Excited to share our latest! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... This was a highly collaborative endeavor– the best way to do science. We asked how a developing tissue achieves the right shape despite all the variability along the way. Short answer: Hydrostatic pressure. Read on for the long answer!

Our paper on a Hamiltonian description of non-reciprocal interactions is out @natphys.nature.com! With Yubo Shi, Roderich Moessner, and @marinbukov.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social Check it out, and read more in the thread below! 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hamiltonian description of non-reciprocal interactions - Nature Physics

Many active and driven systems exhibit non-reciprocal interactions, making them hard to describe with standard methods. Now a constrained Hamiltonian embedding with auxiliary variables reproduces thes...

nature.com

Ricard Alert Zenón@ricardalert.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint! Non-reciprocal interactions don’t arise from a potential. Yet, we found a way to encode them in a Hamiltonian, which captures the phase transitions of non-reciprocal systems! With Yubo Shi, Roderich Moessner, and @marinbukov.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social. arxiv.org/pdf/2505.05246

How are two embryos alike? As we collect spatio-temporal microscopy data, we want to quantify variability in the timing of key developmental events. Alignment of multiple recordings is a core engineering challenge here and we suggest a solution; read about it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A quantitative coordinate system for developmental dynamics

Quantitative comparison of morphogenesis across individuals remains a fundamental challenge, as developing embryos vary in shape, orientation and developmental tempo. Moreover, real-time three-dimensi...

biorxiv.org

Hosting my PhD mentor, @thomaslecuit.bsky.social was a welcome reminder of how fortunate I am to do what I do. It was a privilege to host him at Duke and reflect on what good mentorship can build. Thank you for coming, sharing your inspiring science, and for your unwavering support.

Thomas Lecuit@thomaslecuit.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Visiting Duke Univ. yesterday. What a treat to be hosted by @akankshi.bsky.social Munjal (former PhD std) 🤩 and spending time with fantastic trainees & wonderful faculty, such as Stefano di Talia @ditalialab.bsky.social. Many thanks for the invitation 🙏🏼. A place full of talent & energy.

Visiting Duke Univ. yesterday. What a treat to be hosted by @akankshi.bsky.social Munjal (former PhD std) 🤩 and spending time with fantastic trainees & wonderful faculty, such as Stefano di Talia @ditalialab.bsky.social. Many thanks for the invitation 🙏🏼. A place full of talent & energy.

Ear Bending: Atlas of genes active in single cells of the developing inner ear 📷 @akankshi.bsky.social & @kkukreja.bsky.social et al @swinburnelab.bsky.social @harvardmed.bsky.social in @elife.bsky.social ➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2026...

New preprint! We show that cell fate can be predicted from a snapshot of combinatorial signaling — and the underlying map is a single angle in signaling space. Work by first authors Bassit Fijabi and Seth Teague and collaboration with @davidbrueckner.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Glad to see this out in its final form! www.nature.com/articles/s41... What changed since the preprint? Wonderful experiments disentangling the effect of receptor binding vs tissue porosity on Nodal diffusion, plus one of the smoothest review experiences! Thanks @natcellbio.nature.com & reviewers 🙏

Tissue rigidity phase transition shapes morphogen gradients - Nature Cell Biology

Autorino et al. report a feedback loop between Nodal signalling and tissue phase transitions in zebrafish embryos. Nodal alters adhesion, triggering tissue rigidification and reduced porosity, which l...

nature.com

Nicoletta Petridou@nicolettapetridou.bsky.social · last yr.

Here our latest work on how morphogens trigger tissue phase transitions to tune their own length-scales and time-scales - An exciting collaboration with @zhvas.bsky.social @dianakhorom.bsky.social Bernat Corominas-Murtra and heroic experiments by the incredible @cami-autorino.bsky.social @embl.org

To my surprise, I recently learned that Hermann von #Helmholtz’s 1842 dissertation was not about #physics, but about the #NervousSystem. It was an anatomical study of invertebrate nervous systems, written at a time when the conceptual distinction between #neurons and #glia did not yet exist. 🧵1/...

