#WntA is a crucial marker of stripe elements early in development for the Nymphalidae butterfly family. @jasminealqassar.bsky.social & co explore if WntA has maintained its role in stripe elements over 95 million years of evolution in the Hesperiidae family of butterflies. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

What is a promoter? And how does it work? We very happy to share our latest work trying to understand enhancer-promoter compatibility. I am very excited about the results of @blanka-majchrzycka.bsky.social, which changed the way I think about promoters www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Enhancer-promoter compatibility is mediated by the promoter-proximal region

Gene promoters induce transcription in response to distal enhancers. How enhancers specifically activate their target promoter while bypassing other promoters remains unclear. Here, we find that the p...

biorxiv.org

📣 Paper alert! I am delighted that our paper exploring the impact of Neanderthal-derived variants on the activity of a disease-associated craniofacial enhancer has been published in Development today! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Blood stem and progenitor cells give rise to all blood cell types. Tim Petzold & co show that when Connexin 41.8 is present but impaired, it delays their initial formation and disrupts the timely activation of a key signalling pathway in #zebrafish embryos. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

Our work exploring a new explanation for the regulation of Hoxd genes and the #fin-to-limb transition. 🧪 It was an absolute joy working on this w/ @aurhin.bsky.social and @homeobox.bsky.social @denisduboule.bsky.social @neilshubin.bsky.social #evo-devo #InHoxWeTrust

How Did Hands Evolve? The Answer Is Behind You.

nytimes.com

Very interesting new @wbickmor.bsky.social commentary on the mechanistic mystery that is very distal enhancer-promoter interactions www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Is enhancer-driven gene regulation all wrapped up? - Nature Reviews Genetics

In this Comment, Wendy Bickmore discusses mechanistic models of how 3D genome organization facilitates communication between distant enhancers and their target promoters to regulate gene expression.

nature.com

Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. A study in Nature reports a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus, an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species. go.nature.com/3V68MP0 🧪

Our humble gata2b in situ hybridization image made it onto the cover of @biologyopen.bsky.social! If you'd like to check out the story behind the image, the link to our new paper is: journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Excited to share that the final version of our work on Connexin 41.8 in HSPC specification is out now in @biologyopen.bsky.social! If you're curious about how a connexin helps turn endothelial cells into blood stem cells, please have a read! journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Connexin 41.8 governs timely haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell specification

Summary: Cx41.8 is necessary to launch the haemogenic program and induce HSPC formation at the correct time during zebrafish development via a ROS-Hif-Notch-Gata2b pathway.

journals.biologists.com

How the functional architecture of the zebrafish heart is shaped during development 📹 @tobyandrews.bsky.social et al @rashmi-priya.bsky.social lab @crick.ac.uk in @cellpress.bsky.social Developmental Cell ➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2025...

Thrilled to bits to see our latest work online in Dev Cell! 🥳 We wanted to know how cells build functional organs with precision🫀🫁📏 Here we show how coupling of cell shape and organ function fine tunes the form and contractile power of the developing #zebrafish heart 1/n tinyurl.com/cell-stretch

Mechanochemical coupling of cell shape and organ function optimizes heart size and contractile efficiency in zebrafish

Andrews et al. demonstrate that multiscale feedback between mechanical and chemical cues builds a functional heart to support zebrafish embryonic life. Cell recruitment and organ-scale forces drive tr...

tinyurl.com

Got this really cool, ghostly picture by accident the other day in Dillon Beach, CA. It is a Heermann's gull with both it's shadow and reflection. #birds

Issue 14 is complete! On the cover: Drosophila eye imaginal discs stained for the pan-neuronal marker Elav (red or blue) and cell fate-specific markers to investigate basic cell-biological processes such as cell proliferation and morphogenesis during development. See: doi.org/10.1242/dev.204373

This is my first time seeing a Monarch on our property! I literally just purchased milkweed seeds and began preparing the area I’m going to plant in this fall. That’s quite the synchronicity. #gardening #bugsky #bloomscrolling #photography

Beautiful work using lineage-tracing, transplantation experiments and fate mapping to show that somites give rise to nephron progenitors www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Somites are a source of nephron progenitors in zebrafish - Nature Communications

This study reveals that cells of the zebrafish kidney can originate from the somites, structures traditionally held as precursors to the skeletal muscle, challenging a century-old paradigm and prompti...

nature.com

🐌💫 Snail embryos never looked so fabulous! Tubulin (white), phospho-histone H3 (pink), and F-Actin (cyan) light up this early stage like a cytoskeletal disco ball. Image from Clemens Cabernard & Adam von Barnau Sythoff 🪩🧬 #FluorescenceFriday

Wow. Scientists have edited mosquito DNA to prevent the spread of malaria to humans "while supporting essential physiological functions... and negligible fitness costs" to the mosquito population. Potentially ending the mosquito-born spread of malaria to humans. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mustering the courage to share my latest scicomm endeavour: I channelled my love for writing into a blog where I can hopefully bring the marvels of evolutionary biology and non-coding DNA to all Science lovers! darkgenomevo.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/i...

