We have a postdoc position available in the lab and would like to spread the word. Please apply if you are interested! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

A thoughtful piece on what it means to be a postdoc: *independence is about moving forward without all answers *use science conversations to make sense of uncertainty, beyond presenting results *a postdoc is as much about learning to think & adapt as it is about generating data & publishing

eLife@elife.bsky.social · 2d ago

A postdoc comes with challenges and uncertainties different from those of a PhD. In this ecrLife blog Vartika Sharma shares how managing expectations and building a community are key skills that can help us navigate the new uncertainties of a postdoc.

🐙 Octopuses appear to have evolved a ribosomal innovation that increases protein translation fidelity. *suggests that evolution can tune core components of the proteostasis machinery, extending adaptation beyond gene regulation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus

Much of biology focuses on how genetic changes mediate new functions, but less attention is given to adaptations in other steps of the central dogma. Octopuses exhibit complex nervous systems and soph...

biorxiv.org

How does an embryo generate the right cells in the right place? Delighted to share our latest findings on how neural crest cells acquire vagal or trunk identities Spoiler alert: The timing & combination of CDXs preconfigures cell identity & distinct HOX states www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Temporally distinct CDX programmes preconfigure vagal and trunk neural crest

Neural crest cells (NCCs) are progenitor cells vital in establishing the head, heart, gut and peripheral nervous system of vertebrate embryos. Disruptions to NCC development underlie neurocristopathie...

biorxiv.org

Our new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...

Naked mole-rats are ruled by a queen: this chemical puts her in power

YouTube video by nature video

youtu.be

In case you missed this preprint - check it out now! Determining Species-specific tempo per cell between fishes 🐟 ⌛️ 🐠 ⏳ Congrats to Jess, Mike et al!

Mike Dorrity@mwdorr.bsky.social · 2mo ago

First pre-print from the lab, a collaborative effort led by Jess Bourn @bournsupremacy.bsky.social, a fantastic PhD in my group. We resolve a key problem in development + evolution: how do we quantify heterochrony and link temporal variation to phenotype? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The 2nd part of my postdoc is now out as a preprint! A challenging but fulfilling team effort to perform genome editing in opossums. We found that the lncRNA RSX is essential to initiate X-inactivation in marsupials 🦘 A long-standing question since the discovery that Xist is absent in marsupials 👇

Turner Lab@lab-turner.bsky.social · 4w ago

New preprint 📢 Thrilled to share our long-awaited work on the role of RSX in marsupial X-inactivation. This was a huge team effort over the years, led by @aureliencourtois.bsky.social @sermenchero.bsky.social Sugako Ogushi and Waz Varsally, that allowed us to set up genome editing in opossum embryos

Registration for the 19th meeting of the #SEBD is now open! Please join us at El Rompido for 3 days full of excellent #DevBio and plenty of opportunities to present your work at #SEBD2026 share.google/2llY3VlS5fQA...

Paying peer reviewers Interview with @danielgorelick.bsky.social about @biologyopen.bsky.social Fast & Fair trial in which peer reviewers were paid £220/review Spoiler: it works - fast, high quality reviews www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief

A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.

nature.com

I wanted to like QED's new 1% preprint ranking. I really did. But the more I looked at the data, the more uncomfortable it made me. Here is my full peer review. open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

My Peer Review of The 1%

I wanted to like QED's new 1% ranking. I don't.

open.substack.com

AI ranking shows familiar cracks: figure vs text evaluation, the Matthew effect & male last author bias Celebratory signals for visibility are already popping up too. This experiment feels like an emerging curation space *we need to shape and exploit AI systems beyond simple approval loops

QED Science@qedscience.bsky.social · last mo.

🎉 Meet The 1%. Out of 57,455 bioRxiv life science preprints, QED Science selected 574 exceptional manuscripts through blind evaluation. The 1%: the-one-percent.qedscience.com Good science deserves to be seen. @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social @openrxiv.bsky.social @richardsever.bsky.social

Congrats Elisa!! 🍾 💡🧪 An innovative study using human stem cell-derived spinal cord organoids to explore neural tube morphogenesis, patterning, and function. A strong example of the originality & excellence of #DevBio research in Spain.

SEBD@sebioldev.bsky.social · last mo.

Today we congratulate #SEBD member Elisa Marti @ibmb-csic.bsky.social for being one of this year’s awardees of the ERC advanced grants! With her project SpinaLogic her research group aims to unravel the direct conection between the genetic mutations associated with Spina bifida (1/2)

📢 Next Proteostasis Consortium Seminar – Wednesday 24 June 2026 at 4:00 pm GMT (10:00 am CT) 👉Link & Updates here: www.proteostasisconsortium.com/seminars/ Speaker: Vadim Gladyshev (Harvard Medical School) Title: ‘Measuring Aging’ #proteostasis   #aging

Beautiful piece on how field-specific journals with high ethical standards, such as Development, don’t try to « Game » the impact factor system - and practical steps to move away from this inherently flawed metric as a researcher (see Box 2)

James Briscoe@jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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....

