@tobiasber.bsky.social
biology student feeding slugs at @svobodalab.bsky.social
Congratulations!
04.10.2025 12:41 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
25.04.2025 15:32 — 👍 60467 🔁 20749 💬 602 📌 833But sometimes, the penis grows back and they eventually mate.
How is that regulated? And can we maybe even induce the penis growth? The applications of this research are sky-high.
Picture shows 2 slugs Deroceras cecconii mating with everted penial glands.
There can’t be anything cooler, or? Well, there is…
Altough being hermaphrodites, not every slug have penis. And some of them are doing just fine without a it. They reproduce by themselves, not worrying about finding a partner.
(slugs Deroceras cecconii mating; Hutchinson et al., 2020)
A series of pictures showing amputation of slug tentacles and their subsequent full regeneration.
Slugs can also regenerate – and quite a lot.
You can cut their head off and it grows back, with all the nerves as well!
(Arion vulgaris regenerating tentacles after amputation)
In mammals, the war between invasive elements and genome guards happens only in germline. But in slugs it is ongoing in the body as well.
What if we turn the protection system off and let the invasion spread? How will slugs cope with that?
A scheme showing how piRNAs targets transposon mRNA through protein called Piwi. This leads to chromatin silencing.
Molluscs have messy genomes with lots of repeats and they have to fight back.
piRNA pathway guards the genome against invasive elements (such as transposons). It targets and silences them, so they cannot spread further.
(figure from doi.org/10.1007/978-...)
Pictures shows a phylogenetic tree of bilaterians and highlights a position of slugs.
Slugs are occupying an unexplored part of the phylogenetic tree.
They haven’t enjoyed much attention from scientists, yet they hide many secrets that are just starting to be uncovered.
Studying them is like setting on a voyage to explore new lands overseas.
Picture shows a land slug Deroceras in a plastic dish with tissues, lettuce and leaves.
It’s time to introduce slugs!
These slimy creatures are now taking over @svobodalab.bsky.social lab and I am in part responsible for keeping them alive.
Why do we have them in the lab? I’ll try to explain in this thread.
If it´s a new complicated topic, no more than an hour straight. And I always appreciate when the lecturer changes the pace of the talk and incorporates "checkpoints", so that when I zone out for a moment, I have a chance to chatch up again.
16.03.2025 11:34 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
