New preprint up with collaborators Jianguo Lu, @mpodobnik.bsky.social, Uwe Irion, Braedan McCluskey, John Postlethwait and others. New Danio genomes, evolution and pigment pattern variation. Long time in the making www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nemo needs gap junctions, too. New preprint with Marleen Klann, Vincent Laudet, et al. showing anemonefish Snowflake mutant due to E42K substitution in Connexin Gja5b. Found exact same E42K in zebrafish gja5b (= leopard) by ENU, to the nucleotide! Details, inferences: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Huge congrats to Ray Keller on his election to the National Academy of Sciences! Ray isn’t on Bluesky but that shouldn’t stop anyone from letting him know how well deserved this is, or the impact he’s had generally. Certainly his work was a major reason I ended up in dev bio.

New paper out from grad student Katia Korzeniwsky and collaborators with roles for Mitfa transcription factor in pigment cell development and genetic interactions with related transcription factor Tfec.
dx.doi.org/10.1111/pcmr...

Cool paper out from former lab member Braedan McCluskey’s dissertation, with John Postlethwait. Shows role of hybridization in zebrafish genome evolution. Interesting implications for pigment pattern evolution.

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ar...

New NIH funded research from our group now out. We are interested in development and evolution of cell types and adult phenotypes. In this paper, postdoc Dylan Huang and collaborators asked how a pigmentary ornament of bright white cells develops on the fin of zebrafish. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cirrhilabrus hygroxerus, the Monsoon Fairy Wrasse

Two in two days! I’m feeling generous. Ok I’m gonna speed run this one.

Hygro = wet
Xeros = dry
Wet + dry = monsoon = weather profile of Darwin = type location of this species

🚨New postdoc positions available: we are looking for 2 postdoctoral researchers to join a large, collaborative effort to document, describe, and investigate the biodiversity of tiny, cryptobenthic fishes in the Indo-Pacific 🤏🐠🧪. More details: fishandfunctions.com/join%F0%9F%9...

Please repost 🦑🧪

We have a new preprint out from postdoc Dylan Huang and collaborators on how black cells turn into white cells in zebrafish.

biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...