Category: News

We did do an update on the Nature/asterisks following a request in twitter about the source of what I mentioned about changes in authorship policy in the journal (what’s in an asterisk). As I said, Nature refers you to the instructions to authors and to a web post for this matter. But, this is not clear. What is clear is what I have heard from authors which is that only three asterisks (joint first authors) and three corresponding authors are allowed. This is like an experiment, only time and use will make clear what this actually means. One, two or […]

Well done to our part II project students who made wonderful presentations of their toilings in the lab last Friday. Ellie Davies presented her work (with David Turner) on the requirement for Bra in the movement of Bra +ve ES derived cells (watch this space on this one!). Hilmi (with Penny Hayward) explored the role that E-Cadherin might have on pluripotency (see the intriguing new paper from R. Kemler’s lab in Development on this: E-cadherin is required for the proper activation of the Lifr/Gp130 signaling pathway in mouse embryonic stem cells. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23487312). Leo Sideris (with Tina Balayo) looked at the […]

Last week the on-line version of Development published our manuscript “A membrane-associated β-catenin/Oct4 complex correlates with ground-state pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells.” Development. 2013 Mar;140(6):1171-83. doi: 10.1242/dev.085654.. Given its checkered history (see the forthcoming blog  “What I learnt from a rejection” ) we were delighted. The work gets close to settle ongoing debates about the impact of ß-catenin, the transcriptional effector of Wnt signalling, on pluripotency in mouse ES cells. It concurs that while ß-catenin contributes to the self renewal of the pluripotent state, this effect is not mediated by its transcriptional activity. We show that ß-catenin/Tcf mediated transcription […]

Next week is the annual meeting of the BSDB and look forward to it is a very good place to meet people and discuss cell and developmental biology. Most importantly, it brings the UK community together.

We want to congratulate and wish luck to our colleague Silvia Muñoz Descalzo on starting an independent position in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry of the University of Bath. Silvia spent several years in the lab peering into the mysteries of the interactions between Notch and Wnt signalling in Drosophila and more recently in ES cells.