Susie Wopat

Years of tracking T+ cells now a preprint! We show APLNR directs mesoderm migration in gastruloids and plays a role in spatial fate patterning. 🙏 @sseethar.bsky.social @alex-plum.bsky.social @heemskerklab.bsky.social @mattiaserra.bsky.social @squishycell.bsky.social 🔗 tinyurl.com/aplnrmeso

When cells in different phases fuse, nuclei play a mitotic tug-of-war @olgaafonso.bsky.social, Daniel Feliciano & Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz investigate the fate of syncytia containing nuclei at different cell cycle stages. Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

What’s inside the black box of cis-regulatory control? Our new review proposes a conceptual framework for understanding how regulatory inputs are integrated, linking molecular mechanisms to sequence constraints and quantitative rules, across scales.

Our work is finally out! How do organs get the right shape and size on time? Using the zebrafish inner ear canal, we show that a mechanical feedback loop between the ECM and Yap1 drives timely tissue growth, and a built-in termination system shuts it down once morphogenesis is done.

Happening in 10 minutes!

It was fun to write this commentary with @priyomadhyapok.bsky.social on a beautiful new paper from @pfrancois.bsky.social and Aulehla's groups. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In the mid 1900s, not everyone even believed that genes played a significant role in development. C.H. Waddington’s iconic epigenetic landscapes helped to change that. New data both confirms and complicates his ideas. www.quantamagazine.org/how-does-lif...

DNA → RNA → protein. From single mRNAs to an entire developing vertebrate embryo, we can now watch this last step unfold in real time. Our paper is out today! 🐟🔬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

BREAKING NEWS The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

We built a fully functional LegoAFM for imaging! 🤩... Today presented at #TürenAuf Tag der #SendungMitDerMaus! ... Remember: Always be curious! ⁉️

🧬 Preprint! 🧵 Our goal is to genetically manipulate every embryonic germ layer to enable high throughput in vivo studies. We previously showed mouse ectoderm can be targeted by amniotic injection, enabling cell-specific manipulation, lineage tracing, and knockouts. But how to reach mesoderm?

How does a growing leaf stay flat? 🍃 Our new paper in @plosbiology.org shows that maintaining leaf flatness requires growth-rate coordination across the width of the leaf blade—not just between the top and bottom surfaces. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The Brantley Lab is hiring a Research Technician/Lab Manager! Looking for someone with a strong foundation in molecular biology, a team player, and excited about basic science. If you know someone who would be a great fit, please share! spartantalent.uncg.edu/postings/35995

The growth of #plant leaves is highly dynamic and should be coordinated, but how is #leaf flatness preserved? @roederlab.bsky.social &co show that global coordination of growth across the leaf blade is required to maintain flatness in #Arabidopsis @plosbiology.org 🧪 buff.ly/QUMxOcF

Since we had to contend with the heat dome temps, we sadly didn’t make our usual trip to the St. Louis Zoo, and checked out the (somewhat newer) aquarium instead! Now that know I what’s lurking beneath the surface of the Mississippi River… I don’t think I’ll be swimming in it anytime soon 🫣

Vought doesn’t want control over science. Vought wants to kill these agencies. He doesn't believe tax dollars should be spent on science or social programs. It's not about control; it's destruction. He intends to cancel grants and impound the money. It’s about corruption.

What a fun couple of days talking optogenetics, zebrafish embryogenesis, quantitative imaging, and more! Thanks @katwrog.bsky.social for visiting and sharing your awesome science with all of us at UCSB! @streichan.bsky.social

And now it is out officially! Thanks to our reviewers whose comments helped strengthen the work. I hope you read the revised version in @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

🐟!JOB ALERT!Duke, Durham, NC!🐟 We are looking for a research tech (our current tech is starting grad school this Fall (Yay!)). The candidate will contribute to our ongoing research projects on tissue morphogenesis using zebrafish. Please RT🙏 www.munjallab.com/join-us

Very happy to see this out. 👏 @yinanwan.bsky.social Bogdan Bintu and team. Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis | free link Science www.science.org/eprint/5MHTM...

Previously we had shown that axolotl tail regeneration occurs in the absence of somitogenesis. In the updated manuscript we propose that vertebral segmentation during tail regeneration occurs through a process of buckling instability. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Looking forward to sharing my postdoctoral work in just a little over a week at the UCAM Morphogenesis Series! 🐟🔬🔦

Elasticity without a reference state: continuum mechanics of active tension nets https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.08968 Nikolas H. Claussen, Fridtjof Brauns, Boris I. Shraiman.

The next the Ethel Browne Harvey Postdoc Seminar will be this Friday, January 9 at 3 pm Eastern Time with Priyom Adhyapok @priyomadhyapok.bsky.social @duke-university.bsky.social and Zong-Yuan Liu @UMich. Register today and join us. bit.ly/4ncxr0M #SDBPostdocSeminar

Using fluorescence live imaging and an in vitro implantation model, we show that human embryo attachment begins with direct cell fusion via syncytin-2–MFSD2A interaction. With @hansclevers.bsky.social. Great work by @tnoordzij.bsky.social & @martinacelotti.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣 New preprint: Mechanochemical feedback, tissue geometry & rigid-body dynamics initiate rotational migration in Drosophila via spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. A mechanism generalizable to closed epithelia. @sreejithsanthosh.bsky.social biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share our new work from my graduate lab: DynamicAtlas, a morphodynamic atlas of Drosophila development! We develop methods for morphological time alignment of live data. Surprisingly, we find that the kinematics of fly morphogenesis are *very* simple. Enjoy! 
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

zSwim, the zebrafish lab management software we’ve been developing is now officially listed in Duke OT&C’s technology portfolio! We’re launching an official Duke pilot in March 2026 at the new Ze-Core facility! If you’re in the zebrafish community, check it out! otc.duke.edu/technologies...

New paper alert! We report that #zebrafish endodermal cells use contact inhibition of locomotion as a dispersal and spacing mechanism. It’s a neat example of large-scale patterns emerging from local interactions using a simple set of rules. Summary in the thread below 1/9 doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Our November in #preprints list is now up on the Node! Check it out for the latest in #devbio and stem cell research ⤵️: thenode.biologists.com/november-in-...

Boris Shraiman points a physicist’s eye on biological quandaries news.ucsb.edu/2025/022264/... 🧪

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

Advanced grad students + postdocs: apply for the 2026 #kitpqbio summer course, "Physical Principles of Morphogenesis in Plants and Animals," at buff.ly/OXXMKEv. Apply by Feb. 1. Course directors Adrienne Roeder (Cornell) and Sebastian Streichan (UCSB)

Stationary and germ layer-specific cellular flows shape the zebrafish gastrula https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687746v1

Ascidians (Ciona intestinalis)🪸Our distant chordate cousins! 🌊 Simple sea squirts that reveal how vertebrate body plans evolved 🧬 A key model for notochord formation, neural induction, and cell lineage mapping 📸 Video by MBL Embryology 2019 #ModelMonday #DevBio #EvoDevo

If you registered for the West Coast SDB meeting, check out the updates to our meeting website. We added a detailed schedule and info on poster sizes and parking. #wcsdb2025 sdbonline.org/wcsdb2025_program

The difference between Knowledge and Experience

Wednesday is with us again, so grab your family and friends and drag them out to buy a book! - Michael

There’s a sizable group that protests every Friday at a local park in my home town. So of course I had to join my mom when I was home last week! A true testament to how community-level organization can be a powerful act of resistance in current times!

30% budget cut for NIH plus whittling into down to 8 institutes. We are so screwed. wapo.st/42gLz0Z

Give ‘em hell, Harvard.