James Briscoe
Developmental Biologist working at the Francis Crick Institute. Neural tube, morphogens, and gene regulatory networks. Editor-in-chief, Development.
London · briscoelab.org
- Meet the 2025 @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence (PI) fellows Eight developmental and stem cell biologists transitioning from postdoc to principal investigator journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
- Reflections from the Human Developmental Biology Initiative's public engagement team on improving science communication while building public trust. Bridging between tissue donors and discovery research. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- Congratulations to all the newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Including incoming @crick.ac.uk director Edith Heard www.amacad.org/new-members-...
- Very pleased to have been awarded, along with David Rand at Warwick University, this new BBSRC grant Merging dynamical systems theory with molecular biology to predict & understand the principles of cell fate decision making www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-04...
- Please take 5 min to give your feedback to @the-node.bsky.social Over the last 15 years it's become the go-to community blog for the dev bio and stem cell community What do you want from the Node over the next 15 years?
- As we turn 15, we want to collect feedback from you, our community, to ensure the Node is still relevant and useful. If you’ve ever visited the Node to read, write and interact with the #DevBio & #StemCell community, thank you! Please spare 5min to take our survey: www.surveymonkey.com/r/7QHYQCW
- Sad news. Benny Shilo, a pioneer in dev bio & Drosophila genetics, has died. I'll remember the infectious enthusiasm and burning curiosity he brought to every conversation I had with him.
- Always a pleasure to visit @mblscience.bsky.social Looking forward to a few days at #GERN2025 www.mbl.edu/education/ad...
- Delighted that Iva Greenwald & Gary Stuhl have been awarded the Canada Gairdner International Awarded
- Congrats to @columbiauniversity.bsky.social scientists Gary Struhl & Iva Greenwald for winning the @gairdnerawards.bsky.social Award for their research yielding critical insights on how cells communicate with their neighbors during development. Read: zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/columbia-gai...
- Many congratulations to @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social on the award of a Schmidt Science Fellowship Now he just needs to find a lab to host him for his post-doc www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-04...
- Delighted to become a council member for the BBSRC Looking forward to supporting them as they continue to push back the frontiers of bioscience www.linkedin.com/posts/uk-res...
- Congratulations to Rory Maizels delivering the @bsdb.bsky.social Beddington Medal lecture at #Biologists100
- Always a pleasure seeing previous lab members present their own lab's work The wonderful Vanessa Ribes discussing recent work on txn regulation by Pax3/7 in neural progenitors #biologists100 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Peer review completed within 7 days! Paying peer reviewers! Yes, it's possible. Fast & Fair peer review by @biologyopen.bsky.social More innovation from @biologists.bsky.social Details here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- We are excited to be launching the next phase of our Fast & Fair peer review initiative: offering high-quality peer review within 7 working days. #fastandfairpeerreview Read the Editorial by EiC Daniel Gorelick @danielgorelick.bsky.social at: bit.ly/4kYD1mL
- Looking forward to #biologists100 Celebrating all the innovative ways @biologists.bsky.social have supported science over the last 100 years Here's a little example: a link to the 🌳 planted for our recent @dev-journal.bsky.social paper by Libby et al forest.biologists.com/landscape/?i...
- Many congratulations to Rory Maizels. Well deserved winner of the 2025 BSDB Beddington Medal for his PhD thesis.
- The winner of the 2025 BSDB Beddington Medal for the best PhD thesis in developmental biology is Rory Maizels! Many congratulations! bsdb.org/2025/03/21/2...
- Shocked and saddened to hear Paul Kulesa has died Condolences to friends and family A big loss to dev bio
- Provocative but important commentary from Sui Huang & co Argues we need to change the paradigm of cancer origin from a somatic mutation theory to one grounded in gene regulatory networks & tissue organisation: a system level rather purely genetic mechanism journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
- ICYMI: discovering design rules for cis-regulatory elements with a high-throughput screen An explainer from @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social
- Excited to share my latest work with @joadelas.bsky.social and @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social Predictable Engineering of Signal-Dependent Cis-Regulatory Elements www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/11
- Together with fellow @biologists.bsky.social EiCs we've written about the unprecedented cuts & policy changes to research in the US We stand with our US colleagues during this challenging time Science transcends borders—setbacks in one nation affect us all journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- Science under siege: protecting scientific progress in turbulent times journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- Interesting idea: get the sick super-rich to pay for clinical trials Alternative idea: get the super-rich to pay tax that allows democratically accountable governments to support clinical trials (and research and healthcare and....) www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ma...
- Our latest: uncovering hierarchical design rules for cis-regulatory elements with a high-throughput screen CRE activity follows multiplicative modular rules, tuned by spacing & positioning Enables engineering synthetic CREs for predictable tissue patterning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- This is why UK gov needs to invest in PhD training & cut visa costs for scientists Long term economic growth depends on skilled people The UK should make the most of life sciences
- UK life sciences ‘will need 145,000 new people within 10 years’. Report warns of skills shortage in sector at heart of government plans to boost growth. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-i...
- Saddened to hear Bela Novak has died Pioneering and influential systems/quant biologist. Changed how we think about the cell cycle (amongst other things). www.merton.ox.ac.uk/news/remembe...
