iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Gaurav Vaidya

Science Magazine @science.org · 02/07/2026

The first-ever clinical trial to test treatments against the Ebola Bundibugyo virus has started, the World Health Organization has announced. scim.ag/4aAtcrD

scim.ag

First-ever treatment trial for Ebola Bundibugyo kicks off in the Congo

Scientists will test an antiviral drug and an antibody cocktail designed to tame the burgeoning outbreak

16418

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(11/11) Huge thanks to my co-authors, advisors, and everyone at @EMBL and the Stowers Institute who made this possible @hanhtkvu.bsky.social & @mwdorr.bsky.social

110

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(10/11) Our work shows how single-cell genomics can reconstruct life-cycle decisions and resolve their cellular architecture in species that lack established experimental and genetic toolkits, offering a framework with broad relevance across evolutionary and developmental biology.

110

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(9/11) Differentiation gating shows up elsewhere in regenerative systems. The closest parallel is the hair follicle: bulge stem cells sit as an abundant, quiescent pool during rest and activate at the onset of growth, so progenitor abundance is highest when output is lowest.

100

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(8/11) We call this decoupling of abundance from differentiation activity “differentiation gating”. Temperature biases reproductive fate by gating a latent progenitor pool’s activation, not by setting whether it exists. A parsimonious route to two phenotypes from one genome.

100

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(7/11) Unexpectedly, temperature regulates the fate of this progenitor, not its existence. Warm: the pool accumulates but stays transcriptionally inactive and sexual lineages are depleted. Cold: the same pool activates and appears to be consumed as the sexual system is built de novo.

100

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(6/11) Then temperature: cold worms (10°C) took the sexual route, warm worms (22.5°C) the asexual route. Temperature engages the same bifurcating trajectory we found across body size, pointing to a shared cellular mechanism.

100

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(5/11) What separates the routes? Using statistical analysis of cell-cell growth covariation across the body, we nominated a single neoblast (stem cell) subpopulation, poised at the bifurcation as a candidate progenitor of the sexual lineage.

210

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(4/11) Growth remodels every major tissue, yet these changes collapse into a simple organism-level trajectory. At intermediate size, it bifurcates: one route builds reproductive tissues de novo (testes, yolk gland), the other is asexually biased and lacks them.

120

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(3/11) As each nucleus is linked to its animal of origin, we could then turn variation between individuals into developmental information. Instead of averaging across the transition, we reconstructed a whole-animal life-cycle trajectory from individual cell compositions.

120

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(2/11) Using whole-animal, multiplexed single-nucleus transcriptomics, we profiled >1 million nuclei from 308 individual worms across a range of body sizes and a controlled temperature gradient (10°C to 22.5°C).

120

Gaurav Vaidya @gvaidya.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

(1/11) We establish Phagocata morgani as a model for temperature-dependent reproductive plasticity. This freshwater planarian, native to eastern North America, reproduces sexually in winter and propagates asexually by fissioning through the warmer months.

110