Jack Holcombe
@jackholcombe.bsky.social
1.1K followers 330 following 91 posts
Science, data and the natural world 🔬🪰🧬 http://jackholcombe.com/
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Such an amazing experience sharing science with a wonderful community! Thanks so much 🧬🔬@edrc2025.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
mrclmb.bsky.social
John Gurdon, former Group Leader and Head of @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social has died.
Despite calling himself a "total non-intellectual” his work to reprogramme somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells transformed the field of developmental biology.
More: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/john-gurdon-...
#LMBNews
Black and white portrait of John Gurdon, 1971
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Was listening to the bbc coverage of this yesterday and was thinking the same! I need to read the paper itself but would be interesting to see why skin and not some other accessible tissue?
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
joachimgoedhart.bsky.social
Identification of optimal fluorophores for use in the Drosophila embryo by Timothy E Saunders and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Figure 1: Fluorophore intensity in the Drosophila blastoderm (n.c. 14). Comparison of (A) green and (B) red fluorescence intensity using the same intensity scaling in n.c. 14. The fluorescence signal did
not saturate. Shown are single imaging planes. Normalised histograms of fluorescence intensity for green (C) and red (D) fluorophores averaged across at least n=3 embryos per line. Scale bars = 20 μm
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
bethanclark.bsky.social
I wrote something on developmental biology and disability and put it up on the node last night:

thenode.biologists.com/developmenta...

I've been nervous to share because some of it veers a bit personal but they are thoughts that won't stay quiet. Would love to know what people think about it!
Developmental Biology and Disability - the Node
Hopeful monsters. Morphospace. Mutation. Natural variation. Mutagenesis screens. Polymorphism. Deformity. Phenotype. Disease. Adaptation. Anomaly.
thenode.biologists.com
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Thank you for sharing this!
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Thanks so much Iwan, was absolutely lovely to catch up! Hopefully see you around soon!
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
delaevanio.bsky.social
Some amazing talks but highlights for me were David Bilder on innate immune-tumour interactions, @jackholcombe.bsky.social ‘s PhD prize tour de force and exciting and beautiful data and new tools to look at basement membrane and clotting hot out of @stramerlab.bsky.social
jackholcombe.bsky.social
This is awesome Girish! Congrats to the whole team!
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
dyneinassembly.bsky.social
Happy to share the inaugural paper from the lab. We describe a molecular mechanism for the activation of outer dynein arm motors that power the vital motion of cilia.

Open access link below:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's a cool animated summary
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Can you guess what time my talk started?
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Such an amazing experience sharing science with a wonderful community! Thanks so much 🧬🔬@edrc2025.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
edrc2025.bsky.social
This is the organizing team behind #EDRC2025 María Dominguez, Javier Morante @morantelab.bsky.social , Juan Sanchez-Alcaniz @sanchezalcaniz.bsky.social , Pepe Pastor-Pareja @pastorparejalab.bsky.social and Ana Carmena
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
kyracampbelllab.bsky.social
We are loving the
@edrc2025.bsky.social !!

Please come find us at the poster sessions and coffee breaks!
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
drosostalis.bsky.social
If you find yourself at @edrc2025.bsky.social please check my wonderful postdoc's talk @neurogut.bsky.social at the gut workshop this afternoon. Gut, sex, reproduction, our new story! In combo with @irenemiguel-aliaga.bsky.social! @fly-jedi.bsky.social #EDRC2025
A restricted subset of gut-innervating neurons that express the neuropeptide myosuppressin (Ms)
innervate the crop, a stomach-like structure of the fly intestine. This figure shows co-expression
between the Ms protein reporter (green) and Ms peptide (red) in the nervous system, and in
neuronal projections towards the gut (blue).
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
jacoates.bsky.social
This is great news.

Though 'reviewed preprints" does feel a bit dated by now. Last year a few people asked me why EMBO still only accepted reviewed preprints.
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
benforward3.bsky.social
“Trump's Harvard cuts threaten a giant in the biomedical research community: A database about the tiny fruit fly”

The FlyBase grant is run through the Perrimon lab at HMS, so when Trump cut off 100% of our NIH $, it causes existential risk to the entire community

www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...
Trump's Harvard cuts threaten a giant in biomedical research: A database about the tiny fruit fly
This spring, the Trump administration rescinded a grant that maintained FlyBase, a pillar of global basic research, as part of its broader $2.2 billion funding cuts at Harvard.
www.nbcnews.com
jackholcombe.bsky.social
Thanks! If im remembering correctly it was just when I was testing cg10116 > mcd8-GFP! Loved your recent paper btw!
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
hansonmark.bsky.social
Specifically on the #metascience side, congrats to @josephlemaitre.bsky.social and @brunolemaitre.bsky.social on this consequential piece. 🎉

By dissecting factors associated with #reproducibility within a single field, there are broad lessons for #ScientificPublishing and broader #science.
Reposted by Jack Holcombe
benforward3.bsky.social
🔬New paper! This has been my personal favorite project I’ve ever done - also, the only one that the President has been relentlessly trying to destroy by 100% defunding our lab & institution. Please enjoy:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Confocal Images of the fruit fly Proventriculus Confocal Images of the fruit fly Proventriculus