Crump Lab

Wonderful to have my second ever grad student stop by the lab today. Elizabeth Zuniga. She is now faculty working on eye development at Baylor College of Medicine. Such joy to see your former trainees doing so well.

Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure—and yes, pain—as we bite and chew ...

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team!
Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05...
Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Wait what?!

Library of Congress yesterday. It’s impressive inside.

How about this?

She will be a fantastic faculty hire for whoever can snag her

I still use mine several days a week to make panini sandwiches

You just made my day John. Thanks so much for the kind comments.

Fish gills and human ears share the same genetic blueprint Evolutionarily conserved molecular program used to form gills and ears.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Wonderful backstory of this gem by @mathithiru.bsky.social & @crumplab.bsky.social from earlier this year...
🔗 to original research: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 to the Node article: thenode.biologists.com/fish-frogs-f...

I've been told the decision to cancel special emphasis panels has not been finalized yet but is definitely being considered.

Worthy event to support the engine of innovation in our country.

Left: A phylogeny of chordates, flanked by images of a lamprey, a placoderm, a brown shark, a longnose gar and a hawksbill turtle. Agnathans such as lampreys lack synovial joints. The first putative evidence of synovial joints in the fossil record is in early gnathostomes such as the antiarch placoderm fish that lived during the Silurian and Devonian periods. Modern gnathostomes such as cartilaginous fishes (i.e., chondrichthyans such as the brown shark), bony fishes (i.e., osteichthyans such as the longnose gar), and limbed vertebrates (i.e., tetrapods such as the Hawksbill turtle) possess synovial joints in their jaws, fins/limbs, and other locations. All images used are freely available without copyright restrictions. Top right: a typical agnathan joint is shown where glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans are uniformly distributed across the cartilages (blue) that are connected by fibrous tissue (olive). Bottom right: a typical gnathostome synovial joint is shown where surface cartilage has a unique proteoglycan composition from the underlying cartilage and bone, and a fluid-filled cavity separates adjacent skeletal elements.

When did the lubricated joints that allow our skeleton to swivel, rotate and bend evolve? @crumplab.bsky.social explores a new @plosbiology.org paper by @neelimasharma.bsky.social &co that pinpoints their origin to the earliest jawed vertebrates 🧪 Paper: plos.io/3CTC8La Primer: plos.io/4kkhXa6

Hang in there Shawn. I feel so bad for everyone at NIH right now.

I heard SBDD was just cancelled/postponed

Would be great if Utah joined in. Preventing childhood diseases, fighting cancer, preserving jobs seem like things all states should agree on.

How a Canadian scientist and a venomous lizard helped pave the way for Ozempic - National | Globalnews.ca In 1984, Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist from the University of Toronto, discovered a hormone that helped pave the way for popular diabetes drugs such as Ozempic.

This is the most relevant article to NIH and research cuts I’ve seen.

Imagine if this was today , how many people would be saying “Why are we studying Gila Monsters and their impact on diabetes ? That’s wasted money !”

globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

That without an understanding of developmental biology, there would be no stem cell research or regenerative medicine.

Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Nature - Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist.

Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise

https://go.nature.com/4hDJnFM

One can at least hope

Ugh. We were going to apply for IMSD this year.

The amazing Ted Tseng

Wow didn't think you were worried about Southampton catching you.

Yes!

Our Ears Share a Common Ancestry with Fish Gills The genes that build the cartilage of fish gills were repurposed to build the cartilage in mammals’ outer ears

Nice article in Scientific American about our work on outer ear evolution and a complimentary study from the lab of Maksim Plikus on role of unique lipids in mammalian ear cartilage. www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-...

Given enough time, even a monkey could accidentally write Shakespeare.

Thanks Benoit! Such kind words. It was such a fun study and really made possible by the efforts of my amazing student Mathi Thiruppathy @mathithiru.bsky.social who just started her postdoc with Yana Kamberov.

Link should be working now. You can also access the PDF without paywall here: rdcu.be/d5Ml5