📢Paper alert📢 Now out in @natcomms.nature.com: malaria parasites in infected red blood cells 🦟🔴 divide asynchronously due to a limiting replication resource🧬. Another great collaboration within #SFB1129 👍 Read our open access paper here: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Competitive resource allocation drives asynchronous and rapid nuclear multiplication in the malaria parasite - Nature Communications

Within red blood cells, Plasmodium falciparum forms cells with multiple nuclei that replicate asynchronously despite residing in a shared cytoplasm. In this study, the authors developed a biophysical ...

doi.org

If you are around Heidelberg today, starting 12 am we have a symposium on "Frontiers in Cellular Biophysics" at the #BioQuant. At 5.15 pm, Margaret Gardel from @squishycell.bsky.social will speak at the physics colloquium on "Mechanical Information Processing in Adherent Cells". Everyone is welcome!

Feel the heat? This question could not be more fitting than in the current heat wave 🤒🌡️. If interested in the role of temperature for biological organisms, apply for our International Marsilius Academy Sept 20-25 at Heidelberg. We still have open slots 😀. New deadline July 1st. lnkd.in/ez2SMg7J

How can one dynamically change the stiffness of a material? Nature knows how to do this, but would be a synthetic solution? Read our answer published in J Mech Phys Solids doi.org/10.1016/j.jm...

Today the special issue has appeared in @biophysj.bsky.social in honor of the late Erich Sackmann, who has been an inspiration to many of the contributing authors. The wide range of subjects reflects his comprehensive interest in the physics of biological cells: www.cell.com/biophysj/iss...

Exciting end of an amazing conference that covered so much cool physics across the tree of life: closing talk by @prakashlab.bsky.social at #EESMechanobiology.

Very excited that #EESMechanobiology is about to start at EMBL Heidelberg. Check out the details on the website: s.embl.org/ees26-06-bl

An inspiring morning on the mathematics of Turing-like patterns in biological systems at the conference on „Patterning principles in biophysics“ at beautiful Beg Rohu. Great talks by Robert Endres and @physicsoflifelmu.bsky.social biopatterning.sciencesconf.org

Fever - friend or foe? Happy to announce our International Marsilius Academy Feel the Heat – Science and Histories of Fever 📅 20–25 September 2026 | Marsilius Kolleg, Heidelberg ⏰ Application deadline: 14 June 2026 👉 More information and application: lnkd.in/eEmXDYgZ

Now out in Physical Review X: Cell Bulging and Extrusion in a Three-Dimensional Bubbly Vertex Model for Curved Epithelial Sheets Full article: doi.org/10.1103/x82g... With @omdrozdowski.bsky.social, Büşra Kocameşe-Tamgacı, @kimboonekamp.bsky.social and @michaelboutros.bsky.social. Here a 🧶 1/n

Our publication on 3D models for drug discovery is out! In the primer, we discuss the role of organoid models in drug discovery and development. Full article: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @dkfz.bsky.social @uniheidelberg.bsky.social @hlsalliance.bsky.social @sfb1324.bsky.social

How can #diatoms move and turn so fast in their glass-like shells? A team at B CUBE led by Dr. Poulsen @nic-poulsen.bsky.social and Prof. Diez @stefandiezlab.bsky.social has cracked the code: they steer by shifting the contact point with the surface ⚙️ Read our news ➡️ tud.link/zc6u4q #CMCBnews

It was a real pleasure to write this review with the group of ‪@lendertgelens.bsky.social‬ on the temperature response of biological systems👍. There is so much to tell that it did not fit into one manuscript😉Read the thread below to learn more about the two parts of this review👇

Lendert Gelens@lendertgelens.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Temperature affects all biological rates, but how do we model its effects? Our 2-part review brings together modeling approaches from empirical curve fits to microscopic kinetics to network-level dynamics 🧵 Part I: doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2026.100577 Part II: doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2026.100578

The new "auditorium maximum" of @uniheidelberg.bsky.social was inaugurated today, donated by @klaus-tschira-stiftung.de. We are so lucky to now have this beautiful building right in the middle of the science campus Im Neuenheimer Feld😀

Researchers tracked individual diatoms—unicellular photosynthetic microalgae with rigid silica cell walls—as they glided along a surface using mobile adhesive strands that protrude through slits in their cell walls, known as raphes. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/3GnU50YFJwL

Diatom gliding motility is so amazing 🚀 Happy to be together with @lettermann.bsky.social part of this great collaboration 😀 Check out the website of this open access publication to learn how their movement can be fast and flexible at the same time. And to watch many more beautiful movies 😉

