Gonzalo Aparicio

🚨 New preprint!
We built a single-cell atlas of 14 multilayered epithelia and revealed a conserved transcriptomic program guiding tissue architecture and fate composition. Our work brings decades of tissue-specific studies together into a unified evo-devo framework.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Above: transverse sections of neurulating chick embryos stained for DNA (methyl green) and F-actin (TRITC-phalloidin), without and with the addition of the phorbol ester PMA. Below: computational simulations of pseudostratified epithelia, with different apicobasal/lateral tension ratios. Either PMA treatment in embryos, or lower ratios in simulations, cause epithelial instability evidenced by extensive cell extrusion.

Paper alert! Mechanical conditions preventing live cell extrusion during primary neurulation in amniotes. @sabr-bio.bsky.social article published as pre-proof in @cellsdev.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

Complete your profile and join the Network !

This survey is meant for Latin American developmental biologists (investigators, postdocs, students, and technicians) working in Latin America and abroad.

lasdb-development.org/pages/Latin_...

We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji.

It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:

quick test with SAM3 - impressed with how well it seems to track long protrusions? prompted for "cell", does not find anything when looking for "fibroblast" or "nucleus"

Felix Zhou's u-Segment3D is out:

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

It leverages 2D cell segmentations from orthoviews to generate a ‘consensus’ 3D segmentation.

It does a great job on segmenting densely packed samples, and we have used the algorithm in many applications.

Sir John Gurdon on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Original portrait by Prof. Nadia Rosenthal of The Jackson Laboratories, pencil on Arches paper. Courtesy of the artist.

"His secret weapons were an unquenchable curiosity and continuing hands-on experimentation at the bench with his beautiful frog embryos and oocytes".

A thoughtful tribute to the life of Sir John Gurdon by Edward M. De Robertis that we really recommend everyone to read.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

Just published! We share an open-source workflow to measure membrane thickness from tomograms, including a tutorial with 3D visualizations. We analyze thickness variations across organelles and reflect on where to define a membrane boundary. @becklab.bsky.social #teamtomo rupress.org/jcb/article/...

My new ImageJ / Fiji toolkit is out 🔥! The goal is to make image handling & visualization easy, with an intuitive interface! Install it on Fiji with the "Image Viewer" update site
#microscopy #ImageJ #FluorescenceFriday #microscopyMonday
imagej.net/plugins/imag...

🐸 Xenopus laevis 💚 The frog that shaped modern developmental biology! ✨ Xenopus embryos have revealed how the body axis forms, cells choose their fate, and tissues self-organize during early development 📹 Video by Bioquest Sudio and Xenbase #ModelMonday #DevBio

Cool rotifer feeding with it's cilia beating
🐙🧪

Airtable | Everyone's app platform Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.

#HappyFluorescenceFriday #microscopycommunity
Got an idea for an image analysis workshop? Share it at Halfway to I2K: Online Tutorials on Image Analysis (Nov 17–19, 2025), held with Zoom Events!
Submit by Oct 31: buff.ly/lMhK4vz
Website: buff.ly/QP36RZB
Register for the workshops: buff.ly/8nNAI18

PREPRINT OUT ✨ "hack" your microscope to work as a 3D printer! print micrometer sized features at cm scale. a method for easy and cheap microfabrication, with a focus on biological applications. THREAD ↓
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

👃Sniffing out olfactory neurogenesis

New ‘Show and tell’ post on the Node from Sriivatsan G Rajan and Ankur Saxena @saxenalab.bsky.social:
thenode.biologists.com/sniffing-out...
#zebrafish #devbio #neurogenesis

multi-color labeled zebrafish heart with mosaic expression of diverse myl7:color plasmids. Abnormal atrium due to wnt8a overexpression.

Colorful collage of abnormal larval zebrafish hearts. Credit to @dorotheeb.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

6/ You can do so much with it! Here are some case studies:
Demo 1: stretch the endoderm (ventral epithelium of the developing amniote 🐣 embryo, here in 🟢) → observe mechanical coupling with the subjacent mesoderm (brightfield ⬜) 🎥

Fish keratocytes isolated from a fish scale crawling around. Technique: DIC microscopy. #CellBiology.
Another #NikonSmallWorldReject

Structures of DNA and morpholino oligonucleotides. R and R' denote continuation of the oligomer chain in the 5' or 3' direction, respectively. Credit to Corey & Abrams (2001) Genome Biology.

Published October 25 years ago, “Effective targeted gene ‘knockdown’ in zebrafish” by Nasevicius & Ekker detail use of antisense morpholino-modified oligonucelotides or #morpholinos that inhibit translation. This landmark spurred a revolution in targeted gene knockdown in vivo. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists.
🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...

🧬🔬🧪 🎉 Our team at @czbiohub is thrilled to share TWO companion papers out today in @NatureMethods!
📦 Ultrack — robust, scalable nD cell tracking
🌐 inTRACKtive — a beautiful, open-source web viewer for lineage exploration
Let’s dive in! 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m happy to share some plugins I’ve been developping this summer: "Channels and Contrast" and LUTs Manager!
I can’t find new bugs and ideas by now so I need your help to please test them in your machines and report bugs, feedbacks and ideas! forum.image.sc/t/looking-fo...

Sea urchin metamorphosis is maybe one of the most radical event in developmental biology. In just about an hour, these little pluteus larvae completely reorganize their entire body plan.

Very happy that this video got awarded an honorable mention by #NikonSmallWorld 😃

”Please inhibit responsibly: Natural and synthetic actin toxins as useful tools in cell biology”

I had a lot of fun going down different actin inhibitor rabbit holes with @onishilab.bsky.social on this perspective!

www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/...

www.molbiolcell.org/cms/10.1091/...

Researchers have filmed thousands of climbing catfish scaling waterfalls, providing a rare insight into the daring migration of an enigmatic fish.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4lDlFux

Are different cell types like oil and water? Over a century ago, researchers found that dissociated sponges and embryonic tissues can self-assemble into functional structures. Join me, @benswedlund.bsky.social to explore the differential adhesion hypothesis & its applications in tissue engineering!

¡Qué lindo!

Every bit of this south wall in the #MarDelPlataCanyon is vibrant and alive. Read and imagine how a tiny sponge larva or other stationary animal finds a home in a place like this: www.instagram.com/reel/DN37jxs...

La luna terminando su jornada con una sonrisa, sobre el Cerro de Montevideo