Antonio Torres-Méndez

1/7 🧬 New preprint!

What is it like to have one of the highest genomic diversities among metazoans?

🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version?

I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/

It all started a few years ago... 🧵

Lophophytum pyramidale. Photo credit: M. Virginia Sanchez Puerta

Happy to share this work with Virginia Sanchez-Puerta (not on bsky) and colleagues on how loss of photosynthesis in these (strange!) plants affects translation and tRNAs in plastids and mitochondria....

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/n

No journal will take this commentary I wrote In October so fuck it, here it is on medium.

🍉

I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!

Macro Highlights – The Best of 2025 - Macro Photography by Nicky Bay After years of trudging through forests and peering into the hidden lives of tiny creatures, the number of lifers I get should rightfully decline but 2025 proved to be remarkably defiant. This year de...

Please take some time to look through some of the discoveries photographed in 2025. It should interest some invertebrate enthusiasts. yes? yes?

bit.ly/nickybay2025

Do you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!

Optimism for abundant whole-brain connectomes and connectomic screening - Nature Methods Connectomics has so far outpaced the Moore’s law predictions about technological progress. At this pace, many whole-brain connectomes and connectomic screening will soon be realistic.

Method of the Year 2025: In his Comment, Moritz Helmstaedter looks into the future of connectomics and the feasibility of scaling up to larger brains.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Absolutely buzzing over this new video of a rarely seen giant squid

A wasp with the threads of a fungal fruiting body growing out of it

Just a murderous fungus having taken over a wasp and compelled it to die in a place advantageous to finding more victims. With its tiny spores floating off through the air in hopes of just one landing on an exoskeleton.. nothing in the rainforest wants anything to do with this little scene here…

A Halloween treat just for fun! My beloved journal covers have come to life today. Check them out here! www.behance.net/gallery/2364...

50 years ago, King & Wilson published a foundational paper that underlies the cis-regulatory paradigm (CRP) of #DevoEvo #EvoDevo, i.e., that *almost* all morphological evolution is driven by mutations in regulatory elements, rather than proteins, and it all arose from simple misunderstanding 🧪 🧵

The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Recent studies have shed further light on the evolutionary origins of chemical synapses, In this Review, Colgren and Burkhardt explore how ancient proteins were...

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience

Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E

@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

A self explanatory title

Hunger influences the behaviour of female mice towards pups Researchers find that virgin female mice can become aggressive towards pups when hungry, but only in certain hormonal states.

Researchers at the Crick found that virgin female mice can become aggressive towards pups when hungry, but only in certain hormonal states.

It highlights the importance of understanding hormones when observing how different physical states interact in the brain.

www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-10...

LondonEvoDevo meeting's website

Come join the #LondonEvoDevo network half day meeting, hosted at @ucl.ac.uk on Friday November 7th, 2025. Submit your abstract by Oct 27th (or your interest in joining) here: forms.gle/TRbdrCkQTcY2.... Friendly vibes and free registration. More info here: londonevodevo.co.uk.

Is your research important ?

If important, make it count.
Make it easy to reproduce.

Share the data.
Share the code.
Share the metadata.

Use community guidelines to facilitate reanalysis & reuse of your results.
nature.com/articles/s41...

Interested in understanding how new cell types evolve? Consider joining our group for a PhD!

CAN YOU GUESS THIS ONE?? 👀

(Thanks to @schmidtocean.bsky.social for letting me share their video!)

We are recruiting PhD students! If you are interested in evolutionary neuroscience, consider applying: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Join us *next Monday*!
#CrickXrays25
X-ray #nanoimaging of biological tissues

🇬🇧🌐 @crick.ac.uk & online
tinyurl.com/crickxrays25

Sponsored by @dectris.bsky.social, @webknossos.org and @biologists.bsky.social and backed by @brukercorporation.bsky.social and Histomography

#preprint:

We optimised the preparation of tissues for #X-ray phase contrast imaging.

Drying tissue samples (instead of embedding them) brings more signal in #X-ray phase contrast images.

The process largely preserves #ultrastructure.

@safekhan.bsky.social @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social

Critical point drying of brain tissue for X-ray phase contrast imaging X-ray phase contrast tomography is emerging as a powerful method for imaging large volumes of brain tissue at sub-cellular resolution. However, current sample preparation methods are largely inherited...

Our pre-print is out!
Critical point drying of brain tissue for x-ray phase contrast imaging.
@apeart.bsky.social @yuxinzhang.bsky.social @jkbrmn.bsky.social @apacureanu.bsky.social @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social
@carlesbosch.bsky.social
@esrf.fr
@crick.ac.uk
bioarXiv: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

🚨 🐜 is there a Bluesky starter pack for researchers who don’t study ants but who get lightheaded every time there’s an awesome ant paper? CC @mariusw.bsky.social @jrichardalbert.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

Super excited that our latest work is out!

We use optogenetics to dynamically control and study the formation of morphogen gradients.

If you are interested in optogenetic tools and/or how cells shape and process extracellular signals, check out @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social's thread and the paper.

Had time to finish another Aliens dive’s memory card from May 6&8, 2024.
1) #Phronima with behbehies in a fantastically-colored salp
2/3) #Siphonophore (don’t lick)
4) #Ctenophore
5) #Swordfish
6) #Polychaete worm
7) #Scaleworm
8) Ctenophore
9) #MantisShrimp

1. The philosophy of science sometimes gets an unearned reputation as a purely academic exercise that offers little by way of concrete tools for advancing research.

This is wrong.

And today, as we grapple with how AI is changing the nature of scientific activity, it's desperately wrong.

Thanks to all co-authors and to everyone who supported this work - check it out!