December 2019

Tanya's review on cilia in the developing zebrafish ear is now published in Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B, part of a special issue on all things ciliary.  You can read the review here.

Ana presented a poster at the White Rose DTP symposium at the University of York, and arranged an end-of-year lab trip to the panto!

November 2019

We enjoyed a visit from Steven Farber (Carnegie Institute, Baltimore) who gave a fascinating seminar on his work on lipid metabolism in the zebrafish.

Sarah and Tanya visited Sosei Heptares, Cambridge, where Anzar has been working on placement for the past few months.  Both Sarah and Anzar gave excellent talks on their work:

Anzar also gave a talk at the Biochemical Society Meeting on Drug Repurposing in Birmingham.

October 2019

Many congratulations to Mar on the birth of Marta!

A warm welcome to:

• Emily Glendenning, who joins the lab as a Research Technician.  Emily was a former undergraduate student in the Animal and Plant Sciences Department, and has recently been working in the Psychology Department.
• King Yee Cheung, who has started in the lab as a PhD student, working on sensory cells in the zebrafish olfactory epithelium.  King Yee joins us after completing the MBiomedSci course in BMS and research projects in the Roehl lab.
• Lia Wilkinson and Holly Tinsley, who are undertaking their BMS Level 3 research projects in the lab.

It was also a busy month for meetings:

• Sarah presented a poster at the European Developmental Biology Congress in Alicante, Spain.
• Nick presented a poster at the EMBO/EMBL symposium 'Seeing is believing: imaging the molecular processes of life' at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany.
• Ana attended the Royal Society Discussion Meeting 'Contemporary Morphogenesis', held at the Royal Society in London, organised by four of our research 'rising stars' in Sheffield: Emily Noël, Natalia Bulgakova, Kyra Campbell and Alex Fletcher.
• Tanya gave a short talk at the launch of the Neuroscience Institute here in Sheffield.

September 2019

Tanya visited Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi's lab at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, and heard about the lab's work on motile cilia in the zebrafish olfactory system.

August 2019

Sarah gave an excellent talk on her drug screening work at the EdinFishTech 2019 meeting held at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh.  Tanya also gave a talk on imaging work from the lab, and both presented posters.

We had fun imaging various transgenic lines in a demo session with a Nikon super-resolution spinning disk confocal.  Thanks to Darren Robinson and the staff at Nikon for arranging the visit.

Anzar started his 3-month research placement at the Cambridge R&D facility at Sosei Heptares, where he will be continuing work on compounds identified through our zebrafish drug screening work.

July 2019

Congratulations again to Elvira, who was awarded her PhD and has just started a new job as a Senior Scientist with Excellerate Bioscience in Nottingham.

We enjoyed a visit from Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.  Nathalie gave a fascinating seminar on her work on motile cilia in the zebrafish olfactory system and brain.

Tanya gave a seminar to the Neuroscience group in the School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, and had an enjoyable day of discussions with colleagues there.

June 2019

Tanya attended the Genetics Society Centenary celebrations in Norwich.  Happy 100th Birthday to the Society!

We enjoyed a visit and excellent seminar from our collaborator Giselle Wiggin from Sosei Heptares, Cambridge.

Happy to report that the paper describing our drug screening project to identify compounds that can rescue defects in the zebrafish adgrg6 (gpr126) mutant is now out in eLife!  Congratulations to the whole team.  You can read the full paper here.

May 2019

Ana has started her 3-month PIPS (Professional Internships for PhD Students) placement at The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.  She has joined the Trust's Monitoring and Research team, and is posting updates of her work here.  A nice change from the lab, out of doors and enjoying the sunshine!

The final version of our otic axial patterning paper has now appeared in PLoS Genetics.  Congratulations to all the team, including our collaborators Nick Monk (SoMaS, Sheffield), and Sam England and Kate Lewis (Syracuse University, New York, USA).

April 2019

Tanya presented a poster of the lab's work at the BSDB/BSCB Joint Annual Spring Meeting in Warwick.

Tanya also took the poster to a Gordon Research Conference on Neural Crest and Cranial Placodes in Barga, Italy, where it was great to catch up with two other former members of the Wylie/Heasman lab - Clare Baker and Martín García-Castro!

Back in Sheffield, Anzar and Ana both gave excellent talks on their PhD projects in the Bateson Centre and Departmental Internal seminar series, respectively.

March 2019

A month for cilia meetings:

Tanya gave a talk on cilia in the zebrafish ear at a Theo Murphy international scientific meeting:
Unity and diversity of ciliary systems in locomotion and transport, organised by Professor Gáspár Jékely, Professor Raymond Goldstein FRS and Dr Kirsty Wan, held at the Royal Society's Chicheley Hall.

Sarah and Tanya also attended a meeting of the UK Cilia Network in Sheffield, held in remembrance of Jarema Malicki.

February 2019

Davide passed his viva subject to corrections - Many congratulations!

We say goodbye to both Davide and Elvira - we will miss your good company and discussions in the lab and wish you all the best for your future careers!

January 2019

We enjoyed an excellent day of talks at the North of England Developmental Biology Symposium at the University of Manchester.

Tanya presented work from the lab's adgrg6 mutant rescue screen at the 8th Strategic Conference for Zebrafish Investigators at Asilomar, CA, USA.  We have also posted a preprint of this work on bioRxiv:

December 2018

Anzar presented a poster, and Tanya gave a talk, at Zeebrain: Imaging structure and function in the zebrafish brain, held in Brighton, UK.

Ana presented a poster at Actin 2018, held in Bristol, UK.

Anzar and Tanya attended the BBSRC RTP White Rose Research Symposium at The Edge, Sheffield, and enjoyed an excellent day of talks and posters.

Congratulations to Davide, who has submitted his PhD thesis!

We ended the year with a Christmas meal, together with the Noël lab:

November 2018

We say goodbye to Tania, who leaves us for a postdoctoral post at the University of Nottingham.  Pie, peas and Hendo's to mark the occasion!


Tanya attended a meeting of the VERTIGO network of vestibular researchers in Barcelona to discuss a European PhD training network application, which will be submitted in January.

October 2018

A busy teaching month.  Tanya welcomed a new tutorial group, and, together with Freek van Eeden, delivered a new MSc practical course on the use of CRISPR in zebrafish, which was a great success.

Our manuscript on double-anterior ears, hmx3a mutants, mathematical modelling and more is now posted on bioRxiv.  Congratulations to Ryan, Sam, Nick and all the team!

Ana and Anzar gave excellent talks on their projects in the departmental first year PhD symposium.

September 2018

I (Tanya) went travelling in September.  The first stop was to present the lab's work as a poster at the wonderful EMBO 'Size and Shape' meeting in Bangalore, India.  I stayed on for a very enjoyable visit to Raj Ladher's lab and gave a seminar on the lab's morphogenesis work. 

I then went on to give two seminars in Singapore, at the Department of Biological Sciences and Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, hosted by Tim Saunders.  It was also good to see friends and colleagues at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.

I then flew down to Melbourne to visit Pete Currie at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University, where I gave another talk on our drug screening project, and admired the epaulette sharks and other beautiful creatures in the aquarium there.

The trip was rounded off with a committee meeting for the International Society of Differentiation and the excellent ComBio2018 Conference in Sydney, where I gave a short talk on our morphogenesis work.

Meanwhile, the lab continued to do well back in Sheffield.  Most importantly, Elvira passed her PhD viva with minor corrections - many congratulations!