M. Brent Hawkins
@homeobox.bsky.social
Developmental genetics and evolution of the vertebrate skeleton. Postdoc in the Harris Lab at Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Every day is fin day. He/him/his.
And we're excited to have you joining us at Illinois!
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
"After you open a new bottle be sure to mark it with the date"
Thank you all so much for your support! The Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior is a fantastic group especially if you are ichthyologically minded. And there is @prairieresearch.bsky.social as well! Looking forward to doing science with great colleagues 🐟 sib.illinois.edu/departments/...
Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior | School of Integrative Biology | Illinois
sib.illinois.edu
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
Fish evolution at UIUC gets even stronger! 💪
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
New lab incoming ⌛️
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
This is going to be awesome!
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
Excited to see what’s next!
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
Omg you FINALLY announced!!! So excited to have you here!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Also Brent and I are gonna team teach upper level Evo-Devo together. Yep you hear that right: we are doing both plants and animals! It’s gonna be 🔥🔥🔥
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
At #2018SDB in Boston, @homeobox.bsky.social, @zhumeng123.bsky.social, and I were grad students scheduled to give talks at the same time, so we grabbed lunch instead to swap work and future plans. Eight years later, all three of us are opening labs! @socdevbio.bsky.social
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · 2w agoI am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
I am excited to open my lab at @ibioillinois.bsky.social in Spring 2027! We will use zebrafish & other fishy friends to reveal the genetic basis of large scale changes in the vertebrate body plan, and how this impacts both human health and evolution. Join me at UIUC! 🧬🧫🔬 www.hawkinslaboratory.com
I am so excited to announce that the Weber Lab will be opening in the Department of Anatomy, Physiology, & Cell Biology @ucdavisvetmed.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social. We will be investigating the development and evolution of vertebra size, shape, and function. And yes, the jerboas are coming with!
My editorial in this week’s Science @aaas.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪
The enduring pursuit of science in America
Imagine an American organization that convenes scientific experts not to advance any ideology or interest but to provide the nation with a clear understanding of complex problems. Imagine this body wo...
science.org
Excited to share the final published version of our work on the evolution of dorsal-ventral patterning in fins and limbs, now up on @currentbiology.bsky.social In review we added new single LARM element deletions to assess their impact on dorsality. Take a look! 🔬🧪🐟🐁 www.cell.com/current-biol...
M. Brent Hawkins@homeobox.bsky.social · last yr.We take for granted that our hands have two sides and can articulate in an endless number of ways. But what about a fish’s fin? Can a fish know something “like the back of its fin,” or have its future told with a fin palm reading? Check out this bluetorial to find out 👇🧪🧬🐟 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
New in @science.org ...since our first discoveries of early tetrapods, they have been thought of as "amphibians" characterized by aquatic larvae. But is this true? For the first time, we report exceptional fossils of stem tetrapod babies that upend this paradigm. 1/n www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Direct development of stem tetrapods across the fin-to-limb transition
Modern amphibians are characterized by an aquatic larval stage that ends abruptly with a period of widespread tissue remodeling (metamorphosis) upon transition to terrestrial adulthood. A transient la...
science.org
New preprint! We found that distinct positional identity patterns the central features of the zebrafish caudal fin. But, to quote WB Yeats, "The centre cannot hold:" when central identity is disrupted, the center "collapses" and the fin develops with a novel shape. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
One of my dream projects, ever since joining here in Basel, out now in @nature.com : single-cells 🤝 eco-morphological proxies rdcu.be/fiyso How cells and tissues adapt to dietary niches... Thanks and congrats to Antoine, Walter, and all the other co-authors for this great collaboration!! 🙏🥳
Adaptive cellular evolution in the intestine of hyperdiverse cichlid fishes
Nature - Single-cell transcriptomics combined with morphological and ecological data show that the rapid evolutionary radiation of cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika was accompanied by dietary...
rdcu.be
(1/15) Thrilled to share new Evo-Devo work where we address the molecular, cellular & morphometric basis of an extreme axis segmentation program in the Japanese eel — an animal that forms 120 vertebrae.
