Zak Swartz

The dynamics of centromere assembly and disassembly during quiescence Quiescence is a state in which cells undergo a prolonged proliferative arrest while maintaining their capacity to reenter the cell cycle. Here, we analyze entry and exit from quiescence, focusing on h...

New preprint! Graduate student Océane Marescal leverages quiescence - proliferative hibernation - to reveal unexpected dynamics for “constitutively”-localized centromere proteins. To understand the logic of cell division, you need to consider non-dividing cells.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

09.09.2025 11:14 — 👍 35    🔁 10    💬 2    📌 1

mmm, striper

04.09.2025 13:13 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I hope to take a PhD student in 2026 to study siphonophores. Please reach out if you are interested in applying this fall. For examples of recent lab projects see www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... and academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

28.08.2025 12:45 — 👍 54    🔁 46    💬 1    📌 1

This postdoc position is still open! Apply if you want to come work with us on asymmetric cell divisions in spiralian embryos! postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...

07.07.2025 20:51 — 👍 31    🔁 27    💬 0    📌 1

Up Close with Urchins: Undergrads Collect Lab Specimens on the Gemma | Marine Biological Laboratory

A little late with this one, but we got to go hunting for sea urchins on Gemma with the Semester in Biological Discovery (SBD) students. Thanks Captain David Bank and naturalist Scott Bennett, and Alex Megerle for the great writeup! 🌊🌊🌊

www.mbl.edu/news/close-u...

03.06.2025 01:23 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Love this article! Feeling pumped to share the awesomeness of echinoderms again very soon in Embryology 2025

03.06.2025 00:29 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

We have shared detailed protocols for the expression, purification, and use of VitelloTag-Cas9 (in sea stars) on our website. We hope that this will be a useful starting place for working in your own favorite organism!
www.theswartzlab.org/tools-and-pr...

27.05.2025 23:26 — 👍 10    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0

VitelloTag: a tool for high-throughput cargo delivery into oocytes Summary: VitelloTag, a method for transporting protein cargo into oocytes, facilitates microinjection-free CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in multiple species.

At last! The plasmids from our VitelloTag paper ( journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... ) are now available on Addgene: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

We hope they might be useful for you to deliver Cas9 in your favorite organism. Stay tuned for detailed protocols on our lab website.

16.04.2025 13:03 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

Another terrific Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin & Other Marine Invertebrates is done! Thank you to all attendees for sharing your awesome science, the co-organizers for their hard work, our sponsors, and @mblscience.bsky.social for being such a great venue. Photo credit to Bob Morris 👏

08.04.2025 18:42 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Honored to have given the keynote lecture at the DBSUMI meeting. Such an exciting dev bio community!

Thanks @zakswartz.bsky.social for the invitation and kind hospitality at wonderful @mblscience.bsky.social. The naturalist approach to science and rich history in this place are inspiring.

04.04.2025 15:01 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Also a blast from the past! Another preprint is now available from my first postdoc in the @arnonelab.bsky.social at @szndohrn.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

28.03.2025 21:36 — 👍 20    🔁 8    💬 2    📌 2

A versatile cohesion manipulation system reveals CENP-A dysfunction accelerates female reproductive age-related egg aneuploidy. Female reproductive aging is accompanied by a dramatic rise in the incidence of egg aneuploidy. Premature loss of chromosome cohesion proteins and untimely separation of chromosomes is thought to unde...

Some good news during these difficult times. Please check out our new preprint. We built a new tool to probe the origins of high oocyte aneuploidy rates at advanced female reproductive ages. This NIH funded work was led by a fantastic postdoc in the lab, Jiyeon Leem. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

28.02.2025 12:39 — 👍 47    🔁 21    💬 5    📌 0

New preprint from my Postdoc in Zak Swartz’s lab at the @mblscience.bsky.social, in collaboration with Carsten Wolff and @. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

28.03.2025 21:32 — 👍 32    🔁 8    💬 2    📌 1

New preprint drop! Check out work from @jimmy-ly.bsky.social et al for how protein isoforms generated by alternate translation initiation create dual localization, contribute to mitochondrial function, and are mutated in disease. "Blue-tutorial" thread below.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

28.03.2025 10:41 — 👍 61    🔁 22    💬 1    📌 1