The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/

A fish that can drop a beat?!? The freshwater drum(Aplodinotus grunniens) and its saltwater relatives make drumming sounds by rapidly contracting muscles against a specialized swim bladder. Rock on 🥁 #SciComm #illustration #fish #SciArt #ichthyology

My first PhD chapter is out! How do related fishes adapt to eat different foods? And how do they change as they grow? 🧵 doi.org/10.1002/jmor...

Using light-activated CRISPR in zebrafish, we triggered synchronized DNA breaks and track the repair process. ⚡🐟⚡ 

 Well ... DNA repair is very different in embryos compared to tissue culture cells. Embryos repair DNA breaks incredibly fast - within minutes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hey, craniofacial and development folks! Check out a new preprint from me and @crumplab.bsky.social about the developing jaw. Here, we show how major signaling pathways establish distinct compartments along the oral-aboral axis. I'm excited to share it with you all!

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Signal triangulation coordinates cell fate decisions in the developing jaw https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.07.716963v1

Real-time single-molecule imaging in zebrafish embryos uncovers non-canonical translation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697684v1

Not that long ago, in vivo mouse enhancer design was a dream. Today, it's a reality! Using transfer deep learning to design de novo synthetic embryonic enhancers active in the heart, limb, and CNS. Great collab with @alex-stark.bsky.social lab! @ucibiosci.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social

Alex Stark@alex-stark.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Our preprint "Predictive design of tissue-specific mammalian enhancers that function in vivo in the mouse embryo" is on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... . Amazing collaboration by @shenzhichen1999.bsky.social, Vincent Loubiere (@impvienna.bsky.social,@viennabiocenter.bsky.social),... (1/2)

We need to build lots of new transgenic lines that are both very bright and photostable, so I was excited to test membrane fusions of the three published mStayGold variants compared to mNeonGreen. We injected mRNA into zebrafish embryos and imaged at 24hpf. 2/7

🎄 Day 1 of the 24 Days of Development ✨🧬 This study shows how different fixation methods (PFA vs. TCA) change what researchers can visualize in chicken embryos using HCR or IHC. 🔍🐣🔬 doi.org/10.1016/j.yd...

Midline tissue formation in zebrafish development This Research Highlight showcases the work from Robert Morabito, Benjamin Martin (@blmartin.bsky.social) and colleagues @stonybrooku.bsky.social : journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Lots of great discussion about developmental variability here at #GastrulationReloaded! Super important to consider, and current tools have the power for this. Related to this recent paper showing that mild phenotypes are more variable than severe ones. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A quadratic paradigm describes the relationship between phenotype severity and variation - Nature Communications

Phenotype variation is higher in mutants than wild types. Examining a range of mutant severities, this study unexpectedly found that variation decreases in severe conditions. A quadratic trend best fi...

nature.com

John Gurdon, former Group Leader and Head of @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social has died. Despite calling himself a "total non-intellectual” his work to reprogramme somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells transformed the field of developmental biology. More: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/john-gurdon-... #LMBNews

A huge shoutout to all the dedicated grants management specialists at the NIH who are working around the clock to push grants out before the Sep 30 deadline. And also to the POs responding to frantic emails. Not an easy job under the best of circumstances and right now it's the pits. Thank you!

A giant in molecular biology and virology has passed. RIP David Baltimore. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s...

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87

nytimes.com

#DBfeature Loss of KAT6B causes premature ossification and promotes osteoblast differentiation during development by Maria Bergamasco, Jacqueline Ogier, Alexandra Garnham, Lachlan Whitehead, Kelly Rogers, Gordon Smyth, Rachel Burt, Anne Voss, Tim Thomas tiom33.short.gy/DB520,141-154

Happy to share a new preprint from my lab! We characterize the on/off kinetics, light dosage-dependence, and more for a suite of optogenetic signaling activators in zebrafish embryos 💡 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An optogenetic toolkit for robust activation of FGF, BMP, and Nodal signaling in zebrafish

Cell signaling regulates a wide range of biological processes including development, homeostasis, and disease. Accessible technologies to precisely manipulate signaling have important applications in ...

biorxiv.org

Congratulations to Gage Crump, professor and vice-chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research @keck.usc.edu on receiving the 2025 USC Provost Mentoring Award! @crumplab.bsky.social @stemcell.keck.usc.edu stemcell.keck.usc.edu/gage-crump-r...

Congratulations to Camilla Teng, for winning the "Platform presentation SDB prize" for post-docs at the Northwest SDB meeting, which sounds like it was a fantastic meeting! Camilla will be on the faculty job market soon, so look out for her! @socdevbio.bsky.social @ctbatucsf.bsky.social

The outer ear is a mammalian innovation but where did it come from? In our study in Nature, Mathi Thiruppathy and colleagues find that the outer ear arose from modification of an ancestral gill program first originating in marine invertebrates. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

Time to recycle this xmas brittle star HCR ⭐ Happy holidays all!! ❄️🎁🎄 Stay tuned for some more brittle star data coming soon 😎 #fluorescence #microscopy #HCR #holidays #imaging

How can some vertebrates naturally recover from deafness? In work in PNAS, Tuo Shi finds that enhancers for sensory genes remain open but silent in sister cells of zebrafish and lizards, allowing these to make new inner ear sensory hair cells upon damage. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congratulations to newly minted PhD Tuo Shi. Some exciting news from Tuo is imminent. Stay tuned!

This from Liberali and Schier (2024) @priscaliberali.bsky.social @schierlab.bsky.social is just some of the things basic research in Developmental Biology alone has allowed since 1974. Fund basic research. Push back against anti-science nonsense pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38906136/

Deena Mousa@deenamousa.com · 2y ago

Inspired by this viral meme about DOGE: Research the US government has supported that can be made to sound silly, but that has contributed to human progress. Valuable work can often be framed as absurd out of context. That doesn’t make funding research any less important.🧵

Looking for something fun to read? Here’s a #popsci piece I did on the crazy history of cilia and left/right patterning in embryos. Remember #devbiolwriteclub Bluesky Boot Camp starts Monday Dec. 2! Please RS (re-skeet?) nautil.us/the-anatomic...

The Anatomical Quirk That Saved Dr. No

A wild tale of how scientists unraveled embryology's most fascinating mystery.

nautil.us