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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Eszter Posfai @eposfai.bsky.social · Aug 2

Thrilled to share our work using live imaging to understand how Epiblast (future embryo proper) and Primitive Endoderm (future extraembryonic tissues) cell fates segregate in the preimplantation mouse embryo. Gargantuan effort led by amazing @rpkimyip.bsky.social, David Denberg and Denis Faerberg!

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 22

Thank you!!

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 22

pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

Thanks to the reviewers for their thoughtful feedback, @cp-cellreports.bsky.social for a great publishing experience, and @toettch.bsky.social and all our coauthors for making this such a fun project.

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

The power of pYtags is that they can readily be applied to any RTK of interest (and not just in Drosophila). I’d love to connect if you are interested in making a pYtag for your favorite RTK!

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

We built pYtags to detect RTK activity in Drosophila embryos and used them to learn about how developmental patterns form bsky.app/profile/emko...

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

Have you ever wanted to *see* receptor activity in embryos? If so, our new preprint is for you! In it, we showcase a new live-cell biosensor for visualizing receptor tyrosine kinase activity in living embryos – pYtags!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jun 10

So cool! Congrats Susanna!!

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Susanna Brantley @drsusanna.bsky.social · Jun 10

Excited to share the bulk of my postdocotoral work from the @ditalialab.bsky.social on how cells interpret dynamic morphogen signaling during development! Many thanks to our collaborators & coauthors @shelbyflies.bsky.social, Massimo Vergassola, Jacqueline Janssen, and Anna Chao.

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Stephanie Woo @itsthewoolab.bsky.social · May 29

Website and registration will open soon for the West Coast SDB meeting, Aug 14–17 at Cal-Poly SLO! Abstract deadline for talks is July 7. Final deadline for abstracts (posters) and registration is July 31. We will have prizes for best undergrad, grad, and post doc presentations! #wcsdb2025 1/4

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · Apr 21

I'd like to share a little bit of happy lab news in these chaotic times: a new preprint, driven by the brilliant Qinhao Cao!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Katherine W. Rogers @katwrog.bsky.social · Apr 21

Happy to share a new preprint from my lab! We characterize the on/off kinetics, light dosage-dependence, and more for a suite of optogenetic signaling activators in zebrafish embryos 💡 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An optogenetic toolkit for robust activation of FGF, BMP, and Nodal signaling in zebrafish

Cell signaling regulates a wide range of biological processes including development, homeostasis, and disease. Accessible technologies to precisely manipulate signaling have important applications in ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Mary Mirvis @marymirvis.bsky.social · Apr 19

New(ish) preprint! 📰What whole-cell patterns emerge from the arrangement, morphologies, and interactions of organelles in the 3D space of the cell? What would we see if we could gather ALL the whole-cell reconstruction data that's out there in one place? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature: a foundational corpus, potential for mesoscale data synthesis, and implications for standardization of an emerging field

The level of cellular organization bridging the mesoscale and whole-cell scale is coming into focus as a new frontier in cell biology. Great progress has been made in unraveling the complex physical a...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · Mar 25

I'm so happy to report that our preprint on light-induced collective cell migration has now been published in Cell Systems! This project was a lot of fun and will be the basis for a lot of our ongoing & future work.

Large-scale control over collective cell migration using light-activated epidermal growth factor receptors

Programmable control over tissue movement is a fundamental challenge for tissue engineering and wound healing. Suh, Thornton, et al. discovered that a light-controlled EGF receptor controls long-range...

www.cell.com

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Eszter Posfai @eposfai.bsky.social · Mar 22

How many cells do you need to establish PCP? The magic number is 3! Beautiful work by Lena Basta in Danelle Devenport's lab. Happy to have contributed. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Epithelial polarization by the planar cell polarity complex is exclusively non–cell autonomous

For cells to polarize collectively along a tissue plane, asymmetrically localized planar cell polarity (PCP) complexes must form intercellular contacts between neighboring cells. Yet, it is unknown wh...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Daniel Alber @danielalber.bsky.social · Mar 6

Developmental systems have regions that deform actively or passively from their active neighbors. We use a ring of tissue as a model to investigate this boundary-driven morphogenesis in its biological context, learning something about gastrulation and possibly blastopore geometries in the process!

