ZooCELL MSCA-Doctoral Network

🇫🇷 🧬 Meet Richard Copley, ZooCELL PI at IMEV 🧬 🇫🇷 @imev-mer.fr Richard leads the Genome and Protein Evolution in Animals team. We asked him what sparked his interest in EvoDevo, how collaborations influence his choice of organisms and what he values about working with PhD students.

3️⃣ Which project from your career stands out? “My work on the public Human Genome Project at EMBL, with Peer Bork, Tobias Doerks and Jörg Schultz. Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled?” 4️⃣ How do you choose which organisms to study? “I’ve tended to work on species that my friends are working on.”

5️⃣ What motivated you to become a PI? “Realistically, there are few other career tracks in academic science.” 6️⃣ What is most rewarding about mentoring PhD students? “Seeing that they can succeed in spite of oneself.”

1️⃣ What first drew you to EvoDevo or comparative cell biology? “David Quammen’s book The Song of the Dodo, and the gene names used in early Drosophila development.” 2️⃣ Which scientific question excites you most right now? “There seems to be some confusion around biphasic life cycles.”

🔬 Back to our WHO ARE WE series! Meet Evelyn Houliston, ZooCELL PI @imev-mer.fr @clytia-vlfr.bsky.social We asked her about her path into comparative cell biology, the questions guiding her current research and her experience mentoring PhD students. #PI #clytia #development #MSCA #mentoring

6️⃣ Which technology holds particular promise for comparative developmental biology? “Volume electron microscopy! It is opening up an entirely new understanding of organisation within cells, which we can begin to relate to key developmental transitions.”

7️⃣ What is most rewarding about mentoring PhD students? “Seeing them progressively gain scientific maturity and develop unexpected skills and interests.”

4️⃣ Which project from your career stands out? “Our work on light-induced spawning in Clytia was very satisfying. Through nice collaborations, including within a previous EU network, we were able to identify precise molecular and cellular mechanisms relevant across fields.”

5️⃣ What makes an organism a good experimental model? “For me, the key criteria are practical. Can we easily obtain eggs, fertilise them and observe their development, including the events taking place inside their cells?”

2️⃣ What motivated you to become a PI? “The freedom to explore biological questions.”

3️⃣ Which scientific question excites you most right now? “I am becoming very interested in how oocytes grow. This is a major challenge for females across species, yet it remains understudied. I hope that investigating this process in Clytia will uncover new cellular mechanisms of wider relevance.”

1️⃣ What first drew you to comparative cell biology? “I trained in cell biology and have long been fascinated by how cells and embryos break symmetry. After addressing these questions in diverse species, I realised that comparing different solutions can shed new light on biological questions.”

🧬 🇳🇱 As part of our Graduate School activities, we visited the our associated partner, Single Cell Discoveries in Utrecht! It was a valuable opportunity for our students to discover what it is like to work at a dynamic and innovative biology CRO and to learn about careers beyond academia.

A big thank you to @Oriol Batlle and @Regan Hamel for your inspiring talks and for showing us around the company!

Great to have @afalciat.bsky.social at the ZooCELL graduate school! 😊 Thanks for hosting us and for the inspiring talk 🙏

The ZooCELL network has gathered in Paris for its second graduate school. We are at the historical Institute of Physico-Chimiquie de Biologie listening to inspiring talks on Open Science, learning about our DC's projects and much more! @paveltomancak.bsky.social

Gaspar Jekely@jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

Pavel Tomancak on the past present and future of Fiji in our @ZooCELL graduate school in Paris. He warns about chaos and the fragmentation of research #software, on how #AI and the proliferation of vibe-coded tools is undoing over a decade of work of […] [Original post on biologists.social]

🚨 Paper Alert! A new preprint from our DC @Kata_Szabo is out! Check out the sample-preparation protocols she developed for volume electron microscopy (vEM) of marine organisms. 🔬🌊 #Platynereis #microscopy #synchrotron #xray #vEM #connectomics #MCSA #PhD

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

Gaspar Jekely@jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

In our new paper by Kata Szabó et al. we present optimised sample-preparation workflows for volume electron microscopy for entire small marine organisms. The workflow includes high-pressure freezing, various freeze substitution protocols and synchrotron […] [Original post on biologists.social]

🇫🇷 🪼 Meet our partner, the Institut de la Mer de Villefranche (IMEV)! Our next ZooCELL partner takes us to Villefranche-sur-Mer, on the French Mediterranean coast. IMEV is one of Sorbonne University’s three marine stations and is jointly affiliated with the @cnrs.fr .

Two LBDV teams contribute to ZooCELL: 🔬 Cnidarian Developmental Mechanisms (@clytia-vlfr.bsky.social) led by Evelyn Houliston and Tsuyoshi Momose. 🧬 Genome and Protein Evolution in Animals, led by Richard Copley.

