Preprint📣: Living tissues can exhibit odd mechanics without chirality. Our minimal model shows that orientational order can generate an odd modulus—inferable from experiments—and reproduces flows & stress localization around 1/2 defects. @sreejithsanthosh.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Andersen, B. H., Safara, F. M. R., Grudtsyna, V., Meacock, O. J., Andersen, S. G., Durham, W. M., Araujo, N. A. M., & Doostmohammadi, A. (2025). Evidence of universal conformal invariance in living biological matter. Nature Physics, 21(4), 618–623. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #EpithelialMechanics

Very happy to have this work finally published! How do embryos sculpt their shape? We map the contractile & adhesive forces shaping early C. elegans embryos. With K. Yamamoto @ittoku04.bsky.social G. Charras' lab @gcharras.bsky.social & my team @turlierlab.bsky.social shorturl.at/xv7G5 1/6

Very pleased to finally share the main story from my PhD, now published in @natcomms.nature.com ! 🎉 Using a sea anemone we discovered and characterised epithelial cell extrusion as the mechanism underlying starvation-induced cell loss. 🔗 Open-access article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Epithelial cell extrusion underlies starvation-induced cell loss in a sea anemone - Nature Communications

Epithelial cell extrusion in a sea anemone shares key hallmarks with bilaterians and is dynamically regulated by nutritional status. During starvation-induced body shrinkage, extrusion likely contribu...

nature.com

New preprint alert!!! Super proud to finally share an authentic 'tour-de-force' from the amazing PhD students Shivani Gunnan @shivanigunnan.bsky.social, Max Kotz and Lucas Ribas, in collaboration with @friedrich-group.bsky.social 👇a small thread www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Developmental growth rates adapt to enable self-correction of organ morphology after injury.

Proportional organ growth requires tissue-level control of cell behavior. Yet the cues that adapt growth rates, especially after organ injury, remain unclear. Here, we uncover that developing organs a...

biorxiv.org

Sad to be saying goodbye to Drosophila, but excited to get this work out on bioRxiv! If you are interested in the interplay of tissue flows and cool ways to mess them up, this read is for you :) Thanks to colleagues and co-authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Braat, Q. J. S., Storm, C., & Janssen, L. M. C. (2024). Formation of motile cell clusters in heterogeneous model tumors: The role of cell-cell alignment. Physical Review E, 110(6), 064401. journals.aps.org/pre/abstract... #EpithelialMechanics

This epic paper, which has been a heroic 10 year journey for the lead author, Ricardo Barrientos, is finally out in Cell today! Many thanks to all co-authors, especially Billie Meadowcroft and Andela Saric for their beautiful MD simulations www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Basement membrane turnover controls cell shape

Basement membranes are scaffolds of proteins, like collagen, that give organs shape. During development, basement membranes must adapt to the growing organ. We infer how fast the basement membrane ada...

cell.com

Maroudas-Sacks, Y., Suganthan, S., Garion, L., Ascoli-Abbina, Y., Westfried, A., Dori, N., Pasvinter, I., Popović, M., & Keren, K. (2025). Mechanical strain focusing at topological defect sites in regenerating Hydra. Development, 152(4), DEV204514. doi.org/10.1242/dev.... #EpithelialMechanics

New paper in @natphys.nature.com! We uncovered a stress adapation mechanism where keratin intermediate filaments in stretched epithelia undergo a supracellular bundling transition that uncages the nucleus. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ibecbarcelona.eu, @upc.edu @qmul.bsky.social

How do tissues safely remove cells? Join me, @marija-matejcic.bsky.social in this perspective on the past, present and future of epithelial cell extrusion 🧵 0/16

🎉 Happy International #EpithelialMechanics Day! 🎉

Hon Lin Too, Farisan Dary, Isaac Si Yuan Ling, Dustin Erhard Theofilusa, Duo Zhang, Haiyi Liang, Ee Hou Yong: Emergence of Hexanematic Order in a Growing Confluent Cell Monolayer https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.19963 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.19963 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.19963

Our work on pattern formation in fossil and extant liverworts is out! @dev-journal.bsky.social Check it out if you are interested in fossils, evo-devo, and how mathematical modeling can help us understand the evolution of developmental processes! 🌿🧪 Thread ⬇️

Lateral inhibition governs ancestral cellular patterning in fossil and extant liverworts

Highlighted Article: Comparative and mathematical analyses reveal that oil body cell patterning in fossil and extant liverworts is consistent with a local activation-lateral inhibition mechanism, poin...

journals.biologists.com

Impressive closed loop control of optogenetics from the Toettcher lab. Crazy video on flipping cell migration by changing speed of egfr activation. These automated systems will generate more data driven hypotheses in the future. Congrats! www.cell.com/cell-systems...

