International Society of Developmental Biology

Normal meiotic progression in Akap14ins/Y mice.

Akap14ins/Y sperm counts, morphology and motility analysis.

Normal spermatogenesis in Akap14ins/Y mice.

AKAP14 is of those genes that is highly expressed, yet when knocked down by 60% even in a mouse model shows no apparent effects on the organism, no effects on meiotic progression, sperm count, motility and morphology. How weird?Check out this intriguing paper here: doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

Cryosection immunofluorescence image from a Xenopus embryo showing the neural crest, fibronectin, and DAPI.

A cryosection immunofluorescence image of a Xenopus embryo showing fibronectin in 🔵, DAPI in ⚪, and Sox9 - a marker of the neural crest in 🟠.

Image credit: Kai Weissenbruch from UCL
#FluorescenceFriday #devbio

🐌💫 Snail embryos never looked so fabulous!
Tubulin (white), phospho-histone H3 (pink), and F-Actin (cyan) light up this early stage like a cytoskeletal disco ball.
Image from Clemens Cabernard & Adam von Barnau Sythoff 🪩🧬 #FluorescenceFriday

#Postdocs! Two days left to submit an abstract for the Ethel Browne Harvey Postdoctoral Seminar Series! Deadline: Friday, August 1 bit.ly/3x1ptgb

Letters US funding freeze threatens biomedical research Guillermo Oliver, Northwestern University Federal funding is crucial for producing cutting-edge scientific, technological, and clinical breakthroughs, allowing universities to cover salaries, purchase reagents and equipment, and enroll patients in clinical trials. Yet in April, funding freezes were enacted at that affect Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University (1). At Northwestern, almost $800 million has been frozen, without official notification, updates, or recourse (2,3). University faculty and leadership must speak out to make the public and colleagues aware of the funding freeze and to emphasize the dire effects of this policy on research, patients, and public health (4). The frozen funding corresponds to grants that have already been awarded after a stringent, competitive evaluation process that deemed them valuable. To earn a federal grant, basic and clinical researchers must generate and test their results in a laboratory or enroll patients in a long-term clinical trial. Next they must prepare a grant application and submit it to a government funding agency, where a panel of experts carefully reviews it. Only a small number of applications are funded, and it can take up to a year to receive the money. Professors, postdocs, student, and laboratory technicians at US universities come from all over the world to contribute to research projects that could improve human health. Funding freezes with unspecified end dates are demoralizing and stressful, potentially depleting the current and future clinical workforce. Students and postdocs are questioning the viability of a scientific career (5,6), and job applications from domestic and international scientists are likely to decline. These unprecedented, punitive measures against universities and medical schools put both research and patient welfare at risk.

Developmental biologist and former SDB board member Guillermo Oliver published a letter in Science 'US funding freeze threatens biomedical research' in which he highlights the effects of the federal funding freeze on Northwestern University & other institutions. www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Ooh, this is fun! What do we think? What is THE image of developmental biology? As conserved as it is, dev bio is also incredibly diverse across the animal kingdom. So what image would capture the essence of all?

Excited to share our newest preprint!

Marsupial single-cell transcriptomics identifies temporal diversity in mammalian developmental programs Menchero et al. generate a single-cell transcriptomic atlas in the opossum and show rapid progression of transcriptional programs in specific tissues relative to morphological landmarks. This shift in...

Thrilled to share that our latest work on marsupial heterochrony is now online at @cp-devcell.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social @lab-turner.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk We used scRNAseq to understand the asynchronous progression of developmental programmes in marsupials www.cell.com/developmenta...

A comparison of the signalling interactions between the organiser/organiser-derived tissues and the neural plate across vertebrate model organisms. Diagrams depict each embryo in 3D, sliced along the sagittal plane.

Mechanical interactions that promote temporal coordination between axial and paraxial tissues during body axis elongation.

Continuing with the theme of organiser biology, Alexandra Neaverson and Benjamin Steventon discussed in this beautifully illustrated review the idea that "neural specification and patterning occur before organiser formation" in Xenopus, zebrafish, chick, and mouse.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

We're excited too! 🥰

LASDB board meeting during the @socdevbio.bsky.social / @isdb.bsky.social / LASDB joint meeting in San Juan, PR 🌴✨! We’re excited for what’s ahead for developmental biology and the growing role of Latinx scientists in the field. 💪🏽🧬 🐸🐟🐣🐭🪰 #DevBio #LatinxInScience #LASDB #LatinxDB

Gastruloids as an emerging technology to study the Primitive Streak

The organizer and the modular organization of the mouse embryo

Topological relationship between Spemann-Mangold Organizer and mouse organizers.

