Daniel Castranova

mRNA tech is some of the coolest, most powerful, most promising scifi shit humans are currently doing. They are being investigated to help with cancers, autoimmune diseases, M.S., stroke recovery, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and high cholesterol.

New short story from my postdoc in the Bassler lab is up on bioRxiv!

Turns out our favorite quorum sensing responsive phage VP882 is a member of a larger family of phages that is distributed across multiple bacterial species and can eavesdrop on a universally conserved autoinducer.

#PhageSky 🦠🧫

Hey friends - Daniocell is experiencing a temporary outage right now. The NICHD server it is hosted on got dropped from the NIH’s firewall list & so currently can’t be accessed outside the NIH. The relevant IT teams are working to resolve it. Sorry for any inconvenience. It’ll be back soon!!

I doubt that there is a single family in America that hasn’t benefitted directly from the NIH.

💥 Paper accepted (in principle) #cellfie 🤩
A long wait, a beautiful project, some amazing collaborations.
Stay tuned for more !
ALT : how cells (and cell-like beads) are deformed in constraining vessels

Our latest issue is now live! On the cover is a species of Asian noodlefish characterized by their transparency due to the absence of red blood cells, slender bodies and scaleless skins, and a poorly ossified skeleton. www.cell.com/current-biol...

I might be a bit obsessed with blood vessels in the brain 🤓! Aren't they pretty? And check the red blood cells inside the small ones!
Is it okay if I keep advertising our call for papers using more images of blood vessels in the brain? 😜🔬
#dementia #WomenInStem
With @natureportfolio.nature.com

Thanks Kate! 😀

Confocal image of a transgenic zebrafish embryo. The transgene is Tg(XlEef1a1:dclk2-GFP)io008, made by the Mione Lab, labels microtubules.

Galaxy of microtubules in the embryonic zebrafish eye. Credit to @zebrafish007.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

The cell looks like Inkay Pokémon🔬 — yellow glowing arms, pink heart.
Under attack by cyan bacteria🦠, but it’s just vibing on the glass, dancing🪩, unaware of the aftermath☠️. #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy #CellBiology #mechanobiology @pasteuredu.bsky.social #hostpathogeninteraction @pasteur.fr

Development of a transgenic zebrafish embryo. Credit to Dr. Mario Mendieta-Serrano. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Why wait for #FluorescenceFriday if you can have a neat #zebrafish right now.
(pic credit Amanda Garfield @cudevbio.bsky.social) #devbio

Ventral view of a two-headed zebrafish stained with a dye that marks collagen. You can see the developed structure of the jaw and head.

Alcian blue staining of cartilage in a two-headed zebrafish embryo. Credit to @jakeleyhr.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Check out the latest microscopy preprints including our recent favorite tool (LUCID) from #WeinsteinLab 🔥

🔗 to preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dorsal view of adult zebrafish showing the lymphatic system in the brain and scales. Appearing in three different color combinations.

High-resolution optical imaging of the meninges within the brain of an adult zebrafish. Credit to @zebrafish007.bsky.social & #WeinsteinLab. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Early epigenetic priming of regeneration studied with a novel transgenic epigenetic reporter Tissue regeneration requires previously differentiated cells to regain developmental plasticity. However, the upstream mechanisms initiating this process remain poorly understood. Here, we leverage a ...

@jimmykjm.bsky.social and @isabellaclsci.bsky.social et al. focus on epigenetic changes during fin regeneration in this preprint:

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

Two great new #Zebrafish preprints from the #WeinsteinLab using a new transgenic that reports epigenetic silencing and activation! Great to study epigenetic changes in vertebrates, and we even did an ENU screen. Excellent work by @mmarvel.bsky.social et al. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Collage of the five different header images, shown from top to bottom. Image descriptions: 1. Zebrafish lymphatics by Daniel Castranova. Lymphatic vessels shown in blue and neutrophils shown in orange in the head of a double transgenic juvenile zebrafish. 2. Catshark by Rory Cooper. Cleared and alizarin and stained hatchling catshark embryo. 3. Preimplantation mouse embryos by Markus Schliffka. Different stages of mouse preimplantation development from the zygote to the blastocyst, with nuclei in cyan and actin in grey. 4. Zebrafish retina by Gonzalo Aparicio. Retina from a 72hpf zebrafish embryo. Photoreceptor marker shown in red, while gfap:eGFP (a Muller cell marker) is shown z-depth pseudo-coloured. 5. Mouse embryo by Evan Bardot. Cleared E12.5 embryo labelled with antibodies against Cntn2 (green) and ColIV (magenta). Generated in Collaboration with James Muller.