Diez Lab @ TU Dresden@stefandiezlab.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🥳 Excited to share our #diatom work out in @pnas.org. In a great collaboration with @nic-poulsen.bsky.social and @ulrichschwarz.bsky.social we show that diatoms modulate the curvature of their paths by dynamic switching of their cell–substrate contact sites. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506122123

Friday afternoon and #DPG2026 is over. Like always, a great meeting, well-organized and highly interesting👍This time with France as a guest country and many high-profile speakers from Dresden. Looking forward to #DPG2027 at Regensburg😀

The annual spring meeting of the German Physical Society #DPG2026 took place this year at beautiful Dresden and we organized a biological physics focus session on ultrasound and #sonogenetics. Peter Yingxiao Wang and Raphael Wittkowski gave impressive overview talks on what this field can do 👍🙏

Just back from the annual meeting of the @dfg.de priority program #SPP2332 on "Physics of Parasitism", this time at the Robert Koch Institute at Berlin. So many great talks and discussions! Already looking forward to next year's meeting at Hamburg👍

📢Paper alert📢 Now out in @bmc.springernature.com with open access: our very cool collaboration with @chlandalab.bsky.social on FIB-milling designs for cryoET rdcu.be/e2nXE Here you can see different designs for the stress relief cuts for dual-axis tomography. Read the paper for more details😀

📢Job alert📢 @uniheidelberg.bsky.social has an opening for a full W3-position on “Modeling of Biological Processes” 😀👍 Here is the call tinyurl.com/3w9e9dtf and application deadline is March 15. The group would be located at the beautiful #BioQuant center right in the middle of Neuenheimer Feld.

(1/2) Our work with @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social on the chirality of malaria parasites has found its home in the January issue of @natphys.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Moreover, we are very happy that it comes with a news and views article 👍❤️😀

Chirality of malaria parasites determines their motion patterns - Nature Physics

Malaria parasites move on helical trajectories when infecting their hosts. Now it is shown that they use right-handed chirality to control their motion patterns, and that this chirality is linked to t...

nature.com

Very sad news…

Jan Lohmann@meristemania.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Shocking news: Peer Bork passed away today. We lost a giant of computational biology! We will miss you Peer. www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

Now out in @biophysj.bsky.social: our work on the rosettes that sometimes are formed by red blood cells infected by malaria parasites (iRBCs). Surprisingly, they do not marginate, as do white blood cells or "normal" iRBCs, and we explain why (because they are dynamic and effectively soft).

Wow, researchers from our #SFB1129 are implicated in the Science 2024 Breakthrough of the Year, because they showed that HIV-capsids are flexible and go through nuclear pores. The latest paper on Lenacapavir-induced capsid damage just came out in @embojournal.org link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Lenacapavir-induced capsid damage uncovers HIV-1 genomes emanating from nuclear speckles - The EMBO Journal

Following cell entry, HIV-1 capsids enter the nucleus by passage through nuclear pores and reach nuclear speckles with subsequent uncoating of the reverse-transcribed genome and its integration into s...

link.springer.com

Science Magazine@science.org · 8mo ago

Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year was lenacapavir, an injectable drug that demonstrated remarkable success at preventing HIV infection with one shot every 6 months. Learn more about last year's #BOTY on #WorldAIDSDay: https://scim.ag/48pk7zZ

Great news also for the Heidelberg life science community 👍

EMBL@embl.org · 8mo ago

Anthony A. Hyman will become EMBL’s next Director General. He joins EMBL from @mpi-cbg.de in Dresden. He is also Professor of Molecular Biology @tudresden.bsky.social, and was a group leader at EMBL Heidelberg from 1993 to 1999. www.embl.org/news/people-...

📢 Paper alert 📢 Chirality is known to be important for the movement of microorganisms and active matter. In our new paper out today in @natphys.nature.com, we show that chirality is used by malaria parasites to control their motion patterns: doi.org/10.1038/s415... Here comes a 🧵 ... (1/9)

I am happy to announce that my group has an opening for a funded PhD position to explore the intersection between mechanobiology and inflammation in the intestine. Please see the attached advertisement below. Thanks for circulating and forwarding! www.srcsb.uni-stuttgart.de/news/New-ope...

Finally out in #PRXLife: our theory on the effect of temperature on the completion time of large networks. Using graph theory, one can show that the Arrhenius plot is quadratic, in excellent agreement with experimental data from fly development. Read the open access paper here: go.aps.org/48brig2

Beautiful work, congrats to Moritz, Petr and team🙌

Chlanda lab@chlandalab.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Mysteries of trafficking of the vRNP segmented genome and assembly of influenza A virus revealed by in situ cryo-ET! 🔗 rdcu.be/eMmct We are very excited that our paper is finally out! 🎉 Big congratulations to Moritz Wachsmuth-Melm and to everyone involved.