN KidneyCure Fellowship/Grant recipients! Ronald's work is achieving remote control over epithelial morphogenesis using light, focusing on the kidney's ureteric bud. www.kidneycure.org/pages/qa.aspx

New Toettchlab paper alert! Harrison Oatman just published his beautiful work combining software design for "smart" microscopy+optogenetics and some really beautiful work understanding EGFR-driven collective cell migration. www.cell.com/cell-systems...

You may have heard about the OMB rule change that will put politics over federal grants. However bad you think it is? It's probably worse. Thanks to @theverge.com for letting me report this one out. There is still time to comment. bit.ly/4v2X4nQ

The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it

“Everyone will be affected, not just scientists. Every community in the country.“

bit.ly

In our latest editorial @amjeve.uk & I take on the dreaded impact factor Like Monday mornings no one likes them but you can't ignore them & they keep coming around However there are things we should all do as authors, reviewers & editors journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

The elephant in the room: impact factor

Summary: This Editorial offers an honest look at impact factor trends in developmental biology, explains how Development serves its community, and makes the case that sustaining developmental biology ...

journals.biologists.com

1/🧵 Can transcription factor condensate formation be explained without phase separation? Our new preprint introduces SPARK, a simulation tool that reproduces condensate behavior (clustering, fusion, FRAP) from diffusion & binding kinetics alone. Movie: 60 sec FRAP sim www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

It's difficult to succinctly summarize a entire germ layer, but Aaron Zorn, Scott Rankin and I tried recently! Our "Endoderm at a Glance" review with @dev-journal.bsky.social is out now. shorturl.at/kHf9Y

For #FluorescenceFriday, an E10 embryo showing Pax2 localization. #DevelopmentalBiology

These images show live embryos of animals (jellyfish, crustacean, worm, sea urchin, sea squirt, beetle) and one of animals closest single-celled relatives. They were captured taking advantage of fluorescent proteins localised on the outer membrane of cells, allowing us to observe cell outlines. 1/9

Mapping nerves in a whole embryos. We find that across species and development stages, embryonic nerves display (beautiful) fractal geometry. More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper! Self-generated gradients in macrophage chemotaxis. Just published, by the esteemed Abhi Kiran and many collaborators. A short skytorial follows. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Macrophages self-generate and refine chemotactic gradients during migration towards complement C5a

Macrophages don’t just follow chemoattractants to locate sites of infection, they can also create and sculpt them as guidance cues but the mechanisms remain unclear. This study shows that macrophages ...

journals.plos.org

Earthset from Artemis II. I am overcome.

🥳 I am happy to share our latest manuscript published in @natcellbio.nature.com We use #Gastruloids to study #CellCompetition during early mammalian development and find not only that this is highly pronounced in our system but also tightly restricted in time. (1/12) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mosaic gastruloids reveal a temporal restriction for developmental cell competition - Nature Cell Biology

Frenster et al. utilize mosaic mouse gastruloids as a model of cell fitness and competition, identifying a temporal window between primed pluripotency and early gastrulation during which cell competit...

nature.com

@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...

New preprint from the lab! How do tissue shapes influence cell fate decisions? By manipulating brain organoid geometry, we show that lumen rounding directs apical progenitor division mode and promotes the emergence of basal progenitors. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

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

Excited to highlight a new preprint about mechanical contributions to tissue homeostasis, from the Manning group in collaboration with the amazing Carien Niessen and Sara Wickstrom @sarawickstrom.bsky.social labs, spearheaded by Dr. Somiealo Azote: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

If you are considering where to publish new research on extracellular/non-autonomous/geometric/physical cause and effect in development, consider our @dev-journal.bsky.social special issue, with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social!

Development@dev-journal.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We welcome submissions to our upcoming special issue on the extracellular environment, guest edited by @hugheslabpenn.bsky.social and @rashmi-priya.bsky.social. Send your #devbio, #regeneration and #stemcell papers by 1 March 2026. For more information, see journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex...

Submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – The Extracellular Environment in Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells Guest Editors: Alex Hughes (@hugheslabpenn.bsky.social) & Rashmi Priya (@rashmi-priya.bsky.social) Deadline: 1 March 2026 journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex...

Developmentally inspired synthetic kidney engineering - @hugheslabpenn.bsky.social @pennengineering.bsky.social go.nature.com/46tacJq

Developmentally inspired synthetic kidney engineering - Nature Biotechnology

Hughes and colleagues present a developmentally inspired tissue engineering strategy to overcome barriers in kidney tissue generation, enhancing prospects for renal replacement therapies.

go.nature.com

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

Developmentally inspired synthetic kidney engineering

Nature Biotechnology - Hughes and colleagues present a developmentally inspired tissue engineering strategy to overcome barriers in kidney tissue generation, enhancing prospects for renal...

rdcu.be

Our new paper just out! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Optogenetic Translocation to Subcellular Compartments through Regulation of Protein Avidity

Inducible translocation to subcellular compartments is a common strategy for protein switches that control a variety of cell behaviors. However, existing switches achieve translocation through induced...

pubs.acs.org

Zikang (Dennis) Huang@dennishuang.bsky.social · last yr.

Check out our Aviatar toolkit for optogenetic translocation to arbitrary organelles! Simple, modular, compact, and many more.

How do cells orchestrate themselves to achieve a directional movement as a group? Hi, I’m @sayukihirano.bsky.social. In this thread, I’ll highlight key mechanisms of how cells communicate with each other to perform directional collective migration.

🚨 PhD Position Available 🚨 I’m recruiting a PhD student to join my lab at the Multiscale Imaging Centre (MIC), Münster, Germany. www.bischofflab.com/jobs Fully funded ✅ #Cellbio #Morphogenesis #Microscopy #Drosophila #PhD (Details Below) Original Posting: stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/d...

Defending PhD student, looking over their thesis: “If I knew then what I know now, I could’ve done all of this in like 9 months.” A thread about my favorite pioneering cave explorers and why I don’t think AI will ever “solve” biology.

With Byung Ho Lee and Kana Fuji as first/lead authors, @anne-grapin.bsky.social group, @utokyoofficial.bsky.social, Inst. of Physics of Academia Sinica, & @igbmc.bsky.social found the shape of lumens in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure & proliferation. www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...

Engineering the development of the pancreas

Researchers found that the shape of the fluid-filled cavities in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure and the rate cells divide.

mpi-cbg.de

🎉 Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2026 with an exciting VGZT seminar! 🗓️ Thursday, January 8th ⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET Our speakers are 👉 Jan Jakub Zylicz (@jzylicz.bsky.social) 👉 Anahi Binagui-Casas (@abinagui.bsky.social) See you there 👋

Blog post: Just quit Quitting projects in science is hard, but we should be doing a lot more of it. open.substack.com/pub/arjunraj...

Just quit

Quitting projects in science is hard, but we should be doing a lot more of it.

open.substack.com

🚨Preprint 2/2: Several studies implicate condensates in RTK fusion onco-signaling. So we were surprised to find that condensates are entirely dispensable😮(!). A study from proteins to mice, by dynamic duo @davidgonzmar.bsky.social and @trmumford.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 👇

🚨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🫧.👇