Bilaterian BMP signaling gradients suggest an ancestral anti-neural role. Study of #cnidarians shows that #BMP signalling promotes neurogenesis; its "anti-neural" function is a side effect of its role in the DV axis @paulknabl.bsky.social @genikhovich.bsky.social @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dJHoiR
New preprint! In an fun collaboration with @imaeso.bsky.social and @mirimiam.bsky.social led by Manu F-M, we set to explore the potential adaptation of transposable elements 👾 to host adenine DNA methylation by recruiting prokaryotic DAM methyltransferases: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... 1/6
Astrangia poculata is an ideal model for coral development. Astrangia can be collected and induced to spawn in the laboratory, producing an abundance of embryos for experimentation.
📸 Credit: Leslie Babonis and Jake Warner, MBL Whitman Fellow
#ModelMonday #DevBio #Cnidarians 🪸
Just finished an incredible two month field season in Shark Bay #Gathaagudu - big thank you to all my wonderful team members 🙏🏻
So much appreciation for the animals and the time I get to spend with them. You have my heart Shark Bay 🫶
Fine #sensory innervation of the contact surface of #lamellae bearing adhesive setae in the tokay gecko zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #adhesion #geckos @elissazcameron.bsky.social @amcell.bsky.social @uhl-lab.bsky.social
The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes:
🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting
🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
A fossil nervous system meets modern neurobiology.
We found that a living comb jelly preserves neural architecture remarkably similar to those inferred from Cambrian fossils over 500 million years old 🤩.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Dear Sir David Attenborough, Happy 100th Birthday you living legend!
🚨 We discovered a new mode of Hox gene regulation in annelids! 🪱 A distal enhancer acts as a "global control region", lifting Hox genes from Polycomb repression. This is reminiscent of Hox gene control in vertebrates, but the two modes likely evolved convergently.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Video
Here’s the last major paper from the PhD of @paulknabl.bsky.social.
We were trying to understand what BMP signaling does in the sea anemone Nematostella when it is not patterning its second body axis. Check out Part 1 in BMC Biol. 2025; and here's is our Part 2
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Video
www.biorxiv.org
PLOS Biology
Alex de Mendoza
Society for Developmental Biology
Stephanie L King
Bilaterian animals with centralized nervous systems have patterns of BMP signaling activity gradient that suggest an “anti-neural” ancestral role, but the evidence for this remains unclear. This study...
