The Oxford-ZEISS Centre of Excellence in Biomedical Imaging between @kiroxford.bsky.social and the Institute of Developmental & Regenerative Medicine has become the first to acquire the new ZEISS Lightfield 4D system. Read more: www.idrm.ox.ac.uk/news-and-fea...

Big paper from @hejnol.bsky.social lab. Title says it all. Congrats, Stanislav Kremnyov and the team. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A blastoporal organizer in a ctenophore - Nature

Experiments using the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi and the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis reveal that the emergence of a core signalling pathway may have been a key innovation enabling the transit...

nature.com

Don't miss this online session on Monday! I'll be talking about our lab's new directions on oxygen sensing in heart plasticity and diversity 🫀🌬️ and @zoenahas.bsky.social will tell us all about shoot branch architectures in plants 🌱 Looking forward to it!

Cambridge Morphogenesis Seminar Series@cammorphoseries.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Next Monday, 15 June at 2:30 PM (UK time), we are excited to welcome Zoe Nahas @zoenahas.bsky.social and Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social! This seminar will be online and will be the last one of the term. We hope to see many of you there and finish the term with great science and discussion!

Next Monday, 15 June at 2:30 PM (UK time), we are excited to welcome Zoe Nahas @zoenahas.bsky.social and Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social! This seminar will be online and will be the last one of the term. We hope to see many of you there and finish the term with great science and discussion!

Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social now discussing adaptive morphogenesis at the heart-blood interface. #CJM26

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

Job alert! 📣 I’m looking for a research assistant to join my new team @idrm.ox.ac.uk Were using #zebrafish to understand gene-environment interactions that shape the heart 🫀generate natural diversity 🐸🐭 and contribute to congenital defects ❤️‍🩹 Full info below, and please share! 🫶🏻 bit.ly/467TO0M

Helping this mood is our latest now out in its final form! @irfankathiriya.bsky.social leading the teams with me. Thanks to the editors and reviewers (incl. @wythelab.bsky.social)for a pleasant and productive journey. More to come when the full issue is out. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

A disrupted compartment boundary underlies abnormal cardiac patterning and congenital heart defects - Nature Cardiovascular Research

Kathiriya et al. identify a cardiac progenitor lineage with expression of Tbx5 and anterior heart field-specific expression of Mef2c that bisects the intraventricular septum during development and sho...

nature.com

Today in Oxford - the Jenkinson DevBio symposium, showcasing exciting #DevBio science from all around the UK! What a lineup 🎉 @vmetzis.bsky.social @tobyandrews.bsky.social @simoesfilipa.bsky.social @jvermot.bsky.social @idrm.ox.ac.uk

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...

Now published in @natcomms.nature.com! 🥳 👉 rdcu.be/eATn3 We developed image analysis tools to capture the nematic orientation field of 3D tissue surfaces. Tested on epithelial aggregates, zebrafish hearts, myoblasts on spheres & micro-vessels, we combined soft matter physics with exp. biology.

Hot off the press!!! Proudly presenting our lab's new review on how do cells communicate to control organ size :) We focus specially on dynamic connections that operate at different timescales to regulate organ growth and morphogenesis. #devbio #SizeandShape www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Start-Shape-Stop: Cell communication mechanisms controlling organ size

Accurate growth control is critical for the achievement of proportional organs during animal development and repair processes. Either extra or deficie…

sciencedirect.com

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

New Pre-Print Alert! "Teeth Outside the Jaw: Evolution and Development of the Toothed Head Clasper in Chimaeras." We use fossil evidence, development and CT scans through ghost shark ontogeny to describe the emergence of the tenaculum! 👻🦈🦷 @karlycohen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Latest work: Review on the evolvability of vertebral number, and the developmental processes underpinning it Written by Callum Bucklow, @bertaverd.bsky.social, and myself Check it out here: doi.org/10.32942/X2K...

A fantastic opportunity to take on evolution with experimental embryology Great lab, mentor, department, and model system 🐠 don't miss out!

Berta Verd@bertaverd.bsky.social · last yr.

