EMBL DB unit

It's been a busy month at the DB unit at EMBL #PhDdefence Simona Gioe', from the Aulehla group, successfully defended her PhD thesis, which was titled 'Investigating the functional role of oscillatory signalling via experimental entrainment of the somite segmentation clock'. Congrats, Simona 🥳🎓

✨Andrea Zanon, a PhD student in the van Gestel group @jordivangestel.bsky.social, was our speaker at the DB seminar this week @embl.org. He talked about his project, which involves developing a synthetic soil assay to study the aggregative life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum #lifecycle #amoeba

🎓Congratulations to Camilla Autorino, from the Petridou group @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social @embl.org who has just defended her PhD thesis titled 'A closed feedback between tissue phase transitions and morphogen gradients drives patterning dynamics in the zebrafish embryo' #DevelopmentalBiology

✨ In this week's DB unit seminar, Michael Zhao, a postdoc in the Aulhela group, shared insights on how he uses a combination of experimental data and theoretical models to study patterning and collective behaviour in the presomitic mesoderm #Patterning #CollectiveBehavior #Mesoderm

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Applications are now open for the 2026 SDB Science Communication Internship. Graduate student and postdoc members of the Society for Developmental Biology are eligible to apply. Deadline: August 15. Learn more: www.sdbonline.org/science_comm...

📢 Open Call! The Max Perutz Labs invite applications for a Tenure-Track Professorship in Mechanistic Cell and Developmental Biology. More details ➡️ tinyurl.com/3fbkp89c

🎉 Congratulations to Magdalena Schindler, from the Petridou group @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social @embl.org, who has just defended her PhD thesis titled 'An optimum cell cycle heterogeneity times tissue fluidisation at the onset of zebrafish morphogenesis' #PhDDefense #Zebrafish #DevelopmentalBiology

Brillouin microscopy showing strength in non-invasive, live-imaging applications!

Studying fruit fly embryos during gastrulation as cells rapidly change shape @prevedel-lab.bsky.social @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social @marialep.bsky.social characterised & mapped mechanical changes in 3D. rdcu.be/ev6ZX

✨At our seminar this week, Luca Santangeli, a scientific officer in the Arendt group @embl.org, presented a new imaging and computational pipeline for investigating the evolution of cell types in the Platynereis Cell Atlas.

Slides from my talk today at the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) at @uniheidelberg

"COS goes FOSS (Open Science @COS)
– part I –
What is FOSS, why it matters and what can we do about it"

launching a new series of talks and training sessions in open software and open science […]

🔬 The Multiscale Integration in Biological Systems course with @normalesup.bsky.social will explore how physical tools address biological complexity across scales.
Open to MSc/PhD students, postdocs & researchers in biology, physics & related fields.
👉 training.institut-curie.org/courses/mult...

Currents of Change: Metabolism shaping cell fate and evolution #MetabolismMondays - the Node All the world's a metabolic dance, early career scientists are leading the way! Emerging perspectives in metabolism Anna-Lena Brigitte Gunda VigilPhD

#MetabolismMondays
Meet Anna Vigil, #PhD student in @justinmcrocker.bsky.social lab @embl.org @embldbunit.bsky.social, discussing her work on how #metabolism impacts cell fate, development & #evolution #Drosophila.
#theNodeCorrespondents #ecr @the-node.bsky.social #DevBio

Oh, what a great fun it was! Thank you @embldbunit.bsky.social, Karen Alim, @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social , @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social , @jordivangestel.bsky.social , @hanhtkvu.bsky.social , @aikmi.bsky.social, and all instructors and participants. Back to the lab now - inspired & motivated!

That's a wrap for #EMBLDevBio! 🧫🧬 Over the last eight days, our participants received hands-on training using state-of-the-art methods applied in different model systems.

Thank you to everyone who made this course special, especially our participants, speakers, trainers, and organisers! 👏

Thank you also to all the participants for their engagement and enthusiasm in discussing science throughout the course. 🤩

We cannot believe the DB unit summer school "Transitions in developing systems: from theory to experiments" has already come to an end. A huge thank you to all the organisers, speakers, and trainers for making it such an exciting and inspiring course #EMBLDevBio @dev-journal.bsky.social

Time for data analysis practicals here at #EMBLDevBio! 💻

Time for a new practical at the DB unit summer school @embl.org ! This session features the sea anemone Nematostella and explores the larva-to-polyp transition driven by neuropeptide signaling. Thanks to the Ikmi group @aikmi.bsky.social 🤩 #EMBLDevBio

Day 6 of the DB Unit Summer School at EMBL started with an insightful lecture by Caren Norden @nordenlab.bsky.social on the impact of nuclear properties on the behaviour of Zebrafish retinal neuroepithelia. #EMBLDevBio

It's Planarian Time at the DB Unit Summer School!
Today's practical is being led by the Vu group @hanhtkvu.bsky.social and focuses on size-dependent physiological changes throughout the life cycle of planarian flatworms #EMBLDevBio

There's always more to learn at the DB unit Summer School @embl.org ! After two engaging practical sessions yesterday from the Aulehla and Petridou groups @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social , today we will be diving into data analysis #EMBLDevBio

Day 3 of the DB summer school "Transitions in developing systems: from theory to experiments" started with a fantastic talk by Guillaume Salbreux, from the University of Geneva, who discussed transitions in populations of coupled phase oscillators #EMBLDevBio

Day 2 of the DB Unit Summer School has now finished.
We had fantastic talks from Iain Cousin #collectivebehaviour and Karen Alim #physicsofbehaviour, along with an exciting practical session from the van Gestel group on aggregative development in wild-type slime mold species #EMBLdevbio

At the DB Unit Summer School, it's already time for Practical 1!
Participants are exploring the theory of phase transitions, critical points, and bifurcations with James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social and Isabella Graf @isabellagraf.bsky.social and her group members @lwuerthner.bsky.social

The DB Unit Summer School, "Transitions in Developing Systems," kicked off with an incredible talk by Thibaut Brunet @thibautbrunet.bsky.social from the Pasteur Institute @pasteur.fr on the fascinating transition from unicellularity to multicellularity in choanoflagellates #EMBLDevBio

Day 1 of the DB Unit Summer School: 'Transitions in Developing Systems: From Theory to Experiments'.
We are delighted to welcome all participants! Stay tuned for updates.
@nicolettapetridou.bsky.social @hanhtkvu.bsky.social @jordivangestel.bsky.social @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social @karenalim.bsky.social

A huge thx to @vibtrainconf.bsky.social for this #MLD8 full of diatom geeks. Such a beautiful community & really phenomenal science. @serenaflori.bsky.social could present her latest preprint & I updated the diatom folks on how we make Chaetoceros a good model for phytoplankton symbiosis research !

✨This week's DB unit seminar @embl.org featured Alvin Han, a postdoc in the Arendt group. Alvin shared insights into profiling microbiome diversity and variation in the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii #microbiome #marinebiology #developmentalbiology

✨ This week's DB seminar was presented by Vanessa Stürmer, a PhD student in the van Gestel group @embl.org. Her research focuses on microbial interactions in soil ecosystems, particularly the foraging strategies of soil-dwelling protists to overcome physical barriers and bacterial defences 🦠

🌎 Diatoms are now more accessible for modern and comparative cell biology research. The Vincent @floravincent.bsky.social and Dey @gautamdey.bsky.social groups @embl.org show how cryo-ExM enables the scalable, cost-effective imaging of diatom ultrastructure.