Sally Lowell

As summer ends, puffins leave Scotland and migrate long distances, heading west across the Atlantic, or south to Africa, and with some individuals venturing into the Mediterranean Sea This one ended up on the cover of today's EMBO Journal 😃 #GotTheCover www.embopress.org/toc/14602075...

a profound silence

Join us as Sustainability Officer to develop & share best practice for sustainable conferencing, manage & organise sustainability data collection, analysis and reporting, and lead the Company’s review of SGDs. Closing date for applications: 7 September. www.biologists.com/about-us/wor...

So happy & excited to see our paper out in @plosbiology.org ! 🎉 With contributions from many past & present members of the Lowell & Wilson labs @edinuni-irr.bsky.social , and a fantastic collaboration with @osvaldo-chara.bsky.social & @alberto-ceccarelli.bsky.social. 🧵👇(1/10)

We have written a statement in support of Ghent Uni's decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. We resist attempts to frame this as a punishment for "whistleblowing" or censorship of "controversial research". We invite all academics who share our views to sign our letter. forms.gle/qwN8xzEM5C7Q...

Neuromesodermal progenitor cells generate multiple tissues. This study by @abinagui.bsky.social @edinuni-irr.bsky.social @osvaldo-chara.bsky.social @cellysally.bsky.social &co maps their functional heterogeneity and links TF expression thresholds to #cellFate. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4xWA8Ze

It was alleged that Jason Arday was an academic fraud mainly based on accusation of plagiarism initially moved by Nathan Cofnas. I have compared Arday's thesis with the one he's been accused of copying and found a bare 4.2% similarity.

1/ Very excited to share the first publication from my lab! In this work, we developed an efficient strategy to precisely mutate mammalian histone genes in their native genomic context using CRISPR prime editing: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Working on stem cell biology? Our expert Academic Editor, Aryeh Warmflash (@warmflashlab.bsky.social), handles articles on this topic so send your article our way. It's FREE to publish in JCS and we're not-for-profit. Find out more: journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/re... #stemcells #ISSCR2026

New in @dev-journal.bsky.social: how tissue shape tells cells what to become Using human stem-cell neuruloids, we show how that physical boundaries encode positional information that drives cell fate patterning in a model of trunk formation A thread 🧵 journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone... A good read, on the importance of curiosity driven research www.nature.com/articles/s42...

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)

Yet another important benefit of having not-for-profit publishers within the scientific publisher ecosystem. They can do interesting (sometimes risky) experiments, testing innovations that aim to benefit the scientific community rather than enriching shareholders. Up with this sort of thing!

SO INTERESTING! #PaperThemeTune: Careful With That Axolotl Eugene, by Pink Floyd www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RnF...

This is a wonderful opportunity, open to postdocs too! Together with @rocha-lab.bsky.social we’ll be organising one on “Bridging Scales and Disciplines to Understand Robust Development” next year. More info soon - registration will open in July!

Deadline extended- still time to apply! Please spread the word.

Developmental biology bringing together regenerative biology, neurobiology, mathematical modelling, evo-devo and much more to Edinburgh! 19-22 April 2027 Save the date!

that’s Elon Musk FRS

Deadline extended- still time to apply! Please spread the word.

Reminder! Application deadline Friday 8th May

This video sums up just some of the reasons I feel proud to publish our work in Company of Biologists journals.

“Conferences were much more exciting as a young, early-career researcher, when every contact felt like an instant friend and every new city, a gift” My most recent blog post on the effect of age on travel perceptions occamstypewriter.org/mindthegap/2...

New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Reminder! Application deadline Friday 8th May

Had so much fun at @bsdb.bsky.social a few weeks go and am very excited about all the upcoming stories I saw. Check out the #preprint list I've collated from the meeting, now on @prelights.bsky.social👇 prelights.biologists.com/prelists/bsd... And please do let me know if there are any I missed 👀

Congratulations to the @dev-journal.bsky.social 2025 Outstanding Paper nominations, & special mention to the winner by Yang et al doi.org/10.1242/dev.... For the top three nominations and an interview with the winners see: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Just look at this graph (Fig 5A,B from Koeber et al). Amazing. Congratulations to the Pollard lab and all authors. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I illustrated my way through the @bsdb.bsky.social Spring Meeting a couple weeks ago - here's my illustrated summary of the conference! I sketched (almost) all the speakers and glimpses of the science that made it such a great few days.

