Cellular mechanisms of annelid regeneration - New paper!

We have a new publication in Nature Communications, a companion paper to our Pristina leidyi work published earlier this year! This was a part of Duygu’s postdoctoral work when she was back in Guillaume Balavoine’s lab in Paris. It is a great collaborative effort by several labs (Raible, Balavonie, Ruta) that culminated in a fantastic paper addressing some of the big questions in annelid regeneration. More here:

https://source.washu.edu/2024/11/understanding-the-mechanics-of-regeneration/

Skeet by the Raible Lab here: https://bsky.app/profile/tessmarraiblelabs.bsky.social/post/3lb7oy7fsnc2g

Tweet by the Balavoine Lab here: https://twitter.com/BalavoineLab/status/1858472829970256001

It's a worm's world: regeneration and regrowth in the Özpolat Lab

Article by Maddy Frank.

Inside a corner lab in the basement of Busch, thousands of worms lay in wait.

The windowless room stays at a cool 18 degrees Celsius. Small plastic containers (think the ones you might have put some craft supplies in as a kid) line the front wall, each a contained saltwater habitat where juvenile worms hide in tubes of their own creation.

It feels almost Marvel movie-esque—a multitude of worlds stacked on top of one another, where only a chosen few can see the full picture.

…. read the rest of the article here….

Platynereis dumerilii germ cell regeneration - New Publication!

We have a new publication in Developmental Biology!

“Developmental stage dependent effects of posterior and germline regeneration on sexual maturation in Platynereis dumerilii”

This is the hard work of Bria Metzger , who was a post-bac research assistant in our lab, now a graduate student at University of Washington in Seattle.

Here is a Twitter thread about this work.

And we will be on Developmental Biology’s cover with this photo taken by Ryan Null!

We will be at Euro-Evo-Devo in Finland

Exciting times, Duygu is one of the organizers of the Platynereis Satellite Meeting.

Ranny, Duygu, Ryan are giving talks at the satellite meeting.

Ranny is giving a talk at the Evo Devo main meeting. Duygu and Ryan have posters.

Come say hi if you’ll be there!

Welcome new undergrads and goodbye Lisa!

We send the undergrad Lisa Cheung who graduated this year off to her new adventures.

And we welcome 4 new undergrads: Adebimbola Adedeji, Alina Krawczynski, Ina Jaegy, and Solana Cariello. Welcome to the team!

Jasmine gets BIOSURF Fellowship

Undergrad researcher Jasmine Sun got the BioSURF summer research fellowship for 2024, which is a wonderful opportunity for undergrads at WashU!

Congratulations Jasmine. We are so excited to see what you will find with you Pristina experiments.

Goodbye Bria

Research assistant Bria Metzger has been accepted to the Molecular & Cellular Biology Program at University of Washington (Seattle) with a prestigious ARCS fellowship. https://www.arcsfoundation.org

We are so sad to see her leave but so excited for her new adventure. Bria, we know you’ll be amazing wherever you go!

Welcome (back) Julianna!

Julianna joined the lab as our first graduate student! We are so happy to have you back and so glad you picked our lab to continue your graduate school journey!

Pristina single cell atlas

We have a new pre-print out, which is the result of a wonderful collaboration with Jordi Solana’s lab.

It is the first adult single cell atlas of an annelid, one of our favorite annelids, Pristina leidyi Smith, 1896 bioRxiv

Here is Jordi’s tweetorial about the preprint, and here are some details from me.

This was basically one of those collaborations where we were better than sum of our parts, and we loved working on this together! Jordi writes about it here, and I am forever grateful I got to work with him and his team on this project.

Conference/Talks Coming Up

Duygu will give a talk at UW-Madison Wisconsin next week (May 5th)

She will then be at the Gordon Conference on Tissue Repair and Regeneration as an invited speaker in late May/early June.

Duygu and Ranny will teach at the Embryology Course at the MBL in Woods Hole this summer. Then Duygu, Ryan, and Ranny will be at the SDB Meeting in Chicago.

A short note on Duygu's Twitter decision

A while ago, after Twitter was acquired by a somebody with severely low emotional intelligence, and that somebody started attacking trans people, scientists, disabled folks etc, I decided to leave Twitter. Even though initially I wasn’t sure about leaving, it became an obvious choice, especially folks switching to Mastodon. This has been a very interesting experience that had some unexpected outcomes for me. In this blog post, I want to briefly talk about those outcomes, and then explain what I plan to do next about my social media presence.

1) In making the switch to Mastodon, I started spending a lot less time on social media.

Because there was not as much activity on Mastodon. This helped me realize that I was spending way more time on social media than I liked. It was difficult at first, but because I had left Twitter out of a principle that was so important to me, I could not flake and just get back on it. This helped a lot in limiting my social media use.