It just takes one change

Here, I run though three examples of evolutionary novelty driven by single non-coding DNA changes: limb loss in snakes, gliding in sugar gliders, and coat coloration in African striped mice. These …

darkgenomevo.wordpress.com

No new genes needed to fly - just rewire what you have! 🦇🧬 Great new paper from the labs of @fany-real.bsky.social @stemundi.bsky.social @dariloops.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415... #EvoDevo #SingleCell #BatWings

Comparative single-cell analyses reveal evolutionary repurposing of a conserved gene programme in bat wing development - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Single-cell comparison of developing bat and mouse limbs reveals conservation of cell populations and gene expression patterns, and suggests repurposing of genes involved in proximal limb development ...

doi.org

Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics@molgen.mpg.de · last yr.

How did the bat get its wings? New research from a collaboration between the labs of Stefan Mundlos (MPIMG), Dario G. Lupiáñez, and Francisca M. Real (@cabd-upo-csic.bsky.social) show how genetic programs were reused during the evolution of mammalian flight. --> www.molgen.mpg.de/news-2025-fl...

In her Perspective, Emilie Snell-Rood discusses the value of basic science, using the Morpho butterfly as an example of how this type of research has driven later innovation & highlights the value of government and institutional support for basic research journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

The first 22 hours of #Zebrafish development. Blood vessels labeled in green #WeinsteinLab 🔬🧪

Excited to share our new research in @cp-iscience.bsky.social! We reveal that tortoise head scales are sculpted through two distinct developmental processes - chemical signalling and mechanical folding 🐢🔬🧪 @lanevol.bsky.social @genevunige.bsky.social www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Chemical and mechanical patterning of tortoise skin scales occur in different regions of the head

Biological sciences; Zoology; Evolutionary biology

cell.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Dev bio is amazing !!

Maternal iron deficiency causes male-to-female sex reversal in mouse embryos - Nature

Iron-deficient conditions in pregnant mice can cause XY mouse embryos to develop female rather than male genitalia, revealing that iron metabolism has a role in determining male sex in mice.

nature.com

Check out our latest work on the evolution of animal genome regulation out today in @nature.com. Nicely summarized below by @ianakim.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is a major output from our ERC-StG project Evocellmap @erc.europa.eu at @crg.eu

Chromatin loops are an ancestral hallmark of the animal regulatory genome - Nature

The physical organization of the genome in non-bilaterian animals and their closest unicellular relatives is characterized; comparative analysis shows chromatin looping is a conserved feature of ...

nature.com

Iana V. Kim@ianakim.bsky.social · last yr.

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A review emphasizes the advantages of using zebrafish in research, outlines key differences in experimental approaches, and offers guidelines for designing studies in a way that enhances experimental rigor and reproducibility. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Zebrafishology, study design guidelines for rigorous and reproducible data using zebrafish - Communications Biology

A review emphasizes the advantages of using zebrafish in research, outlines key differences in experimental approaches, and offers guidelines for designing studies in a way that enhances experimental ...

nature.com

My first post on Bluesky! Very excited to share our work just published in @science.org. We find that “Interphase cell morphology defines the mode, symmetry, and outcome of mitosis” - in angiogenesis and other tissues! www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Interphase cell morphology defines the mode, symmetry, and outcome of mitosis

During tissue formation, dynamic cell shape changes drive morphogenesis while asymmetric divisions create cellular diversity. We found that the shifts in cell morphology that shape tissues could conco...

science.org

Look familiar? This beautiful video of #zebrafish embryogenesis was used for a 'one-frame per page' flipbook in the December 1996 edition of @dev-journal.bsky.social. Credit to Rolf Karlstrom and Don Kane. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

Awesome new paper by @lucalivraghi.bsky.social et al. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... in @currentbiology.bsky.social on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation enjoy the show!

Thrilled that our image was selected for the cover of @royalsocietypublishing.org's Open Biology! We experimentally induced a developmental shift from normal footpad scales to mechanically-driven folding on chicken embryo digits 🐣🔬. Stay tuned—the full article is coming soon! 🧪 #DevBio

It's the moment you've all been waiting for... Invertebrate of the year voting is now open! 🗳️ Who will be your winner? theguardian.com/invertebrateoftheyear25