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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

A recent paper is out from Zheng Guo's lab, describing the mechanism balancing enteroendocrine cell numbers in the fly gut: lnkd.in/eciTmQSD So is my News and Views piece covering the paper for a wider audience: rdcu.be/fwFDB Thanks to @hollyasmith.bsky.social for editing the piece! @nature.com

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

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British Society for Developmental Biology @bsdb.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2025 Waddington Medal is Helen Skaer! bsdb.org/2025/03/25/2...

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Caroline Bartman @cbartman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Tumor biologists! do we know that tumors produce mRNA (or RNA generally) more quickly than healthy tissues? maybe there are old papers on this? (pls reski)

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James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Congratulations to Rory Maizels delivering the @bsdb.bsky.social Beddington Medal lecture at #Biologists100

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

There are a lot of interesting follow-up questions, which we will try to answer over the next few years, funding permitting. I'd like to send from here a shout-out to all the small labs that are fighting not just for the next grant, but for their very existence.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Then my @EssexLifeSci colleague, Patrick Varga-Weisz, with his student Vinícius Dias Morello, helped with their expertise analysing scRNAseq data from the @FlyCellAtlas. Helen Moor help with microscopy data analysis was instrumental.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

On the bright side @JeromeKorzelius had been working on something very similar, and came to the rescue with new RNAseq data from FACS-purified cells, which we didn't have the capacity to generate. Working with him, Sina Azami, Svenja Dettmann, and Bruce A Edgar has been great.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

This has been the PhD work of Aleix Puig [www.linkedin.com/in/aleix-puig], a long ago. The paper got into limbo when I had to move cities, the lockdowns pulled me out of the lab for almost a year, funding run out; other things run out too, which I am not yet prepared to talk about.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

I find interesting that Da:Da and Da:Sc dimers, which can both promote neural differentiation, here they seem to collaborate promoting non-overlapping aspects of self-renewal and antagonise each other in secretory differentiation. This may make the "circuit" more flexible.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

— another one, towards absorptive cell type, by expressing class ID protein (Emc), which blocks the activity of Daugtherless (and Scute).

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

— one towards secretory cell type by expressing bHLH of class A (Scute), which heterodimerizes with Daughterless to induce enteroendocrine cells (this bit was well known already, starting with the work of @BardinLab)

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

we describe a bHLH network of interactions that allow cells to remain undifferentiated through the activity of E protein homodimers (Daugtherless), or exit this state through two alternative doors:

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

So it would make sense to have an integrated mechanism that links ISC differentiation with the cell type to be replaced. I cannot claim we have put this question to rest, however,

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

We started with the problem of how ISCs balance not only self-renewal vs differentiation, but also which differentiation route to take. Drosophila ISCs do not seem to be spouting new cells by default - they rather wait for them to be needed.

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jdenavascues.bsky.social @jdenavascues.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

I've been away from social media for some time, but I'm very happy to share that we just got a paper out describing how a network of bHLH transcription factors simultaneously regulates #Drosophila #IntestinalStemCell self-renewal and bipotential differentiation www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

A bHLH interaction code controls bipotential differentiation and self-renewal in the Drosophila gut

Multipotent adult stem cells balance self-renewal with differentiation into various cell types. How this balance is regulated at the transcriptional l…

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John Wallingford @jbwallingford.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Birth defects are the #1 cause of death in the first year of life (🧵). Birth defects kill more than twice as many children as cancer. Birth defects are diseases of developmental biology. Here are CDC statistics for 2021. 1/5 wisqars.cdc.gov/pdfs/leading...

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