iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

🦈🧠2 JOB OFFERS in the brand-new Neuroshark group starting at the Institute of Neuroscience Paris-Saclay (NeuroPSI)? Lab manager: www.linkedin.com/posts/idoia-... Bioinformatician: www.linkedin.com/posts/idoia-... Curious about the lab but not your profile? Feel free to contact me

linkedin.com

Lab manager job | Idoia Quintana Urzainqui

JOB OPPORTUNITY 🦈 🧠 🔬. We are looking for a Lab Manager to help establish a new group studying shark embryos to understand the origin of the vertebrate brain. Reach out if this motivates you. We’re ba...

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Thank you The Company of Biologists for the important role you play supporting us. You certainly helped me in key steps in my career. Both with grants and visibility. And I know maaany other examples. ❤️

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Thank you @fredcauseret.bsky.social and @dev-journal.bsky.social for such a nice highlight of our work and @matosches.bsky.social on the evolutionary origins of Cajal Retzius cells. 🦈 🦎 🧠

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Really happy to join NeuroPSI at Paris Saclay to lead a research group funded by an ERC Consolidator grant #ERCCoG . We'll study the origins of the vertebrate brain using shark embryos. 🦈 🧠 Reach out if you are interested in joining the team 🤍

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Reposted by Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui

EMBL DB unit @embldbunit.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

🎓 Congratulations to Victoria Witte from the Arendt group @embl.org who has defended her PhD thesis titled “A single cell transcriptomics investigation of the adult Platynereis dumerilii mushroom bodies” #DevelopmentalBiology

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Thank you!! These years at EMBL have been a true blessing for me. Even more to be part of DB unit. What a fun, friendly and collaborative place. Full of good dancers :)))

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Thanks so much Nikos!!! also for all your good feedback!!🙏😊

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

SI!!! Muchisimas gracias Champi! 💙

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Ohh!!! Thank you so much Teresa! 💙🦈

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Gracias Mette! More sharkie science coming

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Thanks so much Pawel. Also for your advice many years ago when this project was in the making 😊

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

#ERCCogG granted!!! Immensely grateful for this opportunity. Thanks @erc.europa.eu . Many news coming soon. New lab opening and will be posting positions. 🦈🧠🤍 Go sharkies!

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Reposted by Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui

Champi @jpascualanaya.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

🚨 We're hiring! 🚨 Our lab at the University of Málaga, Spain🇪🇸 is looking for a bioinformatician researcher for a postdoc position (1+1 years). Check the ad, and if you're interested, get in touch! 📅 Starting date early 2026, with some flexibility. 🙏Please, RT!

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Reposted by Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui

Arnau Sebé-Pedrós @arnausebe.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

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...

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Thank you so much Diego! Glad you liked it :)

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Ohhhh. Mil gracias!! Me alegra mucho que lo disfrutes.

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Oh! Qué bien Rodrigo! Qué disfrutes mucho la nueva etapa! :)

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Thanks also for pointing to that study in cyclids, it is really interesting. But they compare adult to adult, if I am not mistaken

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Good point. Indeed, age and heterochronies can be important players here. Our study includes a window of development equivalent to mouse E12-14, but it looks like our "MP" is a bit less mature than the mouse MP. This can cause the correlations to be lower, not necesarily meaning a lack of homology..

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Thanks to Arendt group: Detlev, Leslie, Tobi, Nico @galicae.bsky.social and Phil. My amazing students @gulceserka.bsky.social, @anaverbanac.bsky.social,Maite and Dori. Huge thanks to the Kaessmann lab for all their support and fruitful discussions @kaessmannlab.bsky.social @evo-and-devo.bsky.social

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

We now have a unique opportunity to keep developing cartilaginous fish models. Throug their study we will be able to explore how these and other features evolved across vertebrates and uncover the molecular mechanisms driving brain evolution. Stay tuned for more discoveries and tool developments!

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Our study moved the postulated origin of several developmental pallial features back to the jawed common ancestor. We hypothesize these features likely contributed to the increased complexity of their brains coincident with the emergence of predation.

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Using the plasmid, we showed that the dorsal pallial area gives rise to a layered structure aligned with the positions of Reelin and CRs. Moreover, this structure corresponds with a complex anatomical region that brings together glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons, likely forming a complex circuitry

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

We developed a protocol to label shark neural tissue with a reporter plasmid- First time this is achieved in a Cartilaginous Fish! Impossible without (bluesky-less) Maite Boersig, Isabel Rollán, Dori Torres-Sabino and Rami Reshef. The coolest shark team ever!🦈💙

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Even more interesting, their location closely matched where reelin is expressed.

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

But where are CRs in the shark brain? Using HCR we found them emerging from medial pallial regions, spread across the surface of the dorsal and medial pallium and near the olfactory bulb. Really similar to their locations in mammals. Thanks to @anaverbanac.bsky.social for all her HCR work!

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Key question : are shark CR cells homologous to those of mammals? Our various cross-species comparisons suggest they are. Indeed, it was the only cell type with a clear one-to-one match across the three species—supporting an ancient origin of CR cells at least in the stem of al jawed vertebrates.

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Cajal-Retzius cells—first described by Ramón y Cajal and Gustaf Retzius—are a peculiar developmental type essential for neocortex development. They spread through the outter-most cortical layer, they express reelin, and guide the formation of the six neocortical layers, among other key roles.

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Idoia Quintana-Urzainqui @idoiaeu.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Finally, a unique pallial cluster caught our attention. These cells showed the canonical transcriptional signature of Cajal-Retzius cells—the same signature to the one we found in mouse datasets. To our surprise, we also identified a similar cluster in the salamander dataset.

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