An optogenetic smart microscopy platform reveals signaling dynamics-dependent control over collective cell migration

Oatman et al. introduce PyCLM, a Python suite for closed-loop optogenetic experiments combining real-time biosensor measurement and segmentation of thousands of cells. The method is applied to epithel...

cell.com

What determines how epithelial cells divide when shape cues disappear? Our new work shows that division follows the axis of maximal stress anisotropy. This “principal-stress rule” links mechanics, proliferation, and homeostasis. Amazing work from @luanger.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Louise C. Head, Pasquale Digregorio, Davide Marenduzzo, Ignacio Pagonabarraga, Daniel A. Beller, Giuseppe Negro: Topological delocalisation of confined 3D active nematics https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.10234 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.10234 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.10234

Publsihed version www.frontiersin.org/journals/cel...

Frontiers | A predictive model for coupling cell division orientation to tissue mechanics during epithelial morphogenesis

Stratified epithelial tissues such as the skin epidermis maintain barrier integrity during development and homeostasis through the coordinated action of cell...

frontiersin.org

Rajendra Singh Negi@dr-rajendra-s-negi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

(1/n) Does basal stem cell division orientation regulate skin stratification and tissue mechanics? And can tissue mechanics feed back to control division orientation? In our new preprint, we use a 3D vertex model to explore this @manningresearch.bsky.social @somiealo.bsky.social

Thrilled to share our new paper on cell extrusion. A beautiful study with a tremendous amount of data, led by the fantastic @fanny-wodrascka.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🪲🪰 Our preprint is out! This was a team effort with @wolframponisch.bsky.social, @matthewabenton.bsky.social and Ewa Paluch. We asked whether Drosophila and Tribolium use the same cell behaviours to fold their embryos during gastrulation. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Morphospace analysis reveals divergent cellular behaviours driving tissue internalisation during insect gastrulation

During gastrulation, embryonic epithelia undergo large-scale remodelling to internalise the mesoderm. Whether the cellular mechanisms underlying these tissue deformations are conserved across species ...

biorxiv.org

Very cool work from Gürol Süel's lab: Self-generated hydrogel ejects bacterial cells for localized biofilm dispersion www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Self-generated hydrogel ejects bacterial cells for localized biofilm dispersion - Nature Microbiology

Bacillus subtilis biofilms locally disperse by ejecting motile cells through osmotic pressure generated by their poly-γ-glutamic acid hydrogel, a mechanism resembling that through which Cnidaria eject...

nature.com

Definitely check out the Preprint by Lerchbaumer et al. Lerchbaumer, G., Simoes, S., Etemadi, E., Zidan, F., Erdemci-Tandogan, G. and Tepass, U. (2026). E-cadherin clustering as a regulator of morphogenesis. bioRxiv. doi.org/10.64898/202...

E-cadherin clustering as a regulator of morphogenesis

Cell adhesion enables animal multicellular development. E-cadherin and the cadherin-catenin adhesion complex at adherens junctions are engaged in dynamic interactions with actomyosin generated contrac...

doi.org

After a quite long process, we are happy to share the last version of our article describing unexpected results regarding the coupling between local cell death and proliferation (heroic revision effort from @ralitzastaneva.bsky.social ) urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

A global response contributes to tissue size robustness upon local induction of apoptosis

Tissue resilience requires tight coupling between cell proliferation, growth, and death.1,2,3,4It is assumed to be based on compensatory proliferation…

urldefense.com

From single-celled organisms to ciliated epithelia in metazoans, precise positioning of basal bodies (BBs), which anchor motile cilia, is essential for generating fluid flows. Here, I, @raghavan-thiaga.bsky.social, will take you on a brief tour of how cells build this spatial organization.

Body-Axis Reorientation in Regenerating Hydra under Geometric Confinement https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.25.734673v1

EMBL scientists and colleagues have shown how the shape of tissues and orientations of cells interact to give rise to complex structures in embryos. The studies shed light on the fundamental principles that govern the emergence of order in biological systems. www.embl.org/news/science...

Very happy to share our paper is now out in Nature Physics! We combine a four-cell assay with vertex-model theory to study T1 transitions in tissues Started during my postdoc at Syracuse with @manningresearch.bsky.social . Learned a lot from this amazing team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Galvanin (TMEM154) is an electric-field sensor for directed cell migration: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Galvanin (TMEM154) is an electric-field sensor for directed cell migration

Galvanin is an electric-field sensor that links electrical cues to directed migration in rapidly moving cells.

cell.com

Xiangyu Dong, Qian Sun, Xiaojing Liu and Baihai Su discover that N-cadherin mediates replicative senescence of mesenchymal stem cells via regulation of intercellular adhesion. Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/... Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...