The array of organs in the animal body differ dramatically in their architecture, but cell-cell adhesion mediated by cadherins is a common principle. Our lab usually focuses on epithelia but cadherins are also active in migrating mesenchymal cells like these migrating testis myoblasts 1/n 🧪

Our lab website is live! 🚀🐟 www.vasilevalab.com We use genetic #zebrafish models and molecular oncology approaches to study pediatric cancer and discover new therapeutic strategies. We’re growing and recruiting postdocs and research technicians! #PediatricCancer #Zebrafish #PostdocJobs

Home | Vasileva Lab

vasilevalab.com

New publication: Inner-Retinal Changes In AMD: Evidence, Mechanisms, and Future Perspectives. A fun project with Matt Trinh, Michael Kalloniatis, myself, Glenn Yiu, Enrico Borrelli, and Lisa Nivison-Smith bryanwjones.com/2026/03/inne...

Yay! Our paper is now out @emboreports.org! I posted about it a while back (tinyurl.com/yc7td3px) but the work really improved thanks to the wonderful feedback from three anonymous reviewers 🙏 (1/4)

Adhesion to a common ECM mediates interdependence in tissue morphogenesis in Drosophila - EMBO Reports

Organ functionality requires the precise coordination of diverse tissues during development. Halfway through Drosophila embryogenesis, two lateral epidermal sheets stretch to fuse at the dorsal midlin...

link.springer.com

Zebrafish finds Nemo. New paper with our great collaborators on gap junctional communication in widely divergent species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Are you a postdoc in the job market? Do you have a cool story in the making? You forgot to have lunch and just run your gel backwards? You can't sleep because of the prospect of applying to 100 places and getting two replies only? Apply! 🧪🐟https://www.germanfishmeeting.org/from-postoc-to-pi

From Postoc to PI Session | German Fish Meeting

germanfishmeeting.org

MadScientist@mads100tist.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Thinking about a promotional image to advertise the "From Postdoc to PI" session at the 1st German Fish Meeting, I came up with:

Our new paper is now out in @jexpbiol.bsky.social!!! We had all sorts of fun generating LED stimuli for mosquitos to investigate their visual preferences in the presence of different odors. The paper is open access and available here: journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Excited to share our new article, ‘Mechanical regulation of cuboidal-to-squamous epithelial transition in the Drosophila developing wing’, now online in Current Biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... There’s also a great accompanying Dispatch: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... #MatrixMechanics #DevBio

How does the #corneal #lens in the #fly eye get its light-focusing shape? @nehaghosh.bsky.social &co show that central cells produce large amounts of #chitin to form the thick central corneal lens; peripheral cells produce smaller amounts to form tapered lens edges @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4lLNgeY

Hello epithelia enthusiasts! I’m @inesfournon.bsky.social and I study epithelial mechanics in sea anemones 🪼 Did you know epithelial cell extrusion had never been described outside bilaterian animals before? Well… not anymore 👀 Read ⬇️🧵1/9

Geraldine Seydoux @hhmi-science.bsky.social @jhu.edu and co-workers show that germ granule component PGL-3 undergoes #RNA independent #phaseseparation driven by structured domains that oligomerize and interact with RGG motifs. -> link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I am excited to share my new paper in @plosbiology.org . Here we show the role of chitin, a polysaccharide, in controlling the shape of the fly corneal lens. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Curvature of the Drosophila corneal lens depends on localized chitin secretion

How does the corneal lens in the fly eye acquire its light-focusing shape? This study shows that centrally located cells produce large amounts of chitin to form the thick central corneal lens, while p...

journals.plos.org

1st McKinley Lab grad student’s 1st preprint! @claireang.bsky.social studied how the uterus safely excises massive amounts of tissue during menstruation and pregnancy. Come for her GORGEOUS images, stay for her incredible discoveries. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... w/ @akelleher1017.bsky.social

Claire Ang@claireang.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share my new preprint from the McKinley lab, where we explored regenerative mechanisms across menstruation and pregnancy! We thought specialized glands would regenerate everything. We were wrong. But the real mechanism turned out to be way cooler :) 🧪🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Can't wait to serve again as co-director of the CSHL Drosophila Neurobiology course this year! 🧪🪰👀 Application Deadline: March 27 meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx... @cshlnews.bsky.social @cshlcourses.bsky.social

Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behavior

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

meetings.cshl.edu

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

Enhancers are genetic regions that promote the activation of neighbouring genes. @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social asks how long-range enhancers maintain specificity by constructing synthetic gene landscapes and exploring how they affect gene activity. #gfe2026 Alvaro's @dev-journal.bsky.social Review⤵

Enhancer-gene specificity in development and disease

Summary: This Review discusses recent insights into the factors controlling enhancer specificity and how this might help us understand the genetic basis of human disease.

doi.org

Quick plug for our new resource, the Drosophila Species Stock Exchange. This is a database and mailing list that documents species currently in culture and the labs holding them. If you want to know more or sign up then please get in touch. See attached for more info and please share!

Excited to be presenting my work at #ASBMB26 on how glucose metabolism interacts with mTor signaling in #Drosophila in the Integrated Metabolism session on March 9 at 2.50 pm in the Cherry Blossom room. It's my first time attending #ASBMB and we are having a wonderful time here in DC ☺️

If you're at #Dros26 and are interested in how cells change shape & move during morphogenesis & how different classic cadherins influence different cell behaviors, check out the talk by @saraheclark.bsky.social in Cell Biology: Cytoskeleton, Organelles, & Trafficking II Sat 9:15 🧪

Excited to share our work at #DROS26! I’ll be giving a talk today at 11 AM in the Patterning, Morphogenesis, and Organogenesis session. Also come check out posters from our lab: Elizabeth (F 2-4 pm), Debbie (S 1:30-3:30 pm)

New preprint out! In this study, we introduce NanoFLex, a strategy that combines #HaloTag variants with #nanobodies -based immunolabeling to enable rapid, OneStep-IF #lifetime #multiplexing. Possible due to SmartSecondaries fused to #HaloTag from @nanotag.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#Drosophila calling. Delighted to share our new collection of ShineGAL4 drivers for CNS, FB, muscles, enterocytes, oenocytes and MTs made by @vgirard.bsky.social, @sebsorge.bsky.social and colleagues @crick.ac.uk. All at Bloomington @bdsc.bsky.social @dev-journal.bsky.social tinyurl.com/4jpw9jd6

Excited to have started my new lab in Human Genetics at Pitt Public Health! We study wound healing in diabetes & aging using adult zebrafish. Check out this movie showing neutrophil dynamics after injury. Now recruiting research staff, grad students, and postdocs. DM me if interested.

And if you wanted proof ... @dev-journal.bsky.social

Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez@rodrigofg.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Check out our new publication @dev-journal.bsky.social! If you thought that cell divisions challenge tissue boundaries ... you got half of the story! Using in vivo quantitative microscopy and math. modelling we show that divisions fluidize tissues and facilitate boundary refinement. 🧪 #drosophila

I love GFP

#Photoreceptor cells vary in the morphology of the light-absorbing outer segment, but why? This study in #zebrafish shows that the wavelength sensitivity of the expressed #opsin and the intensity of light exposure determine outer segment morphology @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4aKJi15

Happy to share scHiCAR, an ultra-high throughout (millions of cells), low cost (5 cents/cell including NGS), and trimodal platform for integrated single-cell level analysis of mRNA, open chromatin, and 5-kb resolution looping with ground-truth data the same individual cell.

Nature Biotechnology@natbiotech.nature.com · 6mo ago

Trimodal single-cell profiling of transcriptome, epigenome and 3D genome in complex tissues with scHiCAR - @yaruidiao.bsky.social @dukehealth.bsky.social go.nature.com/4rZqimf

The #fly community aims to achieve a comprehensive genomic study of the Drosophilidae family. @pankajd.bsky.social @bernardkim.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social @darrenobbard.bsky.social present a comparative gene annotation for 301 #Drosophilidae species @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c3pyrI

New preprint @biorxiv-devbio.bsky.social by Harshath Amal and colleagues from our lab @uni-muenster.de shows how a BMP #morphogen gradient is translated into graded junctional permeability by tuning adhesion and actomyosin contractility in #Drosophila See tinyurl.com/yhbwd9xh @sfb1348.bsky.social