Arata Wakimoto

William H. Foege, Key Figure in the Eradication of Smallpox, Dies at 89

William Foege has died. He was a central architect of smallpox eradication, pioneering surveillance-driven ring vaccination when vaccine supply was limited. That strategy helped eliminate the deadliest human pathogen we’ve ever known.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Please 🔁

My group at UBC received an allocation from the school to apply for the Canada Impact+ Training Awards (postdoc). Everything is moving fast but please email me in 48 hours with a CV if you are outside Canada and interested😎
Yachie lab: yachie-lab.org
sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...

I am grateful to all initiatives, my mentors, and fellow researchers for this incredible opportunity!

It's my honor to be selected as one of the inaugural SeaBridge Fellows!👏
seabridge.uw.edu/2026/01/22/s...

maybe its just mathematician's style. I would start with like, it is important to precisely compare DNA sequences, or whatever to set the stage

also I love how the intro just starts with math

I never knew the title of the original BLAST paper was 'A Greedy Algorithm for Aligning DNA Sequences'. I just came across it and it's too cool!🤯
www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/...

The WRF has awarded three-year postdoctoral fellowships to a new cohort of 12 early-career researchers who will pursue innovative, high-impact projects.

📝 See the full list including Drs. Winston Dredge, Nastacia Goodwin, Stefany Cruz, and Nathaniel Ritz: https://bit.ly/3L0DhEM

Congratulations on this outstanding work and best wishes for the rest of publication processes!

Also, interesting to see how those specific FGFs/BMPs affect specific lineages.

Human trunk embryoids with patterned anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral body axes: utility for understanding human development and disease Human embryoid models enable mechanistic studies of development and disease. We generated trunk embryoids from human pluripotent stem cells that recapitulate posterior trunk formation at Carnegie stag...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Extremely fine tuned. genuinely admiring!

Favorite fidget toy

Modelling co-development between the somites and neural tube in human trunk-like structures - Nature Cell Biology Makwana, Tilley et al. generate human stem cell-based trunk-like structures approximating Carnegie stage 13–14 of development. They use them to model and study the development of the thoracic and lumbar trunk.

Lovely little pre-Christmas present to see this out @natcellbio.nature.com! Some 🔥 new results in here since the biorvix incl (1) a new RARE-GFP reporter ✳️🙌, (2) additional NMP quantification 🔢, (3) no neural tube patterning on RA inhibition 🙅 etc. Enjoy! 😍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

when we say we want more streets to be pedestrianized, this is what we mean

Karel Svoboda and Jay Shendure elected to National Academy of Medicine The honor recognizes leaders who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and made lasting contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health

Congratulations to Karel Svoboda and @jshendure.bsky.social on their election to the National Academy of Medicine (@nam.edu)! Election to the Academy is one of the highest honors in health and medicine. #NAMmtg

More on their journeys to this achievement: alleninstitute.org/news/karel-s...

Simplified In Vitro Generation of Human Gastruloids for Modelling Early Development The purpose of this study was to optimize the efficiency and cost of human gastruloid formation by testing and adjusting individual parameters using as examples two distinct human pluripotent stem cel...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Simplified In Vitro Generation of Human Gastruloids for Modelling Early Development

Plasmidsaurus's 50$ RNA-seq is just amazing. I won't do qPCRs anymore

🦖 Something HUGE just hatched.

Plasmidsaurus now offers RNA sequencing for gene expression analysis:
• As fast as 3 day turnaround
• $50/sample for academia, $80 for industry
• Up to ~10M unique transcript 3’ end reads per sample
• Interactive results

Explore Plasmidsaurus RNA-Seq today.

Beautiful full moon last night

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!!🥮🎑🌕
I love mooncakes so much

Image shows the first two printed pages of the paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” by Cecilia Lai and colleagues, published in Nature in 2001 (volume 413, pages 519-523). The abstract reads as follows: Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7. We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350....
A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n
🗣️🧬🧪

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model Nature - Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK.
Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model - Nature Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cool paper! Very happy to see my friend's name on it

📢📢An amazing work from my lab mates!🙌

New paper from my lab and @jshendure.bsky.social lab! Led by the brilliant @zukailiu.bsky.social and @cxqiu.bsky.social. We tackled how anterior and posterior progenitor cells cooperate to self-organize into an embryonic structure (termed AP-gastruloid). (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thinking about interspecies differences is always fun. Glad to see this story from my previous lab is out!

Large MAF transcription factors reawaken evolutionarily dormant fast-glycolytic type IIb myofibers in human skeletal muscle - Skeletal Muscle Background Small mammals such as mice rely on type IIb myofibers, which express the fast-contracting myosin heavy chain isoform Myh4, to achieve rapid movements. In contrast, larger mammals, including...

Sadaki, S., Tsuji, R., Hayashi, T. et al. Large MAF transcription factors reawaken evolutionarily dormant fast-glycolytic type IIb myofibers in human skeletal muscle. Skeletal Muscle 15, 19 (2025). doi.org/10.1186/s133...

Are there any reagents/technique available to quench fluorescent proteins (like mCitrin)?

My cell line has a few fluorescent reporters so that they use up channels and I cant stain multiple targets.
Appearently they are still very bright after 4% PFA fixation.

This is cool. BCL2+MYCL overexpression seemed to support human cells' survival during E9.5-E12.5 and enhanced human-mouse chimerism. Still low chimerism, but I believe its an important milestone.

Also these human cells showed interesting tropism towards heart and vein?

The generation of viable, structurally integrated human-mouse chimaeras through enhanced hPSCs proliferation

bioRxiv 2025.06.24.661270; doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025...