I am recruiting an #ERC funded PostDoc to work on the evolution of vertebral counts in cichlids. This is an experimental project & will be looking for candidates with experience generating reporter lines, live-imaging and experimental embryology. Application deadline: 25th Feb. tinyurl.com/33jbu8fa

🚨📢 New paper alert! Our work showing that bilateral cellular flows display asymmetry prior to left–right organizer formation in amniote gastrulation is now published in PNAS!! @pnas.org 🥳😃 🐣 Paper link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... News article: news.miami.edu/stories/2025...

An ancient patterning system co-opted to position the chordate forebrain 🧠 Amphioxus spilling more evolutionary secrets - beautiful and rigorous work from @giacomogattoni.bsky.social (but no surprises there!)

Giacomo Gattoni@giacomogattoni.bsky.social · 2y ago

For my first post on 🦋, I am incredibly excited to share that my PhD paper has been published in #ScienceAdvances! We compared the development of the anterior neuroectoderm to uncover how the chordate #forebrain evolved 🧠. Have a look at the summary 🧵 below! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Registration and abstract submission for YEN 2025 is officially open! We are looking forward to seeing you at the 17th Young Embryologist Network Conference on the 19th May 2025. Attendence is FREE thanks to our amazing sponsors: @biologists.bsky.social @10xgenomics.bsky.social and Azenta.

Tools to analyse early heart morphogenesis in detail are limited. @noelresearchlab.bsky.social &co develop computational package called morphoHeart that allows for integrated 3D analysis of both #heart & extracellular matrix morphology in live #zebrafish embryos 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/42DlqtJ

Spheroids are simple systems with only convex curvature. What about more complex systems? We teamed up with @tobyandrews.bsky.social & @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, and analyzed the ventricular myocardium of Zebrafish hearts ... and it works! 👇 (Directors: high alignment = red, misaligned = blue)

How can we accurately measure features on curved 3D tissues? 📐 Normally we rely on lossy 2D projections, but @juliaeckert.bsky.social's new method detects nematic orientation fields on surfaces of arbitrary geometry We tested it in hearts, and works a charm! 🫀 More in Julia's thread below 👇🏻

Julia Eckert@juliaeckert.bsky.social · 2y ago

Thrilled to share our new preprint on detecting the nematic orientation field on surfaces of 3D multicellular systems! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Huge thanks to all authors: @tobyandrews.bsky.social,Joe Pollard, @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @yap-lab.bsky.social &Richard Morris Any 3D systems?👇

Andrews, T. G. R., & Priya, R. (2024). The Mechanics of Building Functional Organs. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, a041520. Advance online publication. #EpithelialMechanicsReview https://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/early/2024/06/15/cshperspect.a041520.abstract

For my first post on 🦋, I am incredibly excited to share that my PhD paper has been published in #ScienceAdvances! We compared the development of the anterior neuroectoderm to uncover how the chordate #forebrain evolved 🧠. Have a look at the summary 🧵 below! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An ancient apical patterning system sets the position of the forebrain in chordates

A conserved Wnt-regulated molecular signature sets forebrain position and identity in chordates.

science.org

Thrilled to see #choanoflagellates on the cover of Science Advances🤩. Our latest work "Electrical signaling and coordinated behavior in the closest relative of animals" out now. Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 👏 @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

A tail of two tissues: post-gastrulation tissue scaling in zebrafish ensures proper body proportions Read this Research Highlight showcasing work from @dillansaunders.bsky.social, Carlos Camacho-Macorra & @bensteventon.bsky.social @geneticscam.bsky.social: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

The outer ear is a mammalian innovation but where did it come from? In our study in Nature, Mathi Thiruppathy and colleagues find that the outer ear arose from modification of an ancestral gill program first originating in marine invertebrates. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

🎉 We're excited to share our new research in @nature.com ! We reveal that crocodile head scales self-organize through compressive folding of the skin - a mechanical twist on their development & evolution! Please read & share 🐊🔬 @genevunige.bsky.social

Self-organized patterning of crocodile head scales by compressive folding - Nature

Crocodile head scales self-organize through purely mechanical compressive skin folding rather than a patterning process controlled by gene interactions.

nature.com