Development

Volume 152 Issue 20 | Development | The Company of Biologists

Development Reviews Editor Saanjbati Adhikari will also be attending, along with some of our popular posters and two copies of our recent Special Issue - Lifelong Development (journals.biologists.com/dev/issue/15...).
Feel free to visit the @biologists.bsky.social booth to get your copies!

James Briscoe Editor-in-Chief, Development The Francis Crick Institute, UK 'I also think this is where community journals such as Development play a crucial role. Every issue of Development has papers handled by academic editors who are leaders in the field, so it offers a curated collection of the latest developmental biology research selected by experts.' Key topics: cell fate control and differentiation computational biology and modelling gene regulation and stem cells neural development and patterning tissue engineering and organoids

Development's Editor-in-Chief @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social will be attending the upcoming InSDB-ISD Joint Meeting from 14-17 December 2025 at IISER Berhampur, India. @insdb.bsky.social

Speak to James about your next Development paper.

Anzy Miller, Martina Cerise, Giulia Paci, Max Farnworth, Sonya Widen, Marlies Oomen, Ethan Ewe, Joaquín Navajas Acedo and Toshimichi Yamada.

We were delighted to welcome our most recent Pathway to Independence (PI) fellows to our offices at @biologists.bsky.social for leadership training.

Find out more about our PI fellows and how to apply here:
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

Application deadline: 2 February 2026.

Headshot of Clotilde Cadart, to the left, text to the right 100 extraordinary biologists Clotilde Cadart Clotilde Cadart was part of the inaugural Pathway to Independence Programme cohort. She organised the 2022 Workshop on cell size and growth and spoke at the 2025 Workshop on whole genome doubling. Clotilde is a Junior Group Leader at Institut Cochin, France, focusing on the quantitative biology of cells and embryos. #100biologists #biologists100

We are also highlighting Clotilde Cadart, who was part of
@dev-journal.bsky.social's inaugural Pathway to Independence Programme cohort and a co-organiser of the Company Workshop on cell size and growth, as an extraordinary biologist this week. #100biologists
@clotilde-cadart.bsky.social

Ready for #EMBOevoChromo25? Come say hi and feel free to pick up one of our #chromatin #evolution related Development at a glance posters by @robertife.bsky.social, Laura Thomas, Deneen Wellik and others 🤩

A path to success: Development's Pathway to Independence programme ABSTRACT. For post-docs pursuing an academic career, the transition to a group leader position can be a notoriously difficult one, not least because the availability of necessary support and training ...

Learn more about @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence Programme - supporting the transition of postdocs to group leaders

Catch up on where the 2022 PI fellows are now

Apply to become a 2026 PI fellow

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

A thumbnail for the 'stem cell-based models of early human development' poster.

We have one of those too, by Lizhong Liu and Jun Wu.

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

JCS logo Cell Bio 2025 logo Our Editors will be attending Cell Bio 2025 Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have about publishing in the journal or other activities from our not-for-profit publisher The Company of Biologists. Picture of Seema Seema Grewal, Executive Editor, seema.grewal@biologists.com Picture of Amelia Amelia Glazier, Reviews Editor, amelia.glazier@biologists.com X: @J_Cell_Sci Bluesky: @jcellsci.bsky.social Instagram: cell_science_stories

Our Editors will be attending #CellBio2025 @ascbiology.bsky.social @embo.org.

Reach out to @seemagrewal.bsky.social and Amelia Glazier to discuss JCS, @focalplane.bsky.social and our other @biologists.bsky.social initiatives.

Attending #EMBOevoChromo25 next week? Our Reviews Editor @ingridtsang.bsky.social will be attending - feel free to talk to her about the journal or @biologists.bsky.social activities!

From left to right: first authors Fuyun Bian, Kimiasadat Golestaneh, Emily Davis and Abdullah Khan.

To learn more about this work and the people behind it, we talked to first authors Fuyun Bian, Kimiasadat Golestaneh, Emily Davis and Abdullah Khan from the Retinal Epigenetics and Genomics Laboratory at the UPMC Vision Institute @pittophathalmology.bsky.social (USA).

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Read the #OA Research Article "SOX2-driven enhancer landscape defines the transcriptional architecture of retinogenesis" here:

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

 Figure 6 - SOX2 and VSX2 co-regulate Vsx2 enhancer activity in RPCs. (A) Chromatin landscape near Vsx2 with SOX2, VSX2, BRD4, RNAP II and ATAC signals at E14.5 (right). enSERT transgenic mice harboring the Vsx2 regulatory elements EN1 and EN2 (left). LacZ staining of embryos (left) and corresponding eye sections (right) at E12.5 are shown. (B) Top panel: schematic of the Vsx2-EN1 enhancer showing the relative position of potential transcription factor binding motifs A, B and C. Bottom panels: GFP signal and AP staining results alongside mCherry efficiency for WT-EN1 (300 bp), A motif deletion (A del), B motif deletion (B del), C motif deletion (C del) and B+C double motif deletion (B+C del). Image taken at E14.5+2 DIV. (C) Quantification of mutant VSX2-EN1 enhancer activities. The ratio of total GFP intensity over mCherry intensity was calculated and normalized to VSX2-EN1. ****P<0.0001 (one-way ANOVA followed by Dunnett's multiple comparisons test). ns, not significant.

Decoding the role of SOX2 in retinal progenitor competence

This Research Highlight showcases the work of Fuyun Bian, Kimiasadat Golestaneh, Emily Davis, Abdullah Khan, Issam Al Diri and colleagues:

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Pathway to Independence Programme This programme for researcher in developmental biology and stem cells: - supports the transition from psotdoc to principal investigator - provides mentorship and networking opportunities - helps raise your profile

Apply now for the PI programme: www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

Deadline: Monday 2 February 2026

The 2023 PI fellows outside The Company of Biologists' office in Histon, Cambridge, UK. From left to right: Leah Greenspan, Loic Fort, Priti Agarwal (front), Thomas Juan (back), Clotilde Cadart, James Gahan, Yuchuan Miao and Polina Kameneva. Originally posted on the Node (https://thenode.biologists.com/sharing-is-caring-developments-pathway-to-independence-programme/news/).

