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Dr. Bruno Vellutini
Dr. Bruno Vellutini
Federal University of Minas Gerais
Federal University of Minas Gerais
Meet Bruno Vellutini.
His lab uses a comparative approach to investigate the evolution of morphogenetic processes in the early embryonic development of animals.
Where It All Began
Where It All Began
Growing up in a family of physicians, with a researcher mother, shaped Bruno Vellutini in ways he only came to recognize later. As a child, he helped her glue images into her PhD thesis, without fully understanding what it was, but that academic environment quietly guided his path. Visits to CEBIMar, the Center for Marine Biology at USP (University of São Paulo), filled in the rest: dives at the beach, animals he couldn't name, a curiosity that had no obvious explanation at the time.
"I remember helping my mom glue the images into her dissertation."
From the Beach to the Lab
From the Beach to the Lab
During his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at USP, that curiosity found direction. Bruno ended up at the Laboratory of Evolutionary Histophysiology, and only later discovered it was the same department where his mother had worked years before. There, his final project focused on comparing the immune response of sea urchins. To understand these animals, he had to dive deep into developmental biology, and it was love at first sight.
That passion led him to a master's degree at CEBIMar, under the supervision of Professor Álvaro Migotto, where he continued working with echinoderms. The work produced a fundamental description of the life cycle of a sand dollar species and gave rise to the video "Vida de Bolacha", a production that already said something about Bruno: he always wanted his research to reach beyond the lab.
By the end of his master's, Bruno felt the need to explore the molecular side of developmental biology. That's when he heard about an opportunity in Norway: a PhD in comparative developmental biology of marine invertebrates, exactly what he wanted to do. Without hesitation, he left Brazil and went to explore spiralians in the Norwegian fjords at the Department of Molecular Biology and Computational Biology at the Sars Centre, University of Bergen.
His PhD focused on comparing the larval development of different Spiralia species, seeking to understand how different cleavage patterns emerged throughout the evolution of the group. Bruno learned gene expression techniques and fell in love with live imaging of embryos. At his defense, one examiner pointed out that a central question of the thesis, how animals define the boundary between their anterior and posterior ends during development, was not fully comprehended even in Drosophila. For Bruno, that was all the fuel he needed. He went on to pursue a postdoc at the Tomancak Lab at MPI-CBG in Dresden, Germany, dedicated to exploring exactly that question. The institute's interdisciplinary environment, where talks in physics and biology shared the same space, opened up perspectives that a more conventional lab could rarely offer and ultimately inspired him to open his own.
Gene expression during the early development of Drosophila melanogaster. The images show maximum intensity projections of confocal stacks for fluorescent in situ hybridization experiments of three genes: slp1 (cyan), eve (orange), and btd (magenta). Embryonic stages progress from top to bottom, covering the last cycles of syncytial nuclear divisions until gastrulation. The embryo's surface is delimited by a white outline. The left column shows the channels merged in color, and the other columns show the signal of a single channel in grayscale. The expression domains of these genes progress from broad and diffuse to narrow and sharp at the moment of gastrulation.
Back to Brazil
From early in his career, Bruno planned to return to Brazil. His goal was always to bring back what he had learned abroad and put it to work for Brazilian science. In 2026, after passing the public selection process, he opened his lab at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais). The lab's main focus is understanding how evolutionary novelties arise in the earliest stages of development, from cleavage to gastrulation, and how the physical forces of tissues shape that process across different species. The lab works primarily with dipterans but is open to other invertebrates.
The choice is no coincidence. Bruno believes that the biggest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology come from comparing closely related species, and Brazil, with its extraordinary animal diversity, is a privileged place for that. There are many species of dipterans with medical and economic relevance about which very little is known in terms of development. That's exactly the gap he wants to fill. "Basic science is always one step away from a medically relevant discovery. That's why it matters so much."
The environment he wants to build also reflects his own journey: a diverse space where people feel comfortable discussing science openly. His mentorship philosophy is clear, each project should come from the student. He guides, but the students' ideas take center stage, because that's what drives initiative, ownership, and, in the end, new discoveries.
The musculature of a cyphonautes larva. Image depicts an embryo of the bryozoan Membranipora membranacea at late stages of development when the musculature of the larval stage is already formed. Sample was stained with Phalloidin which selectively stains actin microfilaments (F-actin). Signal in the image represents muscles (thicker, mostly striated, stripes) and cellular boundaries (faint and thinner lines). Rings in the central region are the muscles of the esophagus of the larva being formed. A hundred planes were captured in the confocal and projected used a maximum intensity algorithm. Depth of focus was color coded in a spectrum from red (upper most) to purple (lower most).
Science Beyond the Lab
Bruno's commitment to science communication has been there from the start. It began with blogs and Wikipedia edits, ran through "Vida de Bolacha" and Cifonauta, a marine invertebrate image database he helped build, and continues today with a website where he shares information, resources, and images freely available to anyone. The goal has always been the same: bringing science closer to people outside the lab.
Advice From Someone Who's Been There
When the conversation turns to mental health and academic life, Bruno is straightforward: sports help, but the most important thing is knowing yourself. Long fieldwork trips, moving countries, culture shock, and lab transitions, all of it demands internal adjustment. "It's important to understand what works for you, to know when to stop and when to keep going." One of the hardest parts of his journey was being far from his family, especially during moments of transition.
For those considering a postdoc, he offers a practical heads-up that many people overlook: some fellowships have time restrictions that start counting from the moment you defend your PhD. Planning ahead, with those bureaucratic factors in mind, can make all the difference.
Cell nuclei around the embryonic mouth of the bryozoan (=moss animals) Membranipora membranacea. The embryo was fixed during gastrulation and stained with DAPI to reveal its DNA content, and later imaged under a confocal microscope. Several slices were acquired along the body axis of the embryo and projected into a single image. The color code from yellow to purple represents the depth of the structures in the original sample. The vegetal side of the embryo is visible and at its center a circle of nuclei delimits the blastopore of the embryo - an opening that will later become the larval mouth.
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