Sir John Gurdon, 1933-2025 | Wellcome A Nobel-winning scientist of great modesty and humour, John Gurdon died on 7 October. He made a discovery that opened up the field of cloning research, and created one of the best environments for res...

A Nobel-winning scientist of great modesty and humour, John Gurdon died on 7 Oct. Not only did he make a discovery that laid the foundations for stem cell research, he also created one of the best environments for research at the Wellcome/CRUK Gurdon Institute wellcome.org/news/sir-joh...

Very sad indeed. Such a clear mind and inspiration for a whole generation.

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

Notch coordinates self-organization of germ layers and axial polarity in cnidarian gastruloids Dissociation and reaggregation experiments in several animal systems have revealed the stunning capacity of self-organization. Reaggregated early gastrula cells (here called gastruloids) of the sea an...

Sanjay's amazing story is available on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Congratulations to @sanjay-n.bsky.social, @ulrichtechnau.bsky.social and everyone else 🎉

Just came back from a great meeting in Tutzing on the biology of basal Metazoa. Excellent talks, fantastic posters and very kind and vital community. Thanks also to our keynote speaker, Cassandra Extavour. She was the highlight of the meeting. Thanks everyone for contributing.

Finally, Andi Denner finished his PhD. Congratulations for a a long and successful thesis work.

Happy to be presenting our story on Nematostella self-organization :) tune in if you like to hear what organizes the organizer in cnidarian gastruloids!

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Microtubules in Asgard archaea Discovery of heterodimeric, microtubule-forming tubulins in Asgard archaea, the closest known relatives of eukaryotes, reveals snapshots of microtubule evolution.

Microtubules in Asgard archaea (h/t @lanzen.bsky.social) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... #jcampubs

Congrats, Paul!
Too bad, I could not be there.

We knew that cnidarians have stunning regenerative capacities. But the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the self-organization of gastruloids of Nematostella surprised us. A story of cell sorting and Notch signaling. Please check out the work of Sanjay's PhD work: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Thanks Inaki.
Uli

Join our campus! The Vienna BioCenter PhD program offers 20+ fully-funded positions: Open call now!

Read more: www.vbcphd.at
Our working language is English

#viennabiocenter #vbcphd

📰 New paper alert!

In a collaborative project with the lab of Clemens Plaschka at the IMP, the lab of Julius Brennecke has revealed how PIWI proteins kickstart transposon silencing in reproductive cells.

The findings are published in Molecular Cell: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Close inter-lab collaborations with shared PhD students and postdocs are the future!
Julia is the hero of this work, she is currently looking for postdoc labs …

Thanks, Meg. I appreciate

Hey André,
congratulations for receiving the ERC-StG. Fantastic. And definitely going to the right person.

Finally, the excellent postdoc work of Emmanuel Haillot is out, where he dissected the integration of Wnt, MAPK and Notch signaling in defining mesoderm and endoderm identities in the diploblast Nematostella. Strikingly similar to sea urchins. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

the program is open for any strong postdoc from the US, but you would need to find a host who nominates you, with whom your research interests aligns. But I am afraid the deadline for nomination has passed. Hope there will be another call.

All academic institutions will soon realize we are in this together, facing an autocratic ruler who wants to destroy academia, science, and public health (together with media and courts - pick up a history book).

There is only one solution - stand up, speak up, and, critically, collective action.

Very happy that the first article from my postdoc work in the Tomancak lab is now published @PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... We studied the self-organization of actin in aggregates made from Hydra cells. Thread below (1/9)

Not at all a coincidence that this type of clean-energy comms - which presents a positive case in forceful terms rather than trying to dance around the issue - is coming almost exclusively from non-US firms. The comparison tells us a lot about why the IRA failed. More below:

1/9

Functional analysis of ligand-gated chloride channels in a cnidarian sheds light on the evolution of inhibitory signalling ψ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the predominant inhibitory transmitter in the vertebrate nervous system. Fast inhibitory signalling is mediated by type A GABA receptors (GABAARs), which form pentameric ...

What is the evolutionary origin of neuronal regulation by Ligand gated ion channels? In a collaboration with the lab of Stefan Gründer we show that several inhibitory pLGICs predicted to be GABA-A receptors were actually Glutamate-activated Chloride channels. See www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Oh well... 😏 We are just spoiled and not used to it in Vienna. I used to live in beautiful Bergen, Norway, where this was totally normal, just 10 degrees lower. It is still better than what people experience in Sicilia, or Greece these days.

Fig. 1. Overexpression of starfish hesC in sea urchin embryos. (A-D) Effects of starfish hesC overexpression were observed in H. pulcherrimus embryos. Sea urchin embryos injected with EGFP mRNA and starfish hesC mRNA in concentrations according to upper right numbers of each photo. Brightfield (top) and fluorescence microscopic images (bottom) observed by immunohistochemistry using PMC-specific P4 antibody. The white dashed lines show the outline of embryos. (E-H) In-situ hybridization was conducted in sea urchin embryos to observe spatial expressions of delta (E,F) and tbr1 (G,H) in embryos injected with EGFP mRNA and starfish klf2 mRNA in concentrations of 200 ng/µl. (I) Schematic of sea urchin H. pulcherrimus (Hp) egg injected with starfish P. pectinifera (Pp) mRNA. The numbers shown in each image are the numbers of embryos showing typical pattern/total numbers of examined embryos from two batches. Scale bar: 50 µm

Role of klf2 in innovation of the Pmar1-HesC double-negative gate in echinoderms.

Read this Research Article by Nina Levin, Natalia Gogoleva and the team:
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Great opportunity! The Uni Vienna has launched a call (APART) for 4-funding for outstanding postdocs from a US institution. The host lab has to nominate by 1 August a candidate for further selection. Anyone interested in our work please contact me by email with CV/motivation letter. Hurry up!

It's finally here! Great start of the summer. We got our latest preprint from @chemamd.bsky.social in @qmulsbbs.bsky.social @qmulse.bsky.social, showing evidence of developmental system drift in the specification of dorsoventral (belly vs back) axis in annelids 🪱🪱🪱
#DevBio #EvoDevo

@rokofler.bsky.social uncovered a treasure cove in Drosophila populations here. Remarkable and highly relevant findings on horizontal transfer of all kinds of TEs, irrespective of their transposition type.

go, Karl, go! Would you still make it up today?

We've just been awarded a grant to study the cellular basis of regeneration – to track the progenitors of sensory organs in the context of leg regeneration, in our favourite crustacean tinyurl.com/parhyale, based on live imaging and cell tracking. The project involves some cool collaborations... 1/3