Have you noticed the rotating header images on our site? They're winners of a competition we ran in 2021. Thank you @gaparicio.bsky.social @rorylcooper.bsky.social @zebrafish007.bsky.social @ebardot.bsky.social & Markus Schliffka for the images!

Give us a visit: thenode.biologists.com

In this very cool 1-2 punch from the Weinstein lab, start by reading Miranda & co’s awesome pre-print about a novel epigenetic reporter and follow it up with @jimmykjm.bsky.social’s pre-print using it to characterize epigenetic reprogramming during fin regeneration: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hiding in plain sight: A new lymphoid organ discovered in #zebrafish. Mohamed Bakr and David Langenau discuss new work from @zebrafish007.bsky.social @zebrafishmk.bsky.social and colleagues (rupress.org/jem/article/...) in Insights: rupress.org/jem/article/...

#CellMigration 𝐢𝐧 𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐨!
Excited to share this video on #FluorescenceFriday 🌈
Today as a GIF to circumvent video compression 😅!

Migratory Nascent Myotubes on #Drosophila Testes. Marker: Lifeact-eGFP. Scope: 980 Airyscan (@zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social)

#cellbio #sciart #devbio #science #microscopy

Very cool story, check it out! 👇

Look familiar? This beautiful video of #zebrafish embryogenesis was used for a 'one-frame per page' flipbook in the December 1996 edition of @dev-journal.bsky.social. Credit to Rolf Karlstrom and Don Kane. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

The KIT - European Zebrafish Resource Center (EZRC) www.ezrc.kit.edu now has an account on #Bluesky! Follow us to learn more!!!!!!

An optogenetic toolkit for robust activation of FGF, BMP, and Nodal signaling in zebrafish Cell signaling regulates a wide range of biological processes including development, homeostasis, and disease. Accessible technologies to precisely manipulate signaling have important applications in ...

Happy to share a new preprint from my lab! We characterize the on/off kinetics, light dosage-dependence, and more for a suite of optogenetic signaling activators in zebrafish embryos 💡 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Awesome! Congratulations!!

Great new work led by @biomarina-vg.bsky.social on zebrafish meninges!

Particularly 🤩 is the descriptions of ependymin-expressing meningeal cells (not a fibroblast!) & ablation studies showing their essential role in viability. So much more to learn!

Congrats Marina & team on this great work! 🦓🐟🧠

Interplay of actin nematodynamics and anisotropic tension controls endothelial mechanics Nature Physics - Blood flow through a vessel deforms vessel walls. Cells lining these walls sense the changes in pressure as blood flows and reorient their actin fibres in the direction of largest...

Very happy and excited to share our latest work linking actin nematodynamics and endothelial cell mechanics under anisotropic tension, now published in @natphys.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eigWi

@ipparis.bsky.social @polytechniqueparis.bsky.social

Bakr and Langenau discuss new work from @zebrafish007.bsky.social @zebrafishmk.bsky.social et al. (rupress.org/jem/article/...) that describes a new secondary lymphoid organ found in #zebrafish, which likely facilitates interactions between T, B, and macrophage cells rupress.org/jem/article/...

In @jem.org: Bakr and Langenau discuss work by @zebrafish007.bsky.social @zebrafishmk.bsky.social et al. (rupress.org/jem/article/...) that describes a new secondary lymphoid organ found in #zebrafish, which likely facilitates interactions btwn. T, B, & macrophage cells rupress.org/jem/article/...