Girish Kale
LightNews LightNews
girishkalephd.bsky.social
Girish Kale
@girishkalephd.bsky.social
270 followers 500 following 19 posts
Cell and Developmental biologist, expanding into ecological thinking and evolutionary comparative approaches. Interested in how elevated temperatures affect embryo survival, focusing on pre-gastrulation development, in the context of global warming🌡
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
girishkalephd.bsky.social
Girish Kale @girishkalephd.bsky.social · Nov 22
Our recent preprint on how elevated temperatures affect early embryo development. We are using fly embryos to address this fundamental question, and seeing mitotic defects, which can be rescued to improve embryo survival.

doi.org/10.1101/2023...
Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo
Temperature variations can challenge animal survival, with different life cycle stages presenting distinct vulnerabilities to elevated temperature. Here, embryonic development is known to be especiall...
doi.org
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Join us next week for two exciting talks in the Eastern VGZT session! ☀️

🗓️ Wednesday, February 11th
⏰ 9:00 GMT / 10:00 CET / 14:30 IST / 18:00 JST / 20:00 AEDT

Don’t miss:
👉 Pragathi Masamsetti (on X: @PMasamsetti)
👉 Marc Trani-Bustos (@mtrani.bsky.social)

See you there! 👋
February 6, 2026 at 8:29 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
pritiagarwal.bsky.social
🎉 The Developmental Mechanics Seminar Series is back!
🗓️ Thurs, Jan 22
🎙️ Opening talks:
🧬Guy Tanentzapf (UBC)
— How cell adhesion molecules wire into the cytoskeleton
🌀Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff (EMBL)
@gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social
— Mapping tissue mechanics with Brillouin microscopy
International Developmental Mechanics Seminar Series
Please fill out the following survey if you are interested in the 2025-2026 International Zoom Seminars on Developmental Mechanics.
tinyurl.com
January 19, 2026 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Join us for the next VGZT, featuring complementary approaches to understanding dynamic tissue organization!

🗓️ Thursday, January 22nd
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Chen Yuan Kam (@chenyuankam.bsky.social)
👉 Camilla Autorino (@cami-autorino.bsky.social)
January 19, 2026 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
jamesbriscoe.bsky.social
There's still time to apply to be a 2026 @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence fellow

For those about to apply for their first independent academic position, the programme offers

- mentoring
- leadership training
- profile rising
- networking

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
Pathway to Independence programme | Development | The Company of Biologists
Pathway to Independence programme | Development | The Company of Biologists Development's Pathway to Independence programme Launched in 2022, Development’s Pathway Independence programm...
journals.biologists.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
natalieadye.bsky.social
Apply for a PhD in Singapore at NUS! Deadline Jan 12. I'm recruiting:

Here with Mechanobiology Institute: www.mbi.nus.edu.sg/education/gr...

and

Here with Biomedical Engineering dept: cde.nus.edu.sg/bme/
www.mbi.nus.edu.sg
January 6, 2026 at 4:51 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
centuri-ls.bsky.social
The CENTURI PhD Call 2026 is still ongoing. Applications are open until the end of the month, on January 28th!

Visit centuri-livingsystems.org/recruitment/ to apply.

#PHD #CENTURI
January 5, 2026 at 8:34 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
🎉 Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2026 with an exciting VGZT seminar!

🗓️ Thursday, January 8th
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Jan Jakub Zylicz (@jzylicz.bsky.social)
👉 Anahi Binagui-Casas (@abinagui.bsky.social)

See you there 👋
January 5, 2026 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
dev-journal.bsky.social
Join us next week for #DevPres to hear 3 of our PI fellows talk about the environment & evolution

14 January 15:00 GMT/UTC

With talks from @ethanewe.bsky.social, @maxfarnworth.bsky.social & @sonyawiden.bsky.social, chaired by @pritiagarwal.bsky.social.

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

#DevPres
Development presents… Wednesday 14 January 15:00 GMT/UTC Chair: Priti Agarwal Chee Kiang (Ethan) Ewe Tel Aviv University ‘Neuronal oversight of germline small RNAs prevents heat-induced sterility in Caenorhabditis elegans’ Max Farnworth University of Bristol ‘How the evolution of spatial foraging shaped centres of cognition in Heliconiini butterflies’ Sonya Widen IMBA, Vienna BioCenter ‘“Unpacking” eukaryotic horizontal gene transfer: Mavericks transfer novel “cargo” genes across the globe’ #DevPres | @dev-journal.bsky.social thenode.biologists.com/devpres
January 5, 2026 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
maitrejl.bsky.social
📣 #Job alert!
Looking to establish your own independent research in cell biology, development or evo-devo?
The @cnrs.fr is recruiting 7 scientists in that area of research.
Here are updated unofficial guidelines. Reach out to members of the committee if you have questions
c3n-cn.fr/section-24-w...
December 18, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
hfspo.bsky.social
Attention scientists from all over the world🙃
The Call for Letters of Intent for #HFSPResearchGrants 2027 is now open! 🧪
Get your international & interdisciplinary team. It's time to put your bold research idea into practice!
🔗https://bit.ly/48VsGCG
📅 15 Dec 2025–26 Mar 2026
#sts #LifeSciences
Call for Letters of Intent - HFSP Research Grants 2027
December 15, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Join us next week for the second Eastern VGZT of the season! 🤩

🗓️ Wednesday, December 10th
⏰ 9:00 UTC / 9:00 GMT / 10:00 CET / 14:30 IST / 18:00 JST / 20:00 AEDT

Our speakers are:
👉 Guojun Sheng
👉 Jennifer Zenker

See you there! ✨
December 6, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Reminder: Tomorrow is VGZT day! 🚀