"Why is publishing so expensive?" It's a question I hear all the time, so we at @biologists.bsky.social thought we'd try to dispel some of the myths around publishing economics & provide transparency around our costs. Today, we publish editorials in all 5 of our journals - links in the thread below.

"We want to see the academic publishing industry change in a way that benefits science, not just profits"

Cancer Research UK is fed up of paying too much for open access publishing so they are completely stopping funding this activity: news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

The ABC of my fave things in this paper: * ABOLISHING both silencing AND leakiness of SynNotch (check out the DTA-based demo of this 😍) while preserving high efficiency, in pluripotent & differentiating cells * BOOSTING signal during #PUFFFIN neighbour-labelling * CITING Robbie Burns (1786) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A unique opportunity to lead the most wonderful company in scientific publishing (I might be slightly biased here). The Company of Biologists are searching for a CEO. www.inspiredselection.com/jobs/jo00000...

Huge congratulations to James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social for receiving the 2026 BSDB Waddington Medal, recognising an extraordinary career of discovery, mentorship, and leadership in developmental biology. bsdb.org/2026/03/24/2...

And the @bsdb.bsky.social Waddington medal goes to... @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social. Could not be more highly deserved, I'm so delighted to hear this 👏

Absolutely beautiful work from @matt-mala.bsky.social and Aisling Fairweather with valiant input from undergraduate student Yana Slavova. This excellent paper deserves an excellent #paperthemetune Anyone got any suggestions?

Absolutely terrible news. I knew Alan as he was a long-serving Director @biologists.bsky.social. Our research interests were very far apart but I loved chatting with him about running, gait analysis and GPS. He was a data nerd just like me. So sad. My thoughts are with his family.

We are delighted to announce that we are now open for applications for 2026 summer school Dates: 11th - 18th September 2026 Deadline for applications: 8th May See our website for info on how to apply.. and to check out our stellar speaker list! www.stemcellsummerschool.org/apply 🧪

Interesting move from CAS (if true, struggling to verify). It's free to publish in @dev-journal.bsky.social and Read & Publish agreements between @biologists.bsky.social and institutes worldwide mean that many authors can also publish Open Access research in Development without paying an APC.

When you share an office with the queen of the #axolotls (aidarodrigo.bsky.social) you also get to share the birthday joy! 🥳 Happy 2nd birthday to the OG axolotls (treats baked by Laura Arbanas and @cellysally.bsky.social’s daughter)

At the Centre for Regenerative Medicine #UoE, ECRs discuss preprints + now publish their discussions on #preLights! First #preprint they highlight brings membrane lipids & their spatial organization to the spotlight. @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social #preLight ⬇️ prelights.biologists.com/highlights/t...

PUFFFIN: an ultra-bright, customisable, single-plasmid system for labelling cell neighbourhoods. www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

Excited to announce that our #PUFFFIN plasmids are finally available on @addgene.bsky.social to make PUFFFIN neighbour labelling even more accessible. You can find the plasmids here www.addgene.org/Sally_Lowell/ and our paper here link.springer.com/article/10.1... Big thanks @cellysally.bsky.social!

We are delighted to announce that @giuliapaci.bsky.social from @ucllifesciences.bsky.social has been awarded the 2026 BSCB Postdoctoral researcher medal You can read about Giulia's work on how tissues withstand mechanical stress here: bscb.org/postdoctoral...

Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom 😬 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0e...

Read our interview with Drenka on how she used a grant from our Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing to organise an engaging virtual workshop with low environmental impact, whilst maximising inclusivity: www.biologists.com/stories/remo...

There's still time to apply to be a 2026 @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence fellow For those about to apply for their first independent academic position, the programme offers - mentoring - leadership training - profile rising - networking journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

This meeting will be so great. Only about a week until the early-bird deadline, 9th Feb. #DevBio

I think the latest cover helps to remind us that Development is not just a faceless brand of a journal eager to line shareholder pockets - it's a group of people who share a love for #devbio and, in my experience, really are trying to do their best for their community. #not-for-profit