David Attenborough just turned 100 years old and is now officially too old to play with Lego

Pioneer of shotgun sequencing, synthetic biology and meta genomics J. Craig Venter leaves an impressive science legacy. Controversial, yes, but his unrelenting, curiosity driven science leaves me much to admire. 🧪 🧬

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo ago

J. Craig Venter, a scientist and entrepreneur who decoded the human genome, has died at 79.

Fintastic meeting as always, for those interested! #ZebrafishMeeting

aqmhd2026.bsky.social@aqmhd2026.bsky.social · 5mo ago

📢 Save the Date! The 12th Aquatic Models for Human Disease Conference (AQMHD) 🗓 October 17–21, 2026 📍 Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA Theme- Diving Deeper into Disease Biology: Emerging Models in Human Health #AQMHD #ModelOrganism #MBL #DiseaseBiology

Fully funded PhD post, UK/Home student, starting 01/06/26. Interested in working at the interface of dev bio, biophysics and cell biology? Great collaboration with Amy Beedle and @leonerossetti.bsky.social Informal enquiries welcome. Deadline 15/03 #neuralcrest www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...

Multiscale Models for Life (MM4L) Centre for Doctoral Training Funded Studentship: How ECM changes shape cellular decision making

Embryo, neural crest, developmental biology, cell biology, cell migration, biophysics, mechanobiology, bioengineering.

kcl.ac.uk

Neurod2 knockdown in Xenopus laevis tadpole brain retains cells in a proliferating, progenitor-like state doi.org/10.17912/mic... - I invite you to read the Beck lab's first ever micropublication! @zoologyotago.bsky.social and @otagobiochemist.bsky.social 🐸🧪 @micropub7n.bsky.social thank you!

@zoologyotago.bsky.social will have some new captive reared juvenile Southern Bell Frogs on display soon. Today they had a physical, and this one was especially grumpy about it. 🧪🐸

The last chapter of our RSNZ Marsden funded work on the microbiome and regeneration is out in Developmental Dynamics 🧪🐸🦠🧫https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dvdy.70088 @phoebechapman.bsky.social

Commensal skin bacteria interact with the innate immune system to promote tail regeneration in Xenopus laevis tadpoles

Background Tadpoles of the clawed frog Xenopus laevis can regenerate their tails following partial amputation, replacing the missing spinal cord, muscles, and fin. However, for a brief period of dev...

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

If you want to study a genetic disorder of growth, in a non-mammalian model system, Xenopus 🐸 has a unique advantage. As we show with Recql4 in G3 this month, it is possible to knock out a gene with CRISPR on just one side of the animal doi.org/10.1093/g3jo... 🧪

Unilateral loss of recql4 function in Xenopus laevis tadpoles leads to ipsilateral ablation of the forelimb, hypoplastic Meckel's cartilage, and vascular defects

Abstract. RECQL4 encodes a RecQ helicase, one of a family of DNA unwinding enzymes with roles in DNA replication, double-strand break repair, and genomic s

doi.org

RIP Professor Sir John Gurdon, who inspired so many of us in Developmental Biology, and of course, “the frog”.

James Briscoe@jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Very sad news, John Gurdon has died. A developmental biologist's developmental biologist, Nobel prize winner His work is the foundation of much of today's dev & stem cell bio. An inspiration to many, including me. Always asking questions & wanting the answers www.magd.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

If for some reason you do not already love arthropod appendages, check this paper!! Single‐cell sequencing reveals potential novel insights into appendage‐patterning and joint‐development in a spider - Medina‐Jiménez - Developmental Dynamics anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Single‐cell sequencing reveals potential novel insights into appendage‐patterning and joint‐development in a spider

Background Jointed appendages represent one of the key innovations of arthropods, and thus understanding the development and evolution of these structures is important for the understanding of the e...

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Dr Banerjee nailing it at #IXC25 meeting. Just look at the size of the screen we are presenting on! 🐸🧪🐸🧬

Wow, International Xenopus Meeting (IXC25) -- Matt Guille and EXRC opens the meeting with old friends new science @xenbase.bsky.social xenopusresource.org/20th-interna... #science #devbio #xenopus #frogs

Hey! Any #xenopus folk at IXC25 in Portsmouth? Use #IXC25 in your posts, and let us know how it’s going!!

FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

Harvard University lays off fly database team

The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.

thetransmitter.org

A super cool #single-cell spatial transcriptomic mouse #brain atlas is out! 🐭🧠🔬 Unveiling cell types, #gene expression, & TF dynamics across the whole brain! Awesome! ✨ #neuroskyence #neuroscience #compneurosky www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Single-cell spatial transcriptomic atlas of the whole mouse brain

Han et al. used snRNA-seq and Stereo-seq to generate a detailed mouse brain atlas with over 4 million spatially resolved cells and 29,655 genes. Their findings include region- enriched cell clusters a...

cell.com

Thrilled to share that our latest work on #DravetSyndrome is now out as a preprint! 🚀 This project, brilliantly led by @clarazourray.bsky.social and co-supervised by Serena Barral, brought together an incredible team. A huge thanks to everyone involved, exciting science ahead! 👏 shorturl.at/NdC79

Excited for day one of the first @ epilepsyinst.bsky.social conference! If you ever wanted to know how tadpoles can help us understand DEE please come and chat at poster 2

Epilepsy Research Institute (@epilepsyinst.bsky.social)

Radically advancing epilepsy research.

epilepsyinst.bsky.social

Excited to share our new 🧪 preprint! We show how useful #Xenopus tadpoles, which can be CRISPR engineered on one side, can be for understanding rare genetic disorders that affect growth and development. A study of recql4, with Louise Bicknell and Matt Riley-Bell. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Unilateral loss of recql4 function in Xenopus laevis tadpoles leads to ipsilateral ablation of the forelimb, hypoplastic Meckel's cartilage and vascular defects.

RECQL4 encodes a RecQ helicase, one of a family of DNA unwinding enzymes with roles in DNA replication, double strand break repair and genomic stability. Pathogenic variants in RECQL4 are clinically a...

biorxiv.org

The genetic basis of human height go.nature.com/4lnM152 #Review by Louise S. Bicknell, @joelhirschhorn.bsky.social & Ravi Savarirayan Free to read here: rdcu.be/egGQf @universityofotago.bsky.social @bostonchildrens.bsky.social @harvardmed.bsky.social @broadinstitute.org @mcri.bsky.social

The genetic basis of human height

Nature Reviews Genetics - Genetic factors that influence human height encompass rare monogenic variants as well as common and rare polygenic variants. In this Review, Bicknell et al. summarize our...

rdcu.be

If you, like me, get excited about appendages, it’s hard not love a velvet worm. Hydraulic #lobopods for legs, slime guns, a hidden knife in its jaws… and now bug of the year NZ 2025. Superb.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last yr.

Worm-like creature with ‘dark secret’ wins New Zealand bug of the year

Jaeger et al. screened Adeno-associated viral tools (AAVs) in three different amphibian species brains identifying serotypes that transduce neurons. Published in Developmental Cell. www.xenbase.org/xenbase/doNe... #science #devbio #xenopus #frogs

Our @zoologyotago.bsky.social department is home to many wonderful animals. These two adorable Southern Bell froglets were raised by Zoology PhD student Bryony Alden, and are part of a group destined for the display tank in our foyer. They just need to grow up a bit first! 🧪 #outreach #ambassadors

Excited to see our team’s work on insect colour evolution published in Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Human-driven evolution of color in a stonefly mimic

Rapid adaptation is thought to be critical for the survival of species under global change, but our understanding of human-induced evolution in the wild remains limited. We show that widespread defore...

science.org

A sad day for basic /fundamental research, our government has scrapped Marsden funding to humanities and social science and the sky for science just got a little less blue. 😭🧪

Bronwyn Hayward@bmhayward.bsky.social · 2y ago

I do not yet have a comment on this but I ask all New Zealand researchers and businesses read this and consider the full impact of this signal #nzpol www.beehive.govt.nz/release/mars...

Best question following a talk today.. “if these frogs have thousands of offspring, why isn’t the world covered in frogs?”

OK If we are moving to Bluesky I am rescuing my favourite ever twitter thread (Jan 2019). The renamed: Bluesky-sized history of neuroscience (biased by my interests)

@phoebechapman.bsky.social latest paper on how #Xenopus tadpole skin gets colonised by microbiota. 🧪🐸🦠

Phoebe Chapman@phoebechapman.bsky.social · 2y ago

Recently published (with @frogsquisher.bsky.social and other very valuable contributors not yet here): our paper looking at how skin microbiomes establish in Xenopus laevis. Watch this space for the next installment about the role they play in tadpole tail regeneration #microbiome #xenopus #frog

Assembloids have emerged as a powerful tool for studying previously inaccessible processes of development and tissue homeostasis. In our article in Cell Stem Cell, we summarize advances in the generation & application of neural and non-neural #assembloids to explore complex cell-cell interactions.

Hello world! We’re here to spread the love of our favorite model organism Xenopus. Give us a follow for your daily moment of Xen(opus)!