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Marco Grillo

@mgrillo.bsky.social
278 followers 518 following 46 posts

Developmental biologist. Spatial omics inventor. Co-founder of spatial.ist and haga.bio Researcher at nilssonlab.org

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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Tessa Montague @tessamontague.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Michalis Averof @michalis-averof.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Nice example of how AI predictions are limited by the training set. AlphaFold has not learned the rules of protein folding, it's just great at predicting structures based on what it has already seen. Added constraints (e.g. alignment revealing conservation patterns) can help make a good prediction.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Feedback is, as usual, welcome!
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I believe this should be an acceptable tradeoff for most manufacturers. As always, some manufacturers stand out for transparency and deserve a special mention. Thanks to @dshb-antibodies.bsky.social for making their epitope mapping info available on the product pages.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
4. I added a "Protected catalogue mode". Here, users can screen for Ab cross-reactivity, get a hit list, but not the exact epitope-mapping info. This is to incentivize reluctant companies to share (privately with me) the mapping info, while still allowing users to perform their searches.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
3. The six-frame translation can be now performed in different genetic codes. No matter how weird your organism, you also deserve some good Abs! And now the final touch...
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
2. The app now can stream FASTA files directly from the NCBI FTP site. This allows much higher processing speeds and avoids having multiple downloads and uploads by the users.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
1. The app now supports larger input FASTA uploads than in the past, realistically up to 2-3 GB. However...
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Screen antibody collections for cross-reactivity against your favorite species! SixPack-AbScan is now posted as a preprint, with a few updates.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Profile as many miRNAs as you like, together with mRNAs, via in-situ-sequencing (and its commercial implementation, 10x Xenium).
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Latest from our lab: highly multiplexed spatial miRNA profiling, with @agustinrobles.bsky.social, @augjensen.bsky.social, @nilssonlab.org and others! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Spatial microRNA profiling at single-cell resolution by in situ barcoded extension
The spatial organization of post-transcriptional regulation is a fundamental yet difficult to access layer of tissue biology. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNAs with a key role in post-transcriptional ...
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Stefan Luschnig @luschnig.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Interested in using #Drosophila genetics & advanced imaging combined with modeling to study inter-organ transport and epithelial dynamics? We’re hiring a #PhD student @uni-muenster.de, based at the Multiscale Imaging Center and @sfb1348.bsky.social Graduate School. Apply here tinyurl.com/ypx74a5d
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
New Toettchlab paper alert! Harrison Oatman just published his beautiful work combining software design for "smart" microscopy+optogenetics and some really beautiful work understanding EGFR-driven collective cell migration. www.cell.com/cell-systems...
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Through this work, I see my tools taken in directions I've always dreamed about, but never have the bandwidth or the knowledge to act on. Or to entirely new places! I find this beautiful. Each of these meetings make me think about my own science from a slightly different angle, and maybe improve it.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I treat each meeting with a new potential customer like a mini brainstorming session. I get exposed to new science, sometimes very orthogonal to my main field of activity. I'm expected to provide quick and insightful feedback on subjects I barely know. It's exciting and challenging.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Viceversa, I need also to translate the functionality of products into something that makes sense to a researcher, in their own scientific terms and for their specific research question (of which typically I know nothing about).
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
So, a lot of this double life is about translating concepts: I need to convert customer needs into scientific descriptions I can first understand, and then again into actionable information our company team can work with.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This is hard because scientists are extremely demanding. They will take the magnifying lens out and dissect everything you say, and they're usually good at it. As an annoying buyer myself, I think I know what I’m talking about.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
A big part of my job as CSO is therefore talking to scientists and trying to understand what they really want to do and why. What is their question? Where are they stuck? Can we help them? Is our product the right solution? Will they succeed when using our products?
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
To sell my inventions as a product to someone else is both liberating and terrifying. A paying customer wants reliability, and trust our tools to back their own science up. Scary, right? I feel this is a huge responsibility, and I take it very seriously.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Here's where my company personality steps in. Here my questions are: Can my tools help someone else? Can people realistically use them in their routine and solve a problem? Can a company sell them and make a living out of it? (this one being a particularly crucial question)
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Tool development is tricky. Do you create tools with a specific research question in mind? I sometimes do, sometimes don't. However, I feel pressured to bundle my tools with a cool application (that I don't always have in mind), to publish higher. Tools, however, can also be given away.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
As an academic, I dedicate a lot of time to develop tools that I think might be useful for the community. I'm a molecular biology nerd and I love creating things that others can use for their research questions.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The second thing is that this my double life is not simply “doing academia half of the time and startup stuff in the other half”. My two lives have sometimes different languages, different incentives, different timelines, and different definitions of success.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The first thing to say is that I am amazed this is even possible. I am in a system and in a country where I can have some flexibility in how I define my job, and this is not to be taken for granted. Thanks Sweden!
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I currently live a “double life”: I am both a Staff Scientist in an academic lab and Founder/CSO of a small biotech startup @hagabio.bsky.social . This is not super common, so I thought I’d put together a thread clarifying how this works, at least for me.
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Silicon Vikings @siliconvikings.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
#sthlmtech spatial biology startup Haga Bioscience has secured a $2.3M seed funding round from investors including @Almiinvest, Life Science Invest, SU Ventures, and a group of angel investors. By @arcticstartup arcticstartup.com/haga-bioscience-r… #NordicMade #biotech
arcticstartup.com
Sweden's Haga Bioscience attracts oversubscribed seed round for spatial RNA technology development - ArcticStartup
Haga Bioscience, a Stockholm-based spatial biology startup, has secured $2.3 million (SEK 20.9 million) in an oversubscribed seed funding round from investors
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
HAGA.BIO @hagabio.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
🎙️ Yesterday, Hower was invited to present our in situ technology at the VIB Spatial Omics 26 conference. It was a great opportunity to show the spatial omics field what we have been brewing!🔬 Thank you to the organizers and everyone who joined the session!✨ Catch Hower at poster #63 today💬
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Alex Eve @amjeve.uk · 18/06/2026
Journal impact factors were released yesterday. In our latest @dev-journal.bsky.social Editorial, @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social and I discuss how we are all architects of impact, highlighting that measuring the influence and support journals provide goes beyond a single number. doi.org/10.1242/dev....
doi.org
The elephant in the room: impact factor
Summary: This Editorial offers an honest look at impact factor trends in developmental biology, explains how Development serves its community, and makes the case that sustaining developmental biology ...
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Ctenophores Rock! @ctenophoresrock.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
What is the evolutionary origin of the organizer? New work from @kremnyovs.bsky.social, @tclebedeva.bsky.social & Hejnol Lab @uni-jena.de reports the blastopore lip of the #ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, a member of the evolutionary sister group to all other metazoans, exhibits organizer activity.
nature.com
A blastoporal organizer in a ctenophore - Nature
Experiments using the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi and the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis reveal that the emergence of a core signalling pathway may have been a key innovation enabling the transit...
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HHMI @hhmi-science.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Janelia is built for this moment. Starting today, we're taking on 2 big bets: cracking how a vertebrate brain generates behavior, & building AI-in-the-Loop Discovery — a new way of doing biology. Tiny transparent fish + one of neuroscience’s biggest questions? Let's go: hhmi.news/2BigBets
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James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Our latest: Minimal essential requirements for neural tube self-organisation How does a single cell give rise to a tissue with the right cell types in the right proportions? We deconstruct and rebuild a self-organising tissue from first principles A thread🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Minimal essential requirements for neural tube self-organisation
The reliable generation of diverse cell types in precise proportions is essential for the formation of functional tissues during embryonic development. Three-dimensional organoid models derived from p...
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Julia Sero @cellmorphosero.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Mechanisms of magnetosensing in pigeons - a surprise appearance of macrophages! Getting home in the dark | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Getting home in the dark
Two mechanisms, independent of daylight, may enable pigeons to navigate using Earth’s magnetic field
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...
reeserichardson.blog
How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?
We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Is the purpose of science and 🧪 training to churn out papers or to create a healthy knowledge community? In a @nature.com comment, @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I check in on how AI helps with the former while jeopardizing the latter 1/
nature.com
The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails | Nature
Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained. Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
A gentle reminder that if your customers are scientists, your products and claims will be extensively (and rightfully) scrutinized.
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
eric lai @lucksmith.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
of many projects Craig Venter led, of personal significance was the fly genome, a unique and i think unexpected collaboration of his company Celera Genomics and the BDGP, led by my pd advisor Gerry Rubin. the power of a shotgun sequenced metazoan, benchmarked to a physical map, transformed genomics.
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Reposted by Marco Grillo
James Gagnon @james-gagnon.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Using light-activated CRISPR in zebrafish, we triggered synchronized DNA breaks and track the repair process. ⚡🐟⚡ 