Together, these teams bring complementary expertise in marine developmental biology and genome evolution to ZooCELL. We are proud to have them as part of our network! #developmentalbiology #evolution #EvoDevo #genomics

Its unique location, where deep waters and coastal currents bring diverse planktonic organisms close to shore, has attracted marine scientists since the 19th century. Today, IMEV continues this tradition using approaches ranging from microscopy and quantitative imaging to genomics.

Within IMEV, LBDV @biodev-vlfr.bsky.social, investigates cell and developmental biology in marine invertebrates, as well as the evolution of animal genomes. Its seven research teams study fundamental processes including embryogenesis, regeneration, cell division, life cycles and animal evolution.

Learn about ZooCELL’s X-ray imaging journey from our DC Kata Szabó from the Jekely lab at COS-UHEI. Read below her article: "Exploring marine creatures: X-ray adventures across Europe"! 🧵 #EM #ESRF #DESY #PETRAIII #X-ray #imaging #PhDlife #MSCA

These results motivated us to return to EM to get to know our animals in even greater detail, now exploring inside their cells.

But we are also looking forward to returning to these amazing synchrotrons and cities, imaging even more animals, and discovering what exciting place our PhDs will take us next.

We definitely made the most of our surroundings, going for evening walks after long days underground scanning samples. But the most exciting part was seeing our microscopic animals appear on the screen with the help of Alexandra Pacureanu.

Here, imaging took longer, one day for each animal instead of three minutes, but the images were much more detailed. Seeing every cell in our teeny worms revealed the complexity that cells create together as they build an organism.

Then, equipped with our best samples, we took to the road again. Destination: @esrf.fr - The European Synchrotron in Grenoble. Objective: Obtain the highest-resolution X-ray images possible.

Catching a glimpse of a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains, with a river running through it and a synchrotron in the middle, was an unexpected sight from the FlixBus taking us to Grenoble.

Our travels then continued, with our animals safely embedded in tiny resin blocks. Next stop: PETRA III at DESY, Hamburg. Angelika Svetlove, an X-ray imaging specialist, was there to guide us. She showed us around the beamline, and then we got to work right away.

Imaging animals there, especially such tiny ones, is very quick. However, scanning hundreds of them (as we did!) meant long days at the beamline and last-minute pizza orders before everything closed. But it was all worth it to find one beautiful sample among a hundred cracked ones.

So, we searched for alternatives to complement our work. Some of us turned to light microscopy, while others explored computational approaches. One of the main techniques we chose was X-ray imaging.

Why? Because it allows us to image the animals in a fraction of the time, without cutting them into thousands of tiny slices, as required for EM. Of course, the trade-off is less detail.

But starting a new life in a new European country is not the end of our travels, and our animals come with us. The animals’ journeys begin in different places. Some come from Tupperware boxes in our labs, some from the freezing North Sea, and others come from a gulf in the Mediterranean.

Because our animals are very small, studying them in detail can be difficult. To examine the tiniest details of every cell in an animal, we study them using volume Electron Microscopy (EM). It is an amazing but laborious and time-consuming technique.

Exploring marine creatures: X-ray adventures across Europe 🔬 🇪🇺 In ZooCELL, we are interested in the smallest details of our weird little marine creatures. This interest brought us together from all over the world and led us to leave our home countries to study them.

This week, we are taking a short break from our “Who We Are” series to share some exciting experiences from across the ZooCELL network. Come back tomorrow to follow our doctoral candidates and their marine animals on an X-ray imaging adventure across Europe! 🦐 🪱 🪼

🔬 Meet Marie, ZooCELL Doctoral Candidate at UCL! @mariemaeland.bsky.social From cell biology to exploring the evolution of sensory cells, Marie combines advanced imaging and single-cell approaches to uncover the cellular architecture of a tiny flatworm larva. Read on to meet Marie! 🧵👇

🏀 What do you enjoy outside the lab? "I've always used sports as an outlet, especially basketball and handball. When I'm not in the mood to be active, you'll usually find me reading, watching a movie or experiencing London with friends."

📚 If you weren't a scientist, what would you do? "I've always loved reading, so becoming an author has been at the back of my mind for a long time. I'm not sure what kind of book I'd write, but I'd like to find a way to connect it to science." We are proud to have Marie as part of ZooCELL!

🔬 What are you working on? "I'm using volume electron microscopy and single-cell RNA sequencing to 3D reconstruct the apical organ of a flatworm larva and explore the evolution of the sensory cell types animals use to interact with their environment."

🔬 What technique do you use most, and what makes it exciting? "Electron microscopy is central to my project. I'm new to the technique, so every step is exciting! The ability to visualize cells at such high resolution continues to fascinate me."

💡 Who inspired you to become a scientist? "The science teachers I had growing up definitely influenced my decision. They taught me how to find joy and interest in all the different topics and questions we can explore in biology."