The peer-reviewed version of our cephalic furrow paper is out đ
It was published back-to-back with another cephalic furrow study:
Research mutualism
This was a wonderful collaborative effort to understand the developmental role and evolutionary origins of this prominent but overlooked tissue fold of fly embryos.
We were two teams working on a similar question, doing similar experiments, and observing similar results. But instead of competing and eventually scooping each other, we decided to join forces. The overlapping experiments became an asset as they were performed independently by different people in different labs. And since we were tackling the problem from different angles and using different approaches, the two studies neatly complemented each other and strengthened the main conclusions.
From the start, we posted the preprints and submitted the manuscripts together, and I’m delighted that the papers got to be published together back-to-back, as we had originally envisioned it.
To top this emotion, our findings and overarching story were carefully summarized in a great overview piece written by Thibaut Brunet:
Some thank yous
I have more to say about this cephalic furrow endeavor, but for now I’d like to highlight the immediate people who made it possible.
Marina Cuenca who performed crucial experiments and analyses that were a turning point for the project into tissue mechanics; Abhijeet Krishna, who did an outstanding job coding the model and running the simulations; and Alicja SzaĆapak who greatly contributed to the model and visualizations early in the project. Carl Modes, who supervised the theory part and could always explain so clearly the math and modeling intricacies to this biologist here. And, finally, Pavel Tomancak who provided all the support and input along the course of this project and was a guiding light for the entire endeavor. It was a pleasure to work with such talented scientists and wonderful people.
Additionally, I’d like to thank Steffen Lemke and Yu-Chiun Wang and their teams, who agreed to embark with us on this mutualistic scientific collaboration; our reviewers Thibaut Brunet, Alfonso Martinez-Arias, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive feedback that helped shape and consolidate our work; the editor Henry Gee for handling our manuscripts during the revision process; and the Max Planck Society for paying the article processing charges to make the article open access.
There are many more people to thank. I’m writing it up on a new post, which I’ll link below when ready.
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