High-speed video of a zebrafish larva feeding on a tasty paramecium. Credit to @georgelauder.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Download our updated database of postdoc fellowships from different foundations and agencies. We identified 275 fellowships. For each entry, we provide description of the fellowship, focus, amount, deadline, eligibility, etc. Download this database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

Happy centenary Sir David! Are there one hundred things named after David Attenborough? Surely we should be able to compile a list… I will start: 1. Attenborosaurus a plesiosaur from the Jurassic Coast en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenbo... Let’s see if we can get to 100! /🧵

Attenborosaurus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This exciting paper is now out in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

3D epithelial cell topology tunes signaling range to promote precise patterning | PNAS

Cell behaviors in multicellular organisms are coordinated via both diffusible molecules and by signals based on direct cell–cell contacts. The mode...

pnas.org

Yanlan Mao@yanlanmao.bsky.social · 12mo ago

An exciting new paper from the lab! Check it out:

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The next time you find someone pretending to explain quantum mechanics, quantum computers and quantum artificial intelligence like a guru, keep in mind this short introduction to the field given by Prof. Shankar at Yale University. After it, you can start spreading ignorance too. Simply brilliant.

New work from Prober Lab @caltech.edu 🐟 💤 🔗 to original research: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Melatonin promotes sleep by suppressing responses to visual stimuli via MT1 receptors

Sleep is regulated by a homeostatic process that increases sleep propensity with time spent awake and a circadian process that determines when most sl…

sciencedirect.com

Caltech@caltech.edu · 3mo ago

Melatonin is a naturally produced molecule that has long been suspected to play a role in healthy sleep. Now, Caltech researchers have discovered a mechanism through which melatonin promotes sleep, using zebrafish models in the laboratory. www.caltech.edu/about/news/h...

How does an orbiting spherical tissue suddenly break symmetry and sprout invasive strands? We can predict this behavior from the initial morphology! Hi, I’m @jiwon-kim.bsky.social from @ianywonglab.bsky.social.

Very pleased that after a rigorous (and lengthy) review process, our paper visualizing how myosin generated forces modulate actin filament structure for mechanosensitive recogntion by α-catenin has appeared in @nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📢Preprint: Positional information (PI) and information flows in dynamic tissues. Our mathematical framework quantifies, from data, how the coupled stochastic dynamics of cell positions and properties preserve, degrade and generate PI. @alex-plum.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations to UC Santa Barbara's David Gross, who just won the 2026 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, for a lifetime of groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics—from the strong force to string theory. Full story: https://ow.ly/ZzyO50YMjzv

Our latest work on shape-programmable tissues is out in @science.org. By positioning topological defects in cellular nematics, we encode frustrated 2D force fields that relax into predictable 3D shapes. Collaboration with Marino Arroyo’s lab, led by @pauguillamat.bsky.social at @ibecbarcelona.eu.

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

For scaling-laws aficionados (I am one), here are the graphs showing power-law behavior for vasculature for embryos (macaque, mouse, turtle). This means that the vasculature of developing embryos is scale free fractal. More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations to Vikas Trivedi & collaborators for being awarded the HFSP grant! An international team coordinated by EMBL Barcelona researchers has been awarded $1.5M to study how developing organisms stay on track despite climate-driven temperature instability. www.embl.org/news/awards-...

New funding to explore how embryos survive temperature stress in the era of climate change | EMBL

An international team coordinated by Vikas Trivedi at EMBL Barcelona has been awarded an HFSP grant worth $1.5 million (€1.3 M) to study how developing organisms stay on track despite climate-driven t...

embl.org

An independent arXiv I'm a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an "independent nonprofit organization". It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and…

An independent arXiv

I'm a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an "independent nonprofit organization". It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and how it will work, and there is a lengthier article in…

telescoper.blog

Now #published @physreve.bsky.social: "Elasticity and plasticity of epithelial gap closure" doi.org/10.1103/qtcv-gk3y #PhD work of Maryam Setoudeh, a model of cell intercalations during epiboly as elastoplastic deformations of a surface. @mpipks.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @csbdresden.bsky.social

Pierre Haas@lepuslapis.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Another #preprint: "Elasticity and plasticity of epithelial gap closure", from the #PhD work of Maryam Setoudeh: arxiv.org/abs/2509.05110 This one required a lot of (I think) beautiful #mechanics! @mpipks.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @csbdresden.bsky.social

How do pairs of DNA loci - such as enhancers and promoters - find each other inside the nucleus? 🤔 Most models assume the random forces driving locus motion are independent in space New preprint by @janniharju.bsky.social: this assumption fails in living cells 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Here are some cute little wild zebrafish that we found in Nepal! 🧪🐟

Glob-glob! Absolutely magical sea anemone larva (about 7 mm) from The Lombok Strait, Indonesia 🇮🇩

First 24 hours of embryonic development in 9 different animal species: (From left to right) Zebrafish, Sea urchin, Black widow spider, Tardigrade, Sea squirt, Comb jelly, Parchment tube worm, Roundworm, Slipper snail. Credit to @tessamontague.bsky.social & Zuzka Vavrušová. #ZebrafishZunday #devbio 🧪