Pierre Haas @lepuslapis.bsky.social · Mar 6

New #preprint: "A model for boundary-driven tissue morphogenesis" arxiv.org/abs/2503.03688.

A great collaboration with @danielalber.bsky.social @zhaoshh.bsky.social, Alexandre Jacinto, Eric Wieschaus, Stas Shvartsman.

@flatironinstitute.org @mpipks.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @csbdresden.bsky.social

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Eszter Posfai @eposfai.bsky.social · Mar 5

A duo of preprints on the dynamics of the first cell fate decision in mouse by Madeleine Chalifoux (first grad student in the lab!) and Maria Avdeeva (Flatiron).

We use quantitative live imaging of key cell fate determinants to follow the segregation of inner cell mass and trophectoderm lineages.

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Reposted by Emily Kolenbrander Ho

Society for Developmental Biology @socdevbio.bsky.social · Jan 29

The Society for Developmental Biology has released a statement on the Unprecedented Disruptions to Biomedical Research in the United States.

Scientific research is a driving force behind human progress. It fuels medical breakthroughs, spurs technological innovations and drives economic growth. Federal funding of research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) is absolutely critical for ensuring that the U.S. maintains its global leadership in science and technology.
The unprecedented freeze on the review and issuance of federal research grants is already negatively impacting research and could have significant ripple effects. Ongoing studies may lose momentum if grant renewals or supplement requests are delayed, slowing scientific progress on research the NIH has already invested in. Researchers affiliated with the Society for Developmental Biology carry out critical research on birth defects, which kill twice as many children as cancer does. Slowed progress will delay the development of new therapies and diagnostics, and thus have real public health implications. In 2019, the total estimated cost of birth defect–associated hospitalizations was $22.2 billion.
Scientific research is also critical to the U.S. economy more broadly. In 2023 alone NIH funded research not only directly supported 412 thousand jobs, but its overall economic impact rippled out to all sectors of the economy driving more than $92.89 billion in economic activity across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. It is estimated that every dollar of NIH funding generates $2.46 dollars of economic activity.
Finally, federal research funding not only drives impactful research discoveries but also supports the training of the scientists, engineers, and innovators of the future. University laboratories, funded by federal grants, serve as essential training grounds for the next generation of researchers even as they push the boundaries of knowledge. This training prepares young scientists for leadership roles in both academia and industry, helping to ensure that the scientific workforce r…

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 26

Thanks Ellen!

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 9

Thanks Tim!!

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 8

Possibly! If the phosphorylated substrate was membrane localized and could be tagged with the ITAM. Jak/Stat receptors would be a good example

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

I’ll be starting my undergrad-powered lab this summer at Claremont McKenna College and I’m super excited to continuing exploring new signaling biology with pYtags. If you are interested in tagging your favorite RTK (in flies or in other model systems), please reach out!

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

Huge thanks to: @toettch.bsky.social for being an awesome advisor. Payam for developing pYtags and starting this project with me. @rpkimyip.bsky.social and @eposfai.bsky.social for amazing egg chamber imaging. Alison and Stas for gorgeous trachea imaging. And Harrison who can segment anything!

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

Our data is consistent with a new conceptual model for terminal patterning where a local domain of Torso activity, tuned by negative feedback, produces a long-range gradient of ERK. Check out the paper to learn more!

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

Second, Torso activity was much more restricted to the poles than the broad gradient of ERK activity, consistent with a model where the ERK gradient forms via diffusion. We previously showed the same thing with an optogenetic stimulus.

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Dynamics of an incoherent feedforward loop drive ERK-dependent pattern formation in the early Drosophila embryo

Highlighted Article: Optogenetic dissection of the incoherent feedforward loop regulating brachyenteron in the Drosophila embryo reveals that temporal dynamics and spatial diffusion contribute to stri...

journals.biologists.com

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