Katherine Brown

It’s no underestimate to say that he founded a whole field of biology - reprogramming - and his influence on the #devbio field and community has been enormous. He’ll be sorely missed, but his legacy will live on.

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92 It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

Very saddened to hear of John Gurdon’s passing. I’ve been lucky enough to interact with him at multiple points through my career - from undergrad lectures, through his position as former Chair of @biologists.bsky.social’s Board of Directors, and as an author at @dev-journal.bsky.social.

I'm attending too! Please feel welcome to speak to me about your research and how the journal can better serve you. I'm taking part in the 'Ethics and Publishing' session on Thursday 25 September and I'm also bringing some @dev-journal.bsky.social goodies, including some of our popular posters.

From stem cells to human development: supporting a growing field In 2014, Development organised the first of The Company of Biologists’ Journal Meetings: ‘From Stem Cells to Human Development’. Conceived to help bring together the developmental biology and stem cel...

It was fun to look back over a decade of 'From Stem Cells to Human Development' meetings at @dev-journal.bsky.social. This is one of the projects I most enjoyed during my time at the journal - and I really hope we helped to catalyse and support a community... journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

I understand the regulatory hurdles, and the importance of respecting individual choices, but surely we can do better than this to provide vital material to support research that should - amongst other things - improve the outcome of IVF treatments in the long term.

As someone who cares deeply about advancing our understanding of human dev, and who's been through IVF myself, I found this stat particularly depressing: "In the UK alone, more than 170,000 embryos were discarded in 2019, yet fewer than 1% – a total of only 675 embryos – were donated to research"

Frozen potential: embryo research at the crossroads of ethics, regulation and scientific opportunity ABSTRACT. In an era of expanding reproductive possibilities, the human embryo has come to represent both immense potential and profound constraint. Advances in medically assisted reproduction (MAR) ha...

Just out in @dev-journal.bsky.social - important discussion on the availability of human embryos for research. Thanks @marta-shahbazi.bsky.social and co-authors for contributing this: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Ingrid Tsang

👋Introducing Ingrid - the new Reviews Editor for @dev-journal.bsky.social

thenode.biologists.com/introducing-...

Congratulations Richard and all - fabulous news!

As a former fly pusher, this news hits hard: FlyBase is such a critical resource for the community. My thoughts are with the dedicated individuals at Harvard whose jobs have been cut, and the broader FlyBase team whose future is in question.

@danielgorelick.bsky.social is trying an experiment at @biologyopen.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social at the moment - details on the trial so far here: journals.biologists.com/bio/pages/fa...

Well this feels pretty terrifying.

Great opportunity to join the team here at @biologists.bsky.social. Feel free to get in touch with me or @amjeve.bsky.social for more information

Yup - these are challenging times for small and society publishers...

Thinking about to some more, they won’t need to resort to legal avenues - they just won’t publish your paper until you’ve paid them the APC.

Which works (from the publisher perspective if not the author one) until NIH introduce the threatened APC cap. Impossible to plan when policies keep changing…!

It’s a good question - it’d be terrible PR for them to pursue this legally - but fortunately not one I have to worry about as we’re offering a free route to compliance! But I also suspect that many authors won’t want to risk their relationship with the publisher so will go down the GoldOA route.

Yes but not all publishers allow this - some are insisting that NIH-funded authors choose their gold OA route (pay an APC or have an institutional R&P agreement) to comply.

This is a useful summary of how some major publishers are responding to the new NIH policy. We've just updated our policies at @biologists.bsky.social: @dev-journal.bsky.social @jcellsci.bsky.social and @jexpbiol.bsky.social will allow authors to deposit the accepted version with zero embargo.

Seconded. Ethan is one of @dev-journal.bsky.social's Pathway to Independence fellows this year, and - on top of his great research programme - has been super-active in the @prelights.bsky.social community.

I got varifocals last year and haven't looked back. Embrace the old!

Yup - and a super-brave move that’s revolutionised the publishing process for the better.

Congratulations Eirini - wonderful news!

Staying ahead of the curve: a decade of preprints in biology When Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced the launch of bioRxiv in November 2013, only the braver or more radical amongst us would have predicted that it heralded a lasting change within the scienc...

Hard to remember that just 12 years ago there was no @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social and almost no one in the biology community preprinted their work. What a long way we’ve come. @reinierprosee.bsky.social and I wrote a thing about how @biologists.bsky.social embraced the preprint world

Congratulations Monica - fantastic news!

You can find out more about Pete's groundbreaking work in this recent video from @bsdb.bsky.social and @biologists.bsky.social (from around 21 minutes in). The therapy he and his team developed for AMD is a truly inspiring example of the power of stem cells for regenerative medicine.

I just heard this too. Terribly sad news - Pete's work really exemplified the path from basic science all the way through to the clinic.

On my way to Basel for #BaCell3D. Looking forward to a few days of great science and connecting with colleagues. If you're at the meeting, please do come chat to me about any of @biologists.bsky.social journals, community sites and charitable activities.

Suffering from FOMO and missing the #devbio crowd now I've moved on from @dev-journal.bsky.social and don't get to attend #2025ICDB. But go chat to the journal's awesome new Exec Ed instead! And if you all could just decide on one hashtag, that'd really help me follow along remotely...!

WTF? Feels like a poorly judged April Fools' Day story...