Don’t miss great talks from
👉 Luca Braccioli (@bracciolilab.bsky.social)
👉 Komal Makwana (on X: @Komal_Makwana4)
vgzt2021.bsky.social Virtual Gastrulation Zoom Talks @vgzt2021.bsky.social · Nov 29
Join us next week for another round of inspiring VGZT talks! 🤩

🗓️ Thursday, December 4th
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Luca Braccioli (@bracciolilab.bsky.social)
👉 Komal Makwana (on X: @Komal_Makwana4)

See you next week 👋
December 3, 2025 at 7:48 AM
girishkalephd.bsky.social
This is a great program to support postdocs during the transition to group leader position. I know from first-hand experience :)
dev-journal.bsky.social Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · Dec 2
Apply for our Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs in #devbio and #stemcell research during the transition to their first group leader position: www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

Application deadline: 2 February 2026.
Pathway to Independence Support postdocs on the job market Line drawing of a person at a bench transitioning to working at a desk Development
December 3, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
dev-journal.bsky.social
Learn more about why this programme was started in 2022, and some of the PI fellows we have supported so far, in this #biologists100 Perspective article by Reviews Editor, @ingridtsang.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1242/dev....
The 2023 PI fellows outside The Company of Biologists' office in Histon, Cambridge, UK. From left to right: Leah Greenspan, Loic Fort, Priti Agarwal (front), Thomas Juan (back), Clotilde Cadart, James Gahan, Yuchuan Miao and Polina Kameneva. Originally posted on the Node (https://thenode.biologists.com/sharing-is-caring-developments-pathway-to-independence-programme/news/).
December 2, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
bardinlab.bsky.social
Come join us in beautiful Roscoff for this Conference Jacques Monod on Developmental regulation: from molecular to ecological niches
May 18-22, 2026 Roscoff, France
Abstract deadline: January 31, 2026
Apply here: cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en
December 3, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
zebrafishrock.bsky.social
Fintastic webinar series is expanding! Do follow for more great gastrula gossip 🥚
vgzt2021.bsky.social Virtual Gastrulation Zoom Talks @vgzt2021.bsky.social · Dec 1
News: VGZT has updated its official website and now has now a brand-new LinkedIn page! 🎉🚀
You can find all upcoming sessions, past talks, and updates there.

🌐 Website
🔗 LinkedIn

Feel free to follow, share, and and help spread the word about the seminar series! 🙌
December 1, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
jcellsci.bsky.social
Why choose JCS?
- FREE to publish (OA options available)
- Fast-track option for papers with reports
- Preprint friendly, format-free submission + scoop protection
- Published by a not-for-profit publisher
- A tree planted for every peer-reviewed article🌳

journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/re...
Cover image of Journal of Cell Science showing two cells expressing RFFL–EGFP and labelled for mitochondria and lipid droplets.
November 27, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Tomorrow is VGZT day! 🚀

Don’t miss the great talks from
👉 Allison Kann (@apkann.bsky.social)
👉 Joana da Silva (on X: @joanamsilva14)
vgzt2021.bsky.social Virtual Gastrulation Zoom Talks @vgzt2021.bsky.social · Nov 14
Join us for next week’s exciting VGZT session! 🎉

🗓️ Thursday, November 20th
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Allison Kann (@apkann.bsky.social)
👉 Joana da Silva (on X: @joanamsilva14)

See you there 👋
November 19, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
Join us for next week’s exciting VGZT session! 🎉

🗓️ Thursday, November 20th
⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET

Our speakers are
👉 Allison Kann (@apkann.bsky.social)
👉 Joana da Silva (on X: @joanamsilva14)

See you there 👋
November 14, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
angeloniallegra.bsky.social
1/ I’m very excited to share my postdoc work with @kseskv.bsky.social, in collaboration with @oligriffith.bsky.social. We explore embryonic DNA methylation reprogramming in the fat-tailed dunnart, an Australian marsupial 🦘🌏 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
November 12, 2025 at 2:57 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
the-node.bsky.social
Our next #DevPres webinar focusses on regeneration with talks from Stephanie Tsai and Ben Cox @beeeencox.bsky.social.

📆Wed 19 November
🕓16:00 GMT/UTC

For more info and to register: thenode.biologists.com/development-...
November 12, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
We are excited to announce the first Eastern ☀️VGZT session for this season!✨🎉

📅Tomorrow, November 12th
⏰ 9:00 UTC / 9:00 GMT / 10:00 CET / 14:30 IST / 18:00 JST / 20:00 AEDT

Our speakers are:
👉Sameer Thukral (on X: @SameerThukral6)
👉Axel Newton (on X: @AxelHNewton)

See you on tomorrow☕️👋
November 11, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
girishkalephd.bsky.social
Thanks @amjeve.bsky.social for the invitation to write this perspective in the 'In Preprints' series in @dev-journal.bsky.social .

What's the downside of acclimation to low temperature? Turns out you will perform worse in heat shock.
doi.org/10.1242/dev....
In preprints: multiomics of low temperature acclimation in the era of intensifying temperature fluctuations
In a warming world, all life forms – endotherms and ectotherms alike – are finding their homeostasis being challenged. The environmental change is challenging at all stages of life. How different orga...
doi.org
October 20, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Girish Kale
vgzt2021.bsky.social
We are excited to announce the second Western VGZT of Season 7!

🗓️Thursday, October 16th
⏰9:30 PDT / 12:30 EDT / 16:30 UTC / 17:30 BST / 18:30 CET

Our speakers:
👉 Hidenobu Miyazawa (on X: @HidenobuAnzo)
👉 Girish Kale (@girishkalephd.bsky.social)

See you next week! 👋
October 10, 2025 at 9:51 AM