 Well ... DNA repair is very different in embryos compared to tissue culture cells. Embryos repair DNA breaks incredibly fast - within minutes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A cartoon showing how a caged guide RNA poises CRISPR cleavage until release by light. Below, a cartoon of injection of "light-activated CRISPR" into the embryo, followed by activation.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
At @szndohrn.bsky.social, the floor tiles have stitching and segmentation artifacts :) Just finished teaching the marvels of spatial omics to the great group of PhD students of @zoocell.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy, together with @alvarocrevenna.bsky.social. What a week! 🔬🍕🍝🍷🧪
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Berta Verd @bertaverd.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
As mentioned elsewhere, I've been dreaming of solving this problem for a looooooooong time. Nice to see that my dreams were also the dreams of a very talented team! Slightly different approach, same problem, similar logic. Loving this!
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
We just need the downstream probe to start with a ligation incompetent base, for example a 5'OH. Then Bst will grow the other probe close to this one, chop away the first nucleotide and expose a ligatable phosphate only if and when the gap is fully closed. Unclear? here's a drawing!
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
The solution came from another activity of Bst. It's called nick translation. When a growing strand encounters another oligo, Bst eats the 5' nucleotides away from it and fills it back from the growing strand.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Still, incomplete gaps would sometimes be ligated by the promiscuous ligases, resulting in low capture accuracy close to the downstream oligo.
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
So, how did we pull this off? First we found a DNA polymerase that could also do RT, but without strand displacement activity (Bst, the old Bst...).
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Second, RNA-templated DNA ligases are famously dirty, they love to ligate the wrong junction, and can sometimes even ligate across small spaces, for example non-completely filled gaps
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Except, it's not simple at all. To begin with, you need a reverse transcriptase and these enzymes are very good at kicking oligos out of the way (aka "strand displacement")
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
The solution? Design a pair of flanking probes and try to fill the gap using a polymerase. Simple, right?
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Marco Grillo @mgrillo.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Capturing somatic mutations in single-cell probe-based assays (ie. 10X Flex) is a hard task, especially if you don't know *exactly* the mutations you want to capture, or if your target sequence is a mutational hotspot with many possible alternative alleles. Here's the way we pulled this off. Enjoy!
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Luciano Martelotto @lgmartelotto.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Why so serious? 🃏 Marco Grillo, Anna Nam and yours truly 𝗚𝗼𝗧 𝗮 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 that will make you happy 😃 No more limitations. Maximum flexibility. Something is coming. Stay tuned. #singlecellwithaplus
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