Vassilis has moved from the Schier Lab to start an exciting position supporting data analysis at Norvatis! Vassilis has been a core part of the Schier lab, bringing genuine curiosity as well as a calm depth and breadth of knowledge. He will be sorely missed by all of us. Vassilis had ambitious aims during his postdoc, working on different aspects of sleep in clown loaches and, with Will, Amelia and Clare, on sleep homeostasis in mice. Keep tuned in the next year to hear more about these projects!
Goodbye to Yiqun and Amelia!
Graduate student Yiqun is heading off to San Diego for her Postdoc and research assistant Amelia is heading back to Texas to start a new adventure. It’s been wonderful to have these intelligent and genuine women in the lab. They will be missed and we wish them the best in their future endeavours!
The Inaugural Swiss Schier Lab Retreat
After being delayed from its original March 2020 date, the first Swiss Schier Lab Retreat took place in Anzère. With plenty of COVID testing, scientific discussion, games, snow sports and delicious homemade cooking this retreat was a great success!
Congratulations to Rita and Jakob on winning the 2022 Foosball Extravaganza! Check out the “fun” section under “people” for pictures.
Dave opens his lab at UT Dallas!
Congratulations to Dave who opens his lab in the Bioengineering department of UT Dallas this month! Congratulations Dave and good luck with this exciting new chapter!
Follow him on twitter: @davedingal
Alex elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Congratulations Alex on this huge honour! Read the Biozentrum news article here
The AAAS website describes Fellows as “distinguished cadre of scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching, and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.”
Other AAAS Fellows include Thomas Edison and astronaut Ellen Ochoa.
Learn more about AAAS Fellows here
Max's paper on the evolution of cells types in zebrafish and cavefish is out!
We've moved to the new Biozentrum!
The move from Klingelbergstrasse 70 to Spitalstrasse 41 went very smoothly! Much thanks to our moving champion Fabien, pictured here with his olympic Gold for moving.
To get a sneak peak of the new building check out this video
A warm welcome to Rita!
Rita has joined the lab as a fish technician! We’re excited to have her in the lab!
Congratulations to Phil on becoming an Assistant Professor at University of Washington
Phil Abitua will be starting his own lab at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. Phil will continue his work on annual killifish and their early development.
Congratulations Phil!
Nate and Adam's paper now published in eLife!
Nate and Adam’s paper which was previously available as a preprint, is now published in eLife!
They include additional evidence that Nodal diffusion from a local source is sufficient to generate the signalling gradient. This indicates that there is no need for a transcriptional relay.
Find out more in the paper here
Congratulations to Adam on being awarded best talk!
Adam was awarded best talk at the 13th Swiss Zebrafish Society Annual Meeting. Well done!
Congratulations to Yiqun on defending her thesis!
Yesterday the Schier lab had the pleasure of celebrating Yiqun’s PhD defense! A zoom seminar and then outdoor, socially distanced gathering. Congratulations on a stellar PhD, we’re looking forward to following what exciting things you do next!
Congratulations to Dave on his new BioRxiv paper on Vg1 processing!
Vg1 acts with Nodal to induce mesoderm formation in embryos. Interestingly, Vg1 is only processed and secreted with Nodal. Dave used synthetic biology techniques he had previously developed to address outstanding questions of the mechanisms of Vg1’s retention, processing and secretion.
Learn more by reading the paper here or by his informative gif on twitter, don’t forget to follow him!
Congratulations to Phil on his Killifish axis formation story now on bioRxiv
Axis formation in embryos of fish and amphibians is prepatterned by maternal genes. However, annual killifish embyros go through a diapause state where cells of the blastomere disperse and reaggregate. How this dispersion-reaggregation process affects the molecular mechanisms of patterning is unclear.
Read more here
Schier/Regev collaboration paper chosen as one of Nature Biotechnology's 25 landmark papers!
Nature Biotechnology is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a collection of 25 landmark papers published in their journal, including a collaborative paper from the Schier and Regev labs. To read more about the collection click here
To read the paper titled Spatial reconstruction of single-cell gene expression data by Rahul, Jeff, David, Alex and Aviv click here
Bushra Raj opens her own lab at UPenn's Perelman School of Medicine
Bushra’s lab will open in April/May at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania!
Will be very exciting to see what exciting discoveries she’ll make next!
Learn more about her research and opportunities in her lab here
Nate Lord opens his lab in Pittsburg!
Congratulations to Nate Lord who started his lab at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine! We’re excited to see what he and his lab will do.
Learn more about his research here
Congratulations to Yinan on being awarded a EMBO Long term fellowship!
Yinan has received a prestigious and highly competitive EMBO Long term fellowship for her work in the Schier lab. We look forward to the new discoveries she will make!
Max's paper on cell type diversification in Mexican Cavefish and Zebrafish out on BioRxiv!
Bushra's newest work published in Neuron!
Bushra’s newest work on the “Emergence of neuronal diversity during vertebrate brain development” has been published in Neuron . As part of this work Bushra and coauthors cataloged ∼220,000 zebrafish brain cells encompassing 12 stages from embryo to larva to establish a zebrafish brain development atlas. They segment these cells into ∼800 clusters with both known and novel gene markers and provide an overview of the diversification of neurons and progenitors across these time points.
To find out more read the paper here!