A path to success: Development's Pathway to Independence programme

In this Perspective, @ingridtsang.bsky.social discusses how our Pathway to Independence (PI) programme helps postdocs establish their own labs and showcases the progress of our inaugural 2023 fellows.

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Figure 2: Selected stem cell-derived models to investigate amnion fate specification. (A-C) Schematics of selected stem cell-derived 2D (A), as well as 3D single-tissue (B) and multi-tissue (C) layer models with amniotic cells (orange). Epiblast-like pluripotent cells, blue; mesodermal (embryonic/extra-embryonic; see Glossary, Box 1) cells, light purple; primordial germ cell-like cells, dark purple; trophectoderm-like cells, yellow; extra-embryonic endoderm (e.g. hypoblast, yolk sac)-like cells, green; unknown, gray (Ai et al., 2023; Gharibi et al., 2025; Hislop et al., 2024; Kagawa et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2023; Minn et al., 2020; Munger et al., 2022; Nasr Esfahani et al., 2019; Okubo et al., 2024; Oldak et al., 2023; Pedroza et al., 2023; Sekulovski et al., 2024; Shao et al., 2017a,b; Warmflash et al., 2014; Weatherbee et al., 2023; Zheng et al., 2019). SEM, post-gastrulation synthetic embryo.

Primate amnion development

In this Review, Nikola Sekulovski, Amber E. Carleton, Chien-Wei Lin and Kenichiro Taniguchi (@taniguchi-lab.bsky.social) discuss recent advances in primate amnion development
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Apply! It's a great experience and you get to meet very cool people. Let me know if you want to know more 🧪

Development's Pathway to Independence Programme Our grants support and encourage the sharing of knowledge throughout the community by facilitating international collaboration, event attendance and the organisation of scientific meetings, conference...

Applications are open for @dev-journal.bsky.social 2026 Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs applying for group leader positions:

Mentoring
Profile raising
Leadership training
Network building

Spread the word...

www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

Lovely article about the Pathway to Independence program

This is a great program to support postdocs during the transition to group leader position. I know from first-hand experience :)

Please consider applying, @dev-journal.bsky.social provides:
- Profile raising
- Mentor sessions
- Leadership training

and a growing network of supportive peers.

Excellent opportunity for early career researchers in the job market! Don't miss it!

Are you a #devbio postdoc planning to go on the job market in 2026? Then this is the initiative for you! Offering training, networking, mentoring and profile-raising components, Development's PI Programme can give you that extra support you might need while navigating this challenging time...

Nice piece on the @dev-journal.bsky.social PI fellows programme. I was lucky to be part of the first cohort and cannot speak highly enough about the impact it can have. I sincerely hope it continues and if so I encourage everyone interested to apply!

Also in Issue 22:

▪️5 Research highlights
▪️5 ‘People behind the paper’ interviews
▪️‘In preprints’ Perspective on eye development
▪️Spotlight on mammalian diapause

journals.biologists.com/dev/issue/15...

 In a five-by-five grid, Z-stack image sequence taken from a human hepatoblast organoid stained for the key hepatoblast markers AFP (cyan) and ALB (magenta), with nuclei labelled with Hoechst 33342 (yellow). Each panel shows a merged image of the three markers corresponding to a distinct optical section of the same organoid. See Research Article by Zacharis et al. (dev205026)

Issue 22 is complete!

On the cover: Z-stack image sequence of a human hepatoblast organoid stained for markers AFP (cyan) and ALB (magenta), with nuclei labelled with Hoechst 33342 (yellow).

See Research Article by Ekatarini Zacharis, Ludovic Vallier and colleagues.

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

The 2023 PI fellows outside The Company of Biologists' office in Histon, Cambridge, UK. From left to right: Leah Greenspan, Loic Fort, Priti Agarwal (front), Thomas Juan (back), Clotilde Cadart, James Gahan, Yuchuan Miao and Polina Kameneva. Originally posted on the Node (https://thenode.biologists.com/sharing-is-caring-developments-pathway-to-independence-programme/news/).

Learn more about why this programme was started in 2022, and some of the PI fellows we have supported so far, in this #biologists100 Perspective article by Reviews Editor, @ingridtsang.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Pathway to Independence Support postdocs on the job market Line drawing of a person at a bench transitioning to working at a desk Development

Apply for our Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs in #devbio and #stemcell research during the transition to their first group leader position: www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

Application deadline: 2 February 2026.

Two more days left to apply for a funded ECR place at our Workshop on Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution, organised by James Hombría and Antónia Monteiro.

Apply by 5 December biologists.com/workshops/ju...
@isabelalmudi.bsky.social @jlopezrios.bsky.social

Development's in-house team won't be attending, but it's a staple event for our friends and colleagues at @jcellsci.bsky.social.

James Wells Editor, Development Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, USA "Most exciting discoveries happen at the junction between two disciplines, and two disciplines that I think really are a marriage made in heaven are developmental biology and biomedical engineering. I'd love to see more engineering-based principles applied to studying concepts in developmental biology." Key topics: development and disease, organogenesis, patterning , stem cells, tissue engineering and organoids.

Next week, Development Editor James Wells will be attending the @cshlnews.bsky.social meeting 'Assembloids & Complex Cell-Cell Interactions across Tissues & Organs'.

Speak to Jim about submitting your next manuscript to Development.

Meet our team of Editors:
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ed...