Looking forward to presenting our work and to all the exciting discussions about embryo development today!

bedzhov lab@bedzhovlab.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“Play, Pause, Rewind: protein metabolism and the control of developmental tempo” Looking forward to an exciting seminar with Teresa Rayon @trayon.bsky.social (Babraham Institute, Cambridge) on June 18th at 13:15, MiC. Everyone is welcome.

🔹 Short Talk | Timing Life: Protein Stability in Diapause 🎙 Eleonore Ocana (University of Cambridge) presented novel insights into how protein stability regulates timing during mouse diapause. #YEN2026

Excited that Ellie presented her PhD project @yen-network.bsky.social 2026 in front of friends and colleagues Well done & congrats 🎉🎈🍾🎊 @bsdb.bsky.social @babrahaminst.bsky.social #devbio 🧪

Joaquina Delas@joadelas.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Great back-to-back short talks by Shayma and Eleanor PhD students in the labs of my former postdoc colleagues @kenzoivanovitch.bsky.social and @trayon.bsky.social So special to see their trainees shine! #YEN2026 @yen-network.bsky.social

A UK node for microscopists to work together and combine their expertise in a distributed Node setup. Congrats 🎊🍾🎉 @babrahaminst.bsky.social @smonw.bsky.social #eurobioimaging

Simon Cook@drsimoncook.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A ringing endorsement for @smonw.bsky.social and his excellent Imaging Team @babrahaminst.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/posts/hoyled...

The complete bureaucratization and corporatization (dare I say entshitification) of higher education. Trend called many years ago by the incredibly prescient David Graeber.

Michael Hothorn@structplantbio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This work nicely quantifies a major issue in our universities: "In higher education, administrative costs have risen much faster than instruction and research costs (4). MIT Faculty grew by only 9.2% between 1985 and 2023, while administrative staff grew by 189%." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In vivo research = biological function. *Contributes to developing, validating & promoting cell-based models now shaping policy discussions. *adopts emerging technologies: gene base editing, environmental perturbation, spatial biology journals.biologists.com/dmm/article/...

Why in vivo models of disease remain indispensable

Summary: The call to arms for alternatives to model organisms of disease will fail without ongoing integration with – and validation against – complex animal models and support from the animal modelli...

journals.biologists.com

Really happy to share my PhD story about the regulation of developmental speed in the Drosophila eye 🪰😃👀, which is now published @embojournal.org: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Grateful to everyone who make this possible, particularly F. Schweisguth @pasteur.fr @devstempasteur.bsky.social

It’s not all 1:1 though! Species-dependent effects are observed and enriched in evolutionarily young sequences & at particular motifs.

The application portal for our annual Developmental Biology course for Master's, PhD students, et al at the @institutcurie.bsky.social and @sorbonne-universite.fr will open soon! Anyone can apply, courses are free, but we do not cover travel and lodging. lectures Oct 19-28! More info soon!

so in 2021, I watched a CSR advisory council meeting and one observation made was that overt negative bias during review was rare but that positive bias, or "halo" effects, that tends to favor white, established PIs at elite institutions was more common

Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽@needhibhalla.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I performed an analysis of who received R37s for the 30+ years NIGMS had them (1986-2017, when it was limited to established PIs with 10 years of continuing funding) and there was evidence of gender bias influencing these decisions. I’ll probably repost that thread soon

Some of this has already been demonstrated: for example, despite similar success rates in first time funding, women experience more barriers renewing funding and having more than one R01, contributing to uncertainty and limitations in funding.

Why can't we explain enhancer action despite 2 decades of chromosome conformation technologies? 😬 Our new study spearheaded by Leonid Mirny's group points to a flaw in our assumptions, and to a solution from physical principles By @timothyfoldes.bsky.social 💻& @karissalhansen.bsky.social 🧪 🧵👇

📢 New preprint alert ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Joanna Dembska developed a highly scalable image-base screening platform for protein turnover modulators in human neurons, based on our fluorescent timer system. Protein turnover is perturbed in nearly all neurodegenerative diseases ...

Meet our Preprint Editors We are pleased to welcome our first group of Preprint Editors to our editorial team, responsible for handling our 'In preprints' articles. #preprints journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ed...

(9/15) Eels achieve 120 segments not by altering the core clock machinery (conserved) or its rate (similar to zebrafish) — but by heterochronically extending the duration of segmentation & decoupling it from overall developmental progression. Modularity in action !

No change to eligibility for the upcoming calls 👏🏻👏🏻credit to the council for listening Tight budgets & high application pressure reflect both the programme’s success and the broader funding gap in science 🧪 This is a moment to rethink how we assess proposals, not to limit who can apply

European Research Council (ERC)@erc.europa.eu · 3mo ago

NEWS: The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about changes to the re-submission rules, intended to manage the surge in demand for grants. The Scientific Council will readjust some of the changes: link.europa.eu/TBqRQJ