2) I used to tell myself I learn a lot via Twitter.

And that is not incorrect, but the type of learning that happens wasn’t as meaningful as I wanted it to be, especially for the time spent. For example, I learn more meaningful things by reading a journal article in 1 hour, compared to the 1 hour spent on Twitter. One could argue you learn many more smaller things, but really, do they ever stick as real knowledge? Maybe a small portion. Since leaving Twitter I have been reading so much more, and feel happier.

3) But it is not all black and white, there are good things about social media.

I don’t mean this to be a blog post about how bad social media is. It isn’t. I love #WormWednesday, I love reading other academics thoughts in a less formal space, I love the power of social media in raising awareness. So, I realized I do not want to be completely off social media, but I really want to limit the time spent (like really, 10 minutes/day for Twitter, 10 minutes for Mastodon, 10 minutes for Instagram).

4) Oh so, does this mean I am back on Twitter, after all that I have said, despite how much I despise the owner?

The revolution I hoped (a mass move out of Twitter to a de-centralized platform) unfortunately did not happen. In the meantime, multiple earthquakes devastated Türkiye. So much of the earthquake aid and communication was happening via Twitter inevitably. I realized it is not possible to isolate myself, and the reality is, the social media revolution hasn’t happened. Initially, I decided to be back on Twitter only for earthquake relief efforts. But the experience also made me accept the fact that I need the platform for spreading the word about my lab’s work.

5) So what’s next?

Basically, I will be on Twitter only for announcing my lab’s works, job posts, other professional announcements etc. Stuff that can be done via 10 minutes/day. If something like a disaster requires more time spent, then I will spend more time. I have already been feeling the good effects of the limited time on social media on my mental health. So, in some ways, I am grateful for the toddler man who forced me to explore this new way of existence on social media. <3

Here is where you can find me (but find me IRL and let’s have coffee or something):
Mastodon (the ideal, decentralized social media platform, despite room for improvement for its user interface)
Twitter (out of obligation because y’all haven’t left)
Instagram (for science-art, also I know Facebook is evil too)

Welcome Grace

Grace is visiting from Stephan Schneider’s Lab in Taiwan to learn how to inject Platynereis embryos.

Welcome Kaitlyn Hong

Welcome to Kaitlyn, our new undergraduate researcher at the lab! Kaitlyn will be working with Ranny on establishing sex-specific markers in Platynereis dumerilii.

David Remsen

I heard the news of losing Dave on Wednesday night. Since then, most of my awake hours have been filled with thinking of him, Dana, and his family. Dave was my colleague and friend. He was the director of Marine Resources Center (MRC) at the MBL. Being here in St. Louis, so far from everybody else who know and love Dave, it has been difficult to grieve his unexpected death. So, I decided to write about him.

Dave was one of the best humans you could meet. My office at the MBL was in the same building as Dave’s, and I saw him quite often. It was always a delight to run into him and have a quick chat. He was so knowledgable, kind, caring, supportive. An example human being in every sense I could tell. He set the tone with his personality at the MRC. His staff is just like him: they always go out of their way to help, even though they are often stretched thin with so many people and animals they are helping and taking care of throughout the day.

I would often see Dave with a bunch of visitors, him telling them about MRC, MBL’s mission, the beloved animals, the building’s history. Always with excitement. You could bask in his positivity, knowledge, and kindness.

Most people probably never noticed, but I have had Dave’s face on my powerpoint slides that I use for public science education since 2017. Him and Louie Kerr. During these public outreach talks, I tell the story of how, as a little girl, I dreamed of becoming an explorer like Jacques Cousteau.

I follow up saying that, even though I thought I was going to be in deep oceans in a submersible, or out in the jungles, instead I became a lab biologist. But I still feel like that explorer, I feel like with all the resources available to me, and especially thanks to the experts helping me make my scientific dreams get realized, I get to explore the tiny “planets” that are embryos and organisms.

This is the next slide I show, where I have Dave and Louie photoshopped on that image above:

Here is a close-up:

Because how can you achieve anything without the amazing people like Dave (and Louie)? Him and his team were essential in establishing my animal cultures at the MBL, all the while they made it a joy to be an inhabitant of the MRC. (Except, damn that building’s climate control, but that is nobody’s fault.)

I don’t know how to imagine that building without Dave, I don’t know how to process this.

I trusted Dave’s opinion so much that, anytime I needed to hire a new Research Assistant, first I would go to him and ask if he had any great volunteers or summer workers he may recommend. That is how I had the luck and pleasure to work with some great people at my lab. He just knew how good people looked like, because he was one of the greatest of people.

Dave, my friend, you left a big void that will never be filled. I know I will miss seeing you anytime I visit MBL.