Check out this insightful review by Alfonso Martinez Arias et al where they show how studying the organiser in amphibian embryos helps us understand the development of the body axis in mammalians, and the use of gastruloids to study the Primitive Streak.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

This comprehensive review by Manuel Zúniga-García and Juan Rafael Riesgo-Escovar focuses on the evolutionarily conserved fos gene family in different species of invertebrates (🪰,🪱). The authors argued that fos genes were coopted from stress responses to development. doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

🎉We’re grateful for the support of @isdb.bsky.social and @cellsdev.bsky.social, who will sponsor the ISDB-C&D Lecture by Gage Crump at the #V4SDB2025 Meeting!
#devbio
👉Join us in Slovakia this September: v4sdb2025.img.cas.cz
👉Registration deadline: 31 July 2025
event.img.cas.cz/registration...

Our June cover is here. This image shows SALL1 protein (green) in a slice section of mouse embryonic external genitalia. New research shows that SALL1 is involved in tubulin acetylation and is important for urethral masculinization.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

🫶 @isdb.bsky.social @devbioquintay.bsky.social @mayorlab.bsky.social

A plate made out of wood, with de society for dev bio logo, 2025 Trainee Science Communication Award, my name, and "In recognition of extraordinary science communication and outreach efforts as a trainee member of the Society"

Extremely honored to receive this prize from @socdevbio.bsky.social, which recognizes not only my love for developmental biology, but the extremely online I am 🧪 (protect science, protect people, viva la dev bio!)

Two people struggling to communicate

Workshop 1: Truth Matters: Strengthening Science Communication to Counter Misinformation. 10:30-12:30

If you are at #2025ICDB please join us for Workshop #1: Truth Matters: Strengthening Science Communication to Counter Misinformation from 10:30-12:30 today. We will discuss common misinformation topics and ideas on how to better adapt in these conversations. @socdevbio.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social

@devbioquintay.bsky.social Alumni at the 2025 @isdb.bsky.social / @socdevbio.bsky.social / LASDB meeting with @mayorlab.bsky.social 🇵🇷
#2025SDB #2025ICDB #2025LASDB

A small image summarising the content of a scientific poster entitled 'Stem cell-based models of early human development".

Check out the "Stem cell-based models of early human development" poster by Lizhong Liu and @jun-wu-lab.bsky.social in @dev-journal.bsky.social doi.org/10.1242/dev.....

Pick up your own paper copy at @biologists.bsky.social's stand - booth 4 at #2025ICDB #2025SDB #ICDB2025.

In Hox we trust! Many congratulations to Professor Duboule 👏👏👏

PSA: around 5-8% of the population has a color vision impairment for red/green.

Many talks at #2025ICDB still use red-green LUTs on slides that are not accessible to everyone.

Changing to more accessible colors is doable and easy.

We can do better.
#devbio
#ICDB2025 #WeTheColorBlind

A notebook that says Differentiation and has a picture of cilia on it

Are you at #2025ICDB @socdevbio.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social? Do you want a free pretty notebook? Please come find me and say hi! I have a bag full of them! It features a gorgeous image from a cilia paper from @jbwallingford.bsky.social’s lab! doi.org/10.1016/pj.d...

Reach out to Alex Eve if you have questions about publishing in Development

Looking forward to #2025SDB #2025ICDB this week. Look out for @dev-journal.bsky.social Editors Alex Eve, Benoit Bruneau & Cassandra Extavour and visit our booth (#4) to talk about publishing, grants, events and to pick up your free notebook, article collections & posters @socdevbio.bsky.social

Theee masked scientists at the 2025 ICDB meeting

So happy to see all of my #DevBio folks at the #2025ICDB joint meeting with @socdevbio.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social and the Latin American Society for DevBio in San Juan Puerto Rico! More pics to come! @chrmosimann.bsky.social @mads100tist.bsky.social

One our postdocs, Kai Weißenbruch, just won the Prize for Best Talk at the Cambridge-London Cell Motility conference for his talk on Frictiotaxis - how cells migrate toward regions of higher friction. This video shows a cell repolarises itself in a uniform friction channel. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

The effect of NIH funding terminations in real time. What about xenbase? zebrafish? Mouse database?

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯

Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below.

This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

Fascinating! Every biological structure is a feat of development!

Who would have thought inverting colors would be so tricky ?

jordan.yoonbuck.com/post/contras...