Allison Kann

A widely used RNA assay labels the wrong molecules in several model organisms After a routine experiment raised suspicions, Steinmetz group researchers joined forces with collaborators to highlight the limitations of a commonly used RNA labeling product.

New paper out in @bmc.springernature.com 🤩👏 A routine 5-ethynyl uridine (EU) RNA labeling experiment in a sea anemone turned into detective work for @malinkjosavik.bsky.social, @ktgarschall.bsky.social & @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social 🕵️‍♀️

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won’t end For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach.

On the importance of preprints, regardless of whether you are Team Sponge or Team Jelly:

'King says that she wishes she had posted the study as a preprint so that the errors could have been caught sooner.'

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Morphogenesis & Organogenesis!
Part 1 (full) in the comments 👇

Comment if you'd like to be added (regardless of age or career stage!)

Please post your own biology-related starter packs using #BioStarterPacks

🧬🔬🪰🐟🐁🌱

I would love to be added! This is great, thank you!

Confocal microscopy image of a juvenile sea star (Patiria miniata) viewed from the oral side. The animal has a five-armed, star-shaped body with a central nerve ring. The nervous system is labeled in green, forming radial nerve cords extending into each arm, and cell nuclei are labeled in red throughout the animal. The image appears against a black background and has a holiday-ornament-like appearance.

Felt a little festive at the microscope this morning for #FluorescenceFriday 🎄

Here’s the nervous system of a juvenile sea star ⭐️

Green = acetylated tubulin, red = nuclei

Happy holidays!

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

watercolor of DNA gel

#ArtAdventCalendar Gel Electrophoresis in Green and Blue, watercolor, 2023 #sciart

My team are running the Peripheral Nerve Society's Instagram account this week: www.instagram.com/pnsociety1

If you like images of the nervous system, please check it out!

#FluorescenceFriday
@uclqsneuromuscular.bsky.social
@uclqsion.bsky.social

From #amoeba to humans: new paper @natcomms.nature.com by the Grashoff group @sfb1348.bsky.social reveals evolutionary origin of animal cell adhesion and force transmission. Talin protein plays central role. See rdcu.be/eTFJR
@uni-muenster.de

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl The molecular, cellular, and functional restoration of the axolotl thymus after de novo regeneration is described.

Can't believe my postdoc paper is finally out. Christmas came early this year, holy moly 🎄

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Join us for next week’s exciting VGZT session! 🎉

🗓️ Thursday, November 20th
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Allison Kann (@apkann.bsky.social)
👉 Joana da Silva (on X: @joanamsilva14)

See you there 👋

This image by MDI Bio Lab's Travis Carney is a #drosophila larval brain. Neural stem cells and neurons are marked, including axons that project into the brain. The flare in the center of each lobe is part of a learning and memory center in flies.

ZEISS Microscopy #microscopymonday 🧪 🤝

PAPER OUT ✨ What if you could use your microscope as a 3D printer? Prototype microfluidics in-house, <5$ in material costs per chip. From idea to experiment within a day. Now published in Lab-on-a-Chip (open-access): doi.org/10.1039/D5LC...

As spooky season is upon us 🎃, we have cells that look like spider webs for #FluorescenceFriday 🧪🔬

Happy to share that this work is now published in @biophysj.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1016/j.bp...

A toolkit for testing membrane-localising tags across species Transgenic markers and tools have revolutionised how we study cells and developing organisms. Some of the elements needed to construct those tools are universally applicable (e.g. fluorescent proteins...

How can we see the cells that make up a living organism? Membrane-localising tags can drive fluorescent proteins to the cell's outer membrane, making their outlines visible. But the tags don't work well in all organisms. How do you find one for your species of interest? 🧵

Check our latest preprint

One of the coolest projects I've seen in years - huge congrats to Çağrı and the McKinley team!

🚨 My lab is hiring at all levels!

Interested in animal origins & evolutionary cell biology?

I'm recruiting a postdoc, PhD students & a research assistant to study the molecular evolution of cell adhesion using marine invertebrates + comparative genomics.

🔗: clarkelab.com/join/

Please repost!

RhoA (blue) and the actin cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown in a set of primary microglia.

For #FluorescenceFriday, RhoA (blue) and the actin cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown in a set of primary microglia 🔬 #Neuroscience #Microscopy

Absolutely gorgeous work from Kate - I loved reading the full paper!

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

brightfield images of three lizard embryos of approximately the same developmental stage. Below each embryo image is an immunofluorescence image labeling E-cadherin (green) and alpha-smooth muscle actin (magenta) of their developing lungs

New preprint from some of my postdoc work on lungs! Co-led with Kaleb Hill, we studied smooth muscle and epithelial development in lizard lungs. Stay tuned for more!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Peripheral muscle fibers (pseudocolored in magenta) and nuclei (in gray)

Today's #FluorescenceFriday is featuring the peripheral muscle of Hofstenia miamia 💪

Cells can form patterns within themselves just like embryos do. How? Connie Yan's new preprint shows how the anterior-posterior cytoskeleton pattern in Stentor is dictated by regionalized scaffolding proteins

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Screenshot of Essay from Martin Schwartz on 'Why would anyone want to be a scientist'. An anniversary article from The Company of Biologists published in Journal of Cell Science. The first few lines are: It is difficult to fathom why anyone intelligent enough to be a scientist would actually choose to be one. Doing good science requires the utmost exertion of body, mind and spirit, yet is consistently filled with failure and rejection. But, strange even to myself, I not only don't question the unfavorable risk-to-reward ratio but consider myself astonishingly lucky to be a scientist. There are three fundamental pleasures that have sustained me through 50 years of this madness.

Why would anyone want to be a scientist?

Check out our new Essay from Martin Schwartz: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

The genomic origin of the unique chaetognath body plan - Nature Genomic, single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses show that chaetognaths, following extensive gene loss in the gnathiferan lineage, relied on newly evolved genes and lineage-specific tandem ...

After nearly twenty years in the making, our attempt at understanding what makes the chaetognath phylum so unique has finally been published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
with #LauraPiovani @dariagavr.bsky.social @alexdemendoza.bsky.social @chemamd.bsky.social and others /1

Latest paper elifesciences.org/articles/107... closes an important cycle in our efforts to study regeneration: week-long recordings allow us to observe the behaviour of cells during the entire course of regeneration in a crustacean leg – bright objects in movie are fluorescent nuclei of cells. 1/6

✨Development meets design in this embryonic chameleon lung 🫁 🦎. Smooth muscle swirls 🟣 and branching tips and cartilage 🟢 come together in reptilian lung morphogenesis. Image taken by @drkatiegoodwin.bsky.social 🔬🧪
#FluorescenceFriday #DevBio

Fluorescent embryo showing the developing epidermis, pseudo-colored with the ICA LUT in FIJI

Our transgenic acoel embryos are beautifully mosaic 😍 showing off the developing epidermis for #FluorescenceFriday

Congratulations Tim!! So exciting!