NEW GRANT OPPORTUNITY! Ever wanted to travel to a different lab to learn more? Or expand your knowledge and experience in the field? #IZFS has a new grant opportunity for you! Read more about the Knowledge Exchange Grant here: www.izfs.org/awards/knowl... #ZebrafishGrant
Marco Podobnik
@mpodobnik.bsky.social
Walter Benjamin Fellow at @armilabs.bsky.social Melbourne interested in all things developmental, regenerative, and evolutionary biology. @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social alumnus. https://marcopodobnik.wordpress.com/
"The importance of a model is choosing one that allows you to address the question that you’re setting out to address." Sage advice from Prof. Judith Eisen (University of Oregon), Pioneer of Zebrafish Research & 2024 George Streisinger Award Winner. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪
How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
No better way to head to #EZM2026 than with a freshly published success! Our eLife paper is now out: elifesciences.org/articles/107.... We show optimised prime editing in zebrafish for precise DNA substitutions and insertions. Huge thanks to the fantastic team #Zebrafish #GenomeEditing #eLife
Optimised genome editing for precise DNA insertion and substitution using prime editors in zebrafish
Nickase and nuclease Prime Editors offer complementary routes for precise zebrafish genome editing, balancing accuracy for substitutions with efficiency for short insertions.
elifesciences.org
We're excited to present a single-cell atlas of vertebrate cranial motor neuron development, the first story from my postdoctoral work in the Moens lab, up now on bioRxiv!
How do dozens of distinct muscles emerge from the same pool of precursor cells? Our new Science Advances paper uncovers the developmental logic that coordinates myoblast identities to build diverse muscles. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #DevelopmentalBiology #Drosophila #Muscle
Spatiotemporal control of myoblast identity drives muscle diversity in the Drosophila leg
This study reveals how muscle diversity arises in flies, enabling the complex movements that drive animal behavior.
science.org
I am excited to announce the latest paper from our lab, published in Science ! In this study, we show that thalamocortical-like circuits in the zebrafish brain process sensory information hierarchically across topographically organized forebrain circuits.
Hierarchical sensory processing in zebrafish thalamocortical-like circuits
Thalamocortical projections shape the functional regionalization and parallel sensory computations across the mammalian cortex. However, the principles of thalamocortical computations in non-mammalian...
science.org
Out now in @science.org by @emreyaksi.bsky.social, Anh-Tuan Trinh and colleagues at the Kavli Institute in Trondheim: Hierarchical sensory processing in zebrafish thalamocortical-like circuits doi.org/10.1126/scie...
Dear Friends, I just published an insightful review on neural crest evolutionary origin and later transformations. “Co-option and innovation in neural crest evolution”: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Co-option and innovation in neural crest evolution
Neural crest evolution reassembled ancient programs in pigment cell lineage, resulting in vertebrate innovations.
science.org
What if an embryo made immune cells before it finished building the tissue they usually come from? In our new preprint, we show that annual killifish embryos specify neutrophils before germ layers are fully resolved. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to my PI, @ohnolog.bsky.social ! 🧵
Early immune cell development precedes gastrulation in annual killifish
During embryogenesis, cell types arise in a predictable order because developmental regulators act sequentially. But how evolutionary changes in morphogenesis reshape the signaling environments that a...
biorxiv.org
Annual killifish continue to surprise us: they make neutrophils before almost every other cell type, even before gastrulation. Neutrophils usually arise from the lateral plate mesoderm (forming in cyan), but in killifish they are already patrolling around the embryo in gold. tinyurl.com/killiphil
We read an entire scroll — without ever opening it PHerc. 1667, sealed since the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, has been virtually unwrapped and read from beginning to end scrollprize.org/firstscroll The Herculaneum Papyrus Scrolls project www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculan... #books #old_Manuscripts
🔥 Published today, and just in time for summer conferences, here are your guidelines for presenting badly www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fqa92
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...
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...
IMPORTANT study from @hocinerekaik.bsky.social @denisduboule.bsky.social and a significant validation of SCBEMs, #gastruloids in particular, as a discovery tool www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵
As Editor of @dev-journal.bsky.social I get asked "What are you doing about your impact factor?" In our new editorial we say: Ask not what Dev can do for the impact factor. Ask what you can do for Dev's IF The IF is about how we all cite, review & assess each other's work doi.org/10.1242/dev....
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 ...
doi.org
Just a few months to IVBM in Australia! Come down and enjoy great science, food, beaches, wine and company. Time to register now at ivbm2026.com
Dear all, please join my @isrbio.bsky.social webinar on how danionin fishes grow skeletal muscle. Tomorrow via Zoom. Details here: isrbio.org/webinars
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
Excited to share this new pre-print from the fantastic @kelsiehunnicutt.bsky.social! Kelsie put together a thoughtful and thorough review on hybridization in animal evolution: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v.... She tracks notable shifts in perspectives on the study of hybridization through time.
Some great news, Ensembl has released the GRCz12tu and the GRCz12ab annotations on their beta release site, so now the genes can be looked at in a genome browser. You can load up either one (plus a second TU genome) here: beta.ensembl.org/species-sele... #zebrafish
Species selector — Ensembl
Select one or more species to start using Ensembl
beta.ensembl.org
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...
This NYT magazine article on longevity science, reversing aging with cellular reprogramming, is over the top. We have no proof that rejuvenation of a human organ is possible, no less the whole body, and there is risk of inducing cancer. gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/m...
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
I'm so pleased to see this work on neural crest development out in Nature today! This was a truly fantastic collaboration with @gleesonlab.bsky.social, Keng loi (Harry) Vong and @xiaoxuyang.bsky.social. Huge thanks to everyone involved 👏 🧪🐣 #devbio www.nature.com/articles/s41...
It's out! Happy to present ITEC, a semi supervised algorithm with an extremely low error rate that can track cells in files of any size (think Terabytes!). We used it in many organisms, including zebrafish, to study how organs form and linked it to gene expression www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... +🧪
biorxiv.org
Very happy to see this out. 👏 @yinanwan.bsky.social Bogdan Bintu and team. Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis | free link Science www.science.org/eprint/5MHTM...
Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis
Gene expression patterns underlie development, but their systematic detection in whole embryos has remained elusive. We introduce a whole-embryo imaging platform using multiplexed error-robust fluores...
science.org
Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here: rdcu.be/e5EgU #EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜
The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs
Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...
rdcu.be
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...