Dr. Peter Walentek (Walentek Lab)

It's great to have a great team with great humor. 🤣

Neurod2 knockdown in Xenopus laevis tadpole brain retains cells in a proliferating, progenitor-like state doi.org/10.17912/mic... - I invite you to read the Beck lab's first ever micropublication! @zoologyotago.bsky.social and @otagobiochemist.bsky.social 🐸🧪 @micropub7n.bsky.social thank you!

Multiscale Models for Life (MM4L) Centre for Doctoral Training Funded Studentship: How ECM changes shape cellular decision making Embryo, neural crest, developmental biology, cell biology, cell migration, biophysics, mechanobiology, bioengineering.

Fully funded PhD post, UK/Home student, starting 01/06/26. Interested in working at the interface of dev bio, biophysics and cell biology? Great collaboration with Amy Beedle and @leonerossetti.bsky.social Informal enquiries welcome. Deadline 15/03 #neuralcrest

www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...

Join me next month to learn how to improve the rigour of your experiments with the EDA!
📅 Wednesday 4 March, 16.00 – 18.00 (GMT)
Register here 👇

European Amphibian Conference 2026, July 3-5, 2026, Prague, Czech Republic www.xenbase.org/xenbase/doNe... #science #devbio #xenopus #frogs

My lab is hiring a technician to manage our mouse colony and assist with mouse developmental biology experiments. Please RT and forward to anyone interested! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

It's very nice and rather clear, but I would make the obvious even more obvious by adding labels.

Registration is OPEN for the 2026 Santa Cruz Meeting on Developmental Biology!!! #scdb26

@flybase.bsky.social @zfinmod.bsky.social @alliancegenome.bsky.social @insdb.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social @geneticssociety.bsky.social @bsdb.bsky.social @ascbiology.bsky.social

scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

Let's get this hashtag started! The 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting is happen this August! We will share updates using #SCDB26.

Can't wait!

scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio Aguilar-Gómez et al. use exome sequencing of 347 strawberry poison frogs to uncover the genetic basis of color variation. They identify that kit, ttc39b, and bco1 underlie blue-red, yellow-red, and gr...

The last chapter of my PhD is finally out !!!! In the same species, on neighboring islands, we see radically different warning colors emerge. Evolution in action:
Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

For those interested in helping build an exciting lab from the sea-level up 💪

OryzaNet is a new BBSRC-funded rice research network launching Spring 2026.

We are inviting researchers, social scientists, stakeholders & innovators to register interest ahead of launch.

www.oryzanet.com

Last couple spots remaining for the Craniofacial GRC in sunny CA! Looks to be a full house, with a great set of up-and-coming #craniofacial biologists spanning evo/devo, genetics, multiomics all the way to stem cells, engineering and repair. @brugmannlab.bsky.social www.grc.org/craniofacial...

This is wonderful Roberto. Congrats.

🐸 Amphibians take over Europe!!
📍 Prague. July 3–5, 2026.

The European Amphibian Conference 2026 is coming: 3 days of cutting-edge science, bold ideas, iconic speakers, and serious frog & axolotl energy ✨

👉 Register. Submit. Be there. Do not miss it.
amphib-conf2026.sciencesconf.org?lang=en

So proud to be part of this team work.

It was my pleasure to host @ahnaskop.bsky.social for our departmental seminar tomorrow at 12 pm in BSB1060.
If you are in Ann Arbor and want to know more about mid body remanants, please join us tomorrow! It's going to be a great seminar!
#mcdb #midbody #celldivison #umich @umich.edu

Excited to share our work on epithelial multilayering - identifying why stem cell stay in the basal layer and how and why differentiating cells move up. Great collab with @manningresearch.bsky.social and Niessen labs! Check out preprint and great summary below www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am writing a short piece about Epstein and scientists, but I'm simply unable to say in the space available how disgusted and angry it makes me, or to use the words I'd otherwise be inclined to.
And yes, I do start by saying that none of this is a surprise.

It does make one think that way, indeed.

This looks like a less than smart set of ideas and is in itself logically incoherent. Force basic funding towards more applied research (there is no substitute for such explorative research), and then also cut bridge funding for marketing early stage startups and innovation. 🤦‍♂️

Dear PI colleagues, please do not recommend to your trainees to join labs that have a leader who is known for sexualized talk about their trainees, is "obsessed about sexual attractiveness" of trainees or is otherwise showing warning signs of abusive or inappropriate behavior. This is so fu*ked up.