biorxiv.org
Beautiful work led by Yansong (Kevin) Lu on skeletal muscle growth in zebrafish, giant danio, Danionella cerebrum, and killifish. HCR, new image analysis tool, scRNA-seq, and CRISPR. New international collaborations between Uni Melbourne, NCVC/Osaka, Stanford & ARMI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🔈 Heading to Euro Evo-Devo #EED2026 in Glasgow? Don't miss out our Fish Satellite Meeting! Co-organized with Mike Dorrity @mwdorr.bsky.social, Ralf Schneider @ralfschneider.bsky.social, Laure Sanders @lsaunders.bsky.social and Joost Woltering, and with a list of outstanding speakers 👇
This year, the annual symposium of my Chaire @college-de-france.fr will be on The Evolution of Developmental Mechanisms. An impressive lineup of speakers and weirds animals, including humans. Free entrance and coffee breaks. Come, have a seat, relax and enjoy the best possible basic science🤘RT🙏
This Thursday! 🐓🐁
Virtual Gastrulation Zoom Talks@vgzt2021.bsky.social · 4mo agoTwo great talks coming up this Thursday at VGZT! 🗓️ Thursday, April 16th ⏰ 9:30 PDT / 12:30 EDT / 17:30 BST / 18:30 CEST Our speakers are 👉 Meng Zhu (@zhumeng123.bsky.social) 👉 Pulin Li (on X: @Pulin_Li) See you on Thursday! 👋
In 1936, a U.S. Forest Service ranger was fishing high in the Utah mountains when he found something bizarre: Cutthroat trout with tiny - or missing - dorsal fins! 🧵
Zebrafish finds Nemo. New paper with our great collaborators on gap junctional communication in widely divergent species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Happy to share the version of record, published in Nature communications yesterday!
Kazuhide Miyamoto@miyamoto-evodevo.bsky.social · 6mo agoOur new paper 𓆟 is out in Nature Communications! Using rainbowfish, we elucidate the differences between spiny and soft rays. Furthermore, we investigated the cellular state of the thorny spine in filefish and discuss how spiny rays diverged in acanthomorph fishes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Big news from @evodevopanam.bsky.social 🤩 ⭐️EvoDevo Mondays⭐️ This session will be chaired by the one and only Natalia Pabon Mora from the Universidad de Antioquía, Colombia. And as speakers, @luiza-o-saad.bsky.social and Joao Botelho (both originally from 🇧🇷) Stay tuned for the link!
EvoDevo PanAm@evodevopanam.bsky.social · 5mo agoPASEDB community 🤩 We are excited to announce our first Research Webinar series called: ⭐️EvoDevo Mondays⭐️ Save the date - April 13 With our amazing speakers @luiza-o-saad.bsky.social and João Francisco Botelho Session chair Professor Natalia Pabón-Mora #PASEDB #EvoDevoMondays #EvoDevo
🪰If you’re at #Dros26 and are interested in the fly foregut AND/OR want to support scientists in elected office, please come to talk Friday at 9:45am AND/OR support my run for State Representative in MA :) www.benforward3.com/blog/2026/3/...
Join us this next Friday *the 13th* 👻 👻 to hear us talking about bones and cartilages in development and evolution 🐟 🐠 🦴
Society for Developmental Biology@socdevbio.bsky.social · 5mo agoThe next the Ethel Browne Harvey Postdoc Seminar will be held Friday, February 13 at 3 pm Eastern Time with Martha Echevarría-Andino @uwmadison.bsky.social and M. Fernanda Palominos @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social. Register today and join us. bit.ly/47QVIEK #SDBPostdocSeminar
🐟👀 SFSU Biology seminar — Thu Mar 5 2–3pm | SEC 116 Dr. Patricia Schneider (LSU): “Split Screens: Exploring Vision through the Eyes of the Four-Eyed Fish.” Student time: 3–3:30pm. Come by!
