Silk glands are epithelial tubes made of giant cells. These cells have giant polyploid nuclei (blue) made of thousands of genome copies, and are wrapped around a lumen (yellow), in which they dump silk proteins

🚨New paper! 🚨
@jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this work on the silk glands of the pantry moth.

These two long tubes inside the caterpillar continuously make a ton of silk
How does this special organ work?

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
@cp-iscience.bsky.social

🧵THREAD🧵

It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by
@donyaniyaz.bsky.social
@lucalivraghi.bsky.social

High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers

peerj.com/articles/202...
@peerj.bsky.social

Transgenic Plodia larvae expressing the very bright mBaoJin (mStayGold variant) in its silk glands.

Also some gorgeous 3xP3:mCherry staining of larval ocelli and glia.

(see revised preprint) by pantry moth wizards
@donyaniyaz.bsky.social & @lucalivraghi.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Preprint alert from the lab
@jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this elegant study of gene expression in the silk glands of our favorite alternative "silk worm", the pantry moth.

Mega-polyploid cells with thousands of genome copies just to express a handful of proteins

doi.org/10.1101/2025...