Awesome awardees! Excellent selection and congrats to all, esp to Jeff and Roberto! 👏👏👏

Bio folks hiring: my student is on the job hunt, she finishes undergrad in May. Would do very well in a molecular biology or physiology lab, lots of undergrad research experience, inquisitive, mature, great problem solver, reliable. Who needs a very solid tech? Willing to move!
#scijobs #MedSky

Fig. 1. Animal cap assay and sandwich method as in vitro induction systems. In amphibians, a blastocoel cavity clearly forms inside the animal hemisphere during the blastula and early gastrula stages. The cap-like portion lining the roof of the blastocoel cavity is the animal cap. This region consists of a sheet of pluripotent cells, organized into one or several layers. In the animal cap assay, the animal cap was treated with a physiological saline solution containing inducing factors and then cultured. Depending on the type, concentration, and duration of exposure to the inducing factors, animal caps can differentiate into various cell types. In contrast, the sandwich method, involves culturing the inducer source in between two animal caps. In this technique, the sources of induction can include the dorsal lip of the blastopore (organizer), adult tissues, pelletized soluble factors, or animal caps pretreated with soluble factors. In this figure, activin is used as an example of an inducing factor.

Fig. 12. Summary of the in vitro induction system using activin as an inducing factor. This in vitro induction system utilizes activin and retinoic acid as inducing factors to treat animal caps, employing techniques such as animal cap assay, dissociation/reaggregation protocol, and the sandwich method. By applying these methods, various levels of self-organization can be replicated and controlled in vitro, ranging from lower-order cell differentiation to higher-order tissue differentiation, organogenesis, and even the formation of fundamental body plans. Abbreviations: Dorsal [D], ventral [V], and retinoic acid [RA].

Fig. 11. Formation of embryoids by artificial activin concentration gradients. To create embryoids, animal caps were prepared through treatment with low (0.5–1 ng/ml), intermediate (5–10 ng/ml), or high (50–100 ng/ml) concentrations of activin. These three types of activin-treated animal caps were then sequentially arranged and cultured with untreated animal caps. After 3 days of culture, embryoids with distinct head and trunk-tail structures were formed (A). Histological sections revealed differentiation into head tissues, such as the cement gland [cg] and eyes, and trunk-tail tissues including the ear vesicle [ev], brain [br], notochord [not], muscle [mus], and gut (B). When newt embryos are used in similar combination cultures, neural plate structures forming the brain [white arrow] and axial structures forming the trunk-tail regions [black arrow] are sometimes observed (C).

Fig. 7. In vitro heart formation and in vivo transplantation experiment. When treated with a high concentration of activin, the animal caps of Xenopus embryos did not differentiate into heart tissue. However, if the animal cap dissociates into individual cells before activin treatment and then reaggregates, it forms a beating heart [arrow] with 100 % efficiency (A). This heart expresses differentiation marker genes, such as Nkx2.5, GATA-4, Tbx5, MHCα, TnIc (cardiac troponin I), and ANF, none of which are expressed in an animal cap treated with activin alone, without dissociation/reaggregation (B). Electron microscopy reveals the presence of intercalated discs [id] specific to the cardiac muscle, along with visible mitochondria [m] and Z-bands [z] (C). When the reaggregated heart tissue is orthotopically transplanted into the cardiac primordium of a neurula-stage embryo, it integrates without rejection and continues to beat (D), although it does not persist through host metamorphosis. In contrast, when the reaggregated tissue is ectopically transplanted into the ventral region of the neurula, it begins to beat synchronously with the host heart and gradually reddens as it initiates blood circulation (E).

A fascinating review on the role of Activin in organ induction. Isn't it wild that in Xenopus embryos, a piece of the animal cap can be induced with Activin at different concentrations and buffers to form the ❤️, kidney, the pancreas, head, tail, and even a whole embryoid 🤯:
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

So stoked to see this highlight of postdoc Nayeli Reyes-Nava after her awesome paper in @dmmjournal.bsky.social! Congrats Nayeli!

A protein complex in the extreme distal tip of vertebrate motile cilia controls their organization, length, and function - Nature Communications Here they combine in vivo imaging with proteomics to characterize a protein complex comprised of Ccdc78 and Ccdc33 that acts at the extreme distal tip of 9 + 2 motile cilia to control tip architecture...

Cilia alert! Stoked to have the new paper from Juyeon Hong about a new domain at the extreme distal tip of motile cilia! (The EDT, y'all!) It's out now @natcomms.nature.com.
Check it out!
#cilia

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

Why do we lose so much talent in academia?
Let’s talk about it – openly, together, responsibly.

NEXT TUESDAY AT 5:30 PM.

PI Forum Brno #7 | Feb 3 @ CEITEC MU
For all PIs, PhDs & researchers in Brno.

Chaired by @fabianlab.bsky.social

Join Monica in Barcelona!

In @jcb.org, Diaz & @mayorlab.bsky.social show that epithelial & mesenchymal cells navigate chemical cues via fundamentally different force-generating mechanisms, offering new insight into how diverse cell types achieve collective movement during development and disease. rupress.org/jcb/article/...