Franck Pichaud

I have a fully funded PhD available for someone interested in solutions to plastic waste: www.ucl.ac.uk/study/doctor...

40 years ago today, the BDSC made its 1st shipment. To celebrate, Trudy Kaufman, who packed the 1st shipment, boxed up the same kinds of flies for John Roote at Cambridge, who placed the 1st order. Watch for pics of the arrival next week. We’ve shipped 4,882,378 vials total. That’s a lot of flies!

We've updated the Frequently Used GAL4 and Other Binary Drivers resource flybase.org/GAL4/freq_us... with 3 more GAL4 drivers (Scer\GAL4[Adh.PF], Scer\GAL4[c527], and Scer\GAL4[srp.D.cCa]) and added an image to Scer\GAL4[bap.3].

We welcomed Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to UCL East today as he announced new action to tackle violence against women and girls. We’re proud to have hosted this important moment in building a safer, more inclusive London. Read more 👇 https://bit.ly/4cpDNGL

Clever trick to observe the eclipse safely if u did not get a hold of glasses …

1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Back on the east coast trail 🤩 #newfoundland

Cellular biologist Marilyn Farquhar discovered critical structural components of cells, including tight junctions & desmosomes. A pioneer in electron microscopy, she served as the first female president of the American Society for Cell Biology, 1981-82. She was born #OTD in 1928. #WomenInSTEM

Hot of the press- great collaboration with our friends @lmescu.bsky.social and F. Casares @cabd-upo-csic.bsky.social - building the insect eye is a feat of engineering! @uclnews.bsky.social @lmcb-ucl.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk

Game on, Nige.

The awesome trio of @lmescu.bsky.social @fpichaud.bsky.social and Fernando Casares (and their teams) are on fire Fly eyes represent 'programmable metamaterials'; human engineering principles pre-exist in biology www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So grateful for the new Kathy Matthews Endowment for the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. A wonderful tribute by Kathy's husband, Lawrence Washington, that will help preserve Kathy's legacy and support the fly community for years to come. biology.indiana.edu/news-events/...

@ucl embracing the real robotic revolution! Fun but not very interactive!

Rainbow!

This week's theme is 'People of London' - a celebration of ALL the people who make and have made London the beautiful city it is. ------ 'The London Underground' (from 'This Is London', 1959) by Miroslav Šašek

Helicopter- car !?

Preparing a new talk for our UK Drosophila meeting in Scotland - lovely Edinburgh this evening!

Huge congratulations to Vil Fernandes for being awarded the Lister Prize! Amazing talk as always!

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...

Lunch with a view

The polymath @rogerhighfield.bsky.social gave this year's @royalsociety.org David Attenborough Prize Lecture He discussed how more science communication seems to lead to less public confidence, and the neural basis for this paradox You can watch it here royalsociety.org/science-even...

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

The CODA workflow works for: - any tissue type (eye, kidney, pancreas, brain,...) - any disease (cancer, fibrosis, diabetes,...) - any species (human, mouse, rhesus macaque, ...) It can be integrated with any spatial omic technique (CODEX, Visium, IF, IHC,..) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s official: the UK is rejoining Erasmus! 👏🇪🇺

If you are a UCL student you can register for the hopeful Sustainability Leadership Conference next week. I'll be there but dont let that put you off 🤓 studentsunionucl.org/sustainabili...

Made it ! 2 days of great Matrix biology 🎉

🚨 Open for applications - Director of Scientific Core Facilities & Services! Shape the strategic future of our core facilities and work with leading experts on cutting-edge cancer discovery and translational research 🧑‍🔬🔬🧪 💷 ~£100,000 ⏰ 17.5.2026 Apply 👉 www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk/career/mi-26...

If you know a graduating undergraduate looking for the chance to spend 1-2 years in a lab before graduate school, we're hiring! Our lab explores morphogenesis, defining how the cell adhesion & cytoskeletal machinery work together to allow cells to change shape & move tarheels.live/peiferlab/ 1/n RT

Join us to establish your lab @lmcb-ucl.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk - very supportive environment & state-of-the-art imaging, mass spec and genomics tech platforms!

Made it! Looking forward to 3 days of great developmental biology.

We are looking for a new group leader to join the IGH (Montpellier, France). I can’t wait to meet my future colleague! Apply :-) More infos here: igh.cnrs.fr/join-igh-as-...

Beautiful #devbio talk today at our @lmcb-ucl.bsky.social Seminar Series by @leadingedgeprogram.bsky.social Sarah Bowling!

Wow! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here we report all five canonical nucleobases—purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine and uracil)—in samples returned from the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Knicks’ Mohamed Diawara at Marcus Garvey Park after sharing iftar at Keur Yayeu Dara, a beloved Senegalese restaurant in Harlem.

Your turn! What's My JND? 0.0065 Can you beat it? www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...

We also have PhD scholarships available for UK citizens to work with us as the UCL Plastic Waste Hub. You get to hang out at Institute of Making too which is like enhancing. More info on our general vibe here: UCL Plastic Waste Innovation Hub - Institute of Making share.google/Y2C03GiZgkMO...

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 🧪

Come and join us @lmcb-ucl.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk We are looking for new colleagues. The LMCB offers a very supportive environment and is a great place to be!

Nuclear blending - Jepson lab #UCLSTPisymposium2026

Optical clearing & LSM with Rob Campbell @ucl SWC #UCLSTPisymposium2026

Apply for ‘Beam time’ ! @uclengineering.bsky.social

Great programme for our one-day annual @ucl.ac.uk STP imaging symposium @slcuplants.bsky.social

Lovely Worcester Cathedral

Scientists have seen Asgard archaea crawling for the first time. When it comes to the origin of eukaryotes, this is like seeing a feathered dinosaur in the wild. (Video courtesy of Philipp Ralder)

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

Group Leader Call at the @cbitoulouse.bsky.social in Genome biology, projects at the interface with devbio will be given particular attention. please share :) cbi-toulouse.fr/wp-content/u...