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notes biology

Bryostatin symbiotic origins

Today, I discovered that bryostatin—a promising bioactive compound extracted from bryozoan colonies with potential medical applications for Alzheimer’s, cancers, and HIV therapy—is actually produced by bacterial symbionts:

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biology imaging notes

The blastopore of bryozoan embryos

This is a bryozoan embryo with its blastopore facing us. The blastopore is the hole in the middle. The “balls” are the nuclei of the cells that make up the embryo. While cells have many other structures, they are not visible in this image. The only thing visible is the DNA because I stained it […]

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biology notes

Understanding the evolution of cleavage patterns in early embryonic development

Video summary about our work on bryozoan development and the evolution of cleavage patterns published in BMC Biology!

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biology notes

Bryozoan cell lineage

What happens when cleavage patterns evolve? Some insights from bryozoan embryonic development: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-017-0371-9

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biology imaging notes

Bryozoan embryos viewed from the animal and vegetal poles

The first 24 hours in 1.5 minutes of bryozoan embryos.

Categories
notes biology imaging

Bryozoan embryos viewed from the animal pole

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biology imaging notes

Bryozoan life cycle

The BEST footage of bryozoan life cycle on the internet. Meet the coronate larva of Bugula neritina. Wow!

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biology imaging notes

Cyphonautes day

The name cyphonautes was created by Ehrenberg (1834), who first saw the tiny creature on Nov. 25, 1832 (Hyman 1959).

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biology notes

Classic drawing of a cyphonautes larva

Elegant schematic drawing of a bryozoan cyphonautes larva from 1907 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/10304879#page/324/mode/1up Thanks to @BioDivLibrary. Made me smile :)

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biology notes

Living cyphonautes larva

After the illustration, this is a living cyphonautes larva collected from the plankton.