- Good to see this from @kichevalab.bsky.social in final journal format BMP signalling drives neural tube patterning through a temporal relay mechanism Lmx1a connects fast negative feedback and slow positive regulation www.cell.com/developmenta...
- "Genes are... the easy part" @philipcball.bsky.social argues biologists need to embrace complexity from the start, rather than beginning with oversimplified "one gene, one trait" models +1 www.cell.com/cell-systems...
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- I agree. To me that's the point. We should aim to link reductionist mechanism to higher level explanations & emergent behaviour.
- Do you want one of the most influential jobs in dev bio? Would you like to work with the best group of editors & publishing professionals in the business? Are you interested in leading the premier not for profit community focussed journal in the field? Come be Development's next Executive Editor
- We are looking for a new Executive Editor on the journal, with @katherine-brown.bsky.social taking on a new role at @biologists.bsky.social. If you're an experienced editor with a love of developmental biology and its community, this could be the job for you. Full details in the link below.
- Our latest in @dev-journal.bsky.social: an in vivo CRISPR screening approach in chick embryos to study neural cell specification from the caudal lateral epiblast (CLE) Identifies role for super elongation complex component MLLT3 A thread... journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
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View full threadOverall, the study establishes a CRISPR screening approach for studying developmental processes in chick embryos And reveals how transcriptional elongation control via MLLT3/SEC helps coordinate rapid cell fate transitions during development
- All credit to Ashley Libby who led the project with help from Tiago Rito and Arthur Radley journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- MLLT3 knockout affected expression of RA responsive genes and WNT/PCP pathway components This positions MLLT3 as a link between NMP maintenance and neural differentiation
- MLLT3 works through RARα: Mutant RARα lacking the MLLT3 binding domain phenocopied MLLT3 knockout effects on neural progenitors
- Analysis of guide enrichment/depletion across cell populations revealed distinct phenotypic clusters FGF and RAR knockouts accumulated cells in CLE, consistent with their roles in differentiation
- We found MLLT3 perturbation disrupted neural tube morphology and reduced neural fate acquisition Suggests MLLT3 plays a previously unknown role in neural specification
- For the screen, we identified differentially expressed genes in the the CLE-to-neural transition using entropy-based feature selection (ESFW) This revealed several candidates including MLLT3, a component of the super elongation complex (SEC) For ESFW see: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- We validated the CRISPR system using OLIG2 knockouts in neural tube Then performed a screen targeting 25 genes with 4 guides each (102 total guides including controls) in the CLE
- The CLE contains neuromesodermal progenitors (NMPs) that generate spinal cord and muscle tissue We know the key signalling pathways (WNT, FGF, RA), but gene regulatory mechanisms remained unclear
- We developed a multiplexed CRISPR in vivo screening strategy (aka Perturb-seq) targeting genes expressed in the CLE and neural tube Key refinement: incorporating capture sequences into gRNAs to enable single-cell RNA-seq tracking of perturbations
- New work from my @crick.ac.uk colleagues in @jpvincentlab.bsky.social Brinker only present in winged insects & acts to extend the range of BMP signalling in wing discs This genetic innovation might have been crucial for wing development & insect flight evolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- I agree with @economist.com that the "Oxbridge arc" has huge potential But realising this isn't just about planning regulations People are crucial. This means increasing, not cutting, PhD training & easing skilled worker visas www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
- Saddened to hear of John Reinitz's death Reliably contrarian and argumentative but razor sharp, original and inspirational His approach to dev bio was a decade and more ahead of the field biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/news/john-re...
- ICYMI: Commentary on "mechanism" in dev bio Ozpolat et al argue for diverse approaches to mechanism - from molecular to systems level journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- Registration open for this year's Young Embryologist Network meeting 19 May, The Francis Crick Institute, London thenode.biologists.com/yen-2025-con...
- Agree. Cuts in UKRI funded PhD places, is about government funding and prioritisation. We need work force planning with joined up thinking A PhD is not about an academic career, its an apprenticeship for the knowledge economy. "Europe's Silicon Valley" will not exist without PhDs
- New from @crick.ac.uk Briefing note on what we're doing for #OpenScience & data sharing, including hiring specialist staff, mandatory archiving & enhanced training Result: Data availability statements up to 89% & better quality deposits in our institutional Figshare www.ijdc.net/index.php/ij...
- Beautiful work from my colleagues in the @lab-turner.bsky.social Systematically deleting Y chr genes in mice reveals their crucial roles in sperm development from stem cell establishment to X-Y pairing in meiosis and sperm cell formation www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- A week left to apply to @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence programme Deadline 31 January The programme supports postdocs going on the academic job market in 2025 We offer training, mentorship, profile-raising and networking opportunities journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
- A couple of weeks left to apply to join Development's *Pathway to Independence* programme Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market Deadline: January 31 journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
- This year, the Company of Biologists @biologists.bsky.social publisher of Development, J. Cell Science, Disease Models & Mechs... celebrates its *100* year anniversary From little acorns, mighty oaks grow Find out about some of the centenary activities: thenode.biologists.com/celebrating-...
