Thought it would be fitting for my first post to be this little fly illustration I made. Because once a Drosophilist, always a Drosophilist 🪰

How do cells navigate up gradients of adhesive proteins? 🤔 Termed "Haptotaxis", this effect is ubiquitous in cell migration, but it's mechanism was poorly understood We show that passive friction directs cells & explains complex trajectories on gradients 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm a bit late to the party over here. I'll be advertising a BBSRC-funded postdoc position soon. So if anyone wants to solve some outstanding questions in limb development - please get in touch. We have a variety of models and approaches (everything from stem cells to sharks). towerslab.weebly.com

🤔 Can migrating cells 'remember' their past trajectories? In collab w/ @sgabriele.bsky.social & @kyohalie.bsky.social, we address this question: Confined cells undergo geometry-sensitive morphology switches, and these switches depend on the past migration history! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 New paper out in @pnas.org! 🚨 We show that self-generated gradients allow heterogeneous cell mixtures to co-migrate efficiently over long distances —while optimizing their physical interactions! (See below for 🧵) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪

This is insane. Labour is making the very same mistake the Tories made but in a more catastrophic way. A left-leaning party adopting an ultra-right fascist agenda: what could go wrong?

Sheffield continues to surprise -I was expecting rain and steel 🥲

..and the same day we get a definition of what a *good* theory is by @robinsall.bsky.social back here on the island 😅 @sheffielduni.bsky.social

here's a plot showing the increase in the number of persons disappeared by ICE (data as posted by @msbr89.bsky.social):

Without clear protocols to catch errors, artificial intelligence’s growing role in science could do more harm than good https://go.nature.com/42nGQt6

University of Derby faces mass job cuts as management plans to make half of senior academics redundant. Please spread the word. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1398...

🥳 Thrilled to share our lab's first preprint, led by our talented postdoc Justine Creff! 👩🏻‍🔬 We tackled a fundamental question: how the epithelium withstands mechanical stress at the interface of cells with distinct geometries and mechanics, such as enterocytes (E) and goblet cells (G) (1/9)

The AHA has released a statement condemning "the dismantling of federal departments and agencies through the indiscriminate termination of federal employees and elimination of programs, including historical offices.” 🗃️

NYU canceled a planned speech by the former president of Doctors Without Borders because she planned to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and cuts to US AID. This is what actual campus censorship looks like.

another student was disappeared at the University of Minnesota

How do I even put "my doctoral students could not achieve their full scientific potential because they had to worry ICE would abduct them off the street while getting to lab" into a tenure impact statement?

We are excited to be launching the next phase of our Fast & Fair peer review initiative: offering high-quality peer review within 7 working days. #fastandfairpeerreview Read the Editorial by EiC Daniel Gorelick @danielgorelick.bsky.social at: bit.ly/4kYD1mL

Very happy to share our new preprint "MODIS: Multi-Omics Data Integration for Small and Unpaired Datasets"! We proposed a new coupled variational auto-encoder architecture to solve the problem of data integration for small and unpaired datasets (diagonal integration) arxiv.org/abs/2503.18856

It is inherently dangerous to democracy for one man to hold as much wealth and power as Elon Musk. It should be a primary goal of democratic states to prevent such concentrations of power, & to ensure that global plutocrats cannot shut off the arteries of democracy. www.politico.eu/article/musk...

This should be the last straw for the Turkish opposition. Unless there are mass protests, which the government is trying to prevent at all costs, Turkey is now very much a closed autocracy. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/w...

🚨 Paper Alert 🚨 Absolutely delighted to share our last paper on "spatial mechano-transcriptomics" @naturemethods👇!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do cells migrate without substrate, e.g. in embryogenesis, when extra-cellular matrix has not yet formed? Check out our paper in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social on zebrafish lateral mesendoderm migration, led by @stetavano.bsky.social @heisenbergcplab.bsky.social! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Our work about a dynamic tissue mimetic is finally out: Remodeling of lipid-foam prototissues by network-wide tension fluctuations induced by active particles @mehmetcanucar.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to see this out! 😍 Tissue-like lipid networks with motile bacteria undergo large remodeling events, leading to active “hubs” & tissue fluidization! This was a super fun collab w Jan Steinkuhler lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 PhD position available for Oct 25 🔬Using advanced microscopy to understand how keratin networks control tissue mechanics An interdisciplinary #cellbiology #biophysics collaboration with Ruby Peters & @alicepyne.bsky.social 👇 Apply by March 14 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

AUSTRIAN SCIENTISTS! 🇦🇹☀️ Stand Up for Science on March 7th in Vienna! at.scientists4future.org/mc-events/ma...

Please share: On March 7, scientists and citizens across the US will #standup4freescience . https://standupforscience2025.org/ 👉 Does anyone know whether any events are planned in Europe / Germany ? #defendresearch #standupforscience #standupforscience2025

NEW — OMB temporarily pauses all agency grants and loans programs. Per copy of memo: "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

"eight italian physicists optimize cacio e pepe" [click] 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/s...

The French Human Rights League is asking the public to join them in a mass exodus of X on January 20 www.euronews.com/next/2025/01...

Self-generated gradients guide collective cell movement -but often different cell types must move together, e.g. in immune response. We develop a theory of self-generated chemotaxis in mixed populations -are there optimal principles for this cooperation?🤔 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share the latest work from Preeti Sahu, with Adriana Sanchez-Danes on the biomechanics of cell fate choices during tumor initiation! We implement/test a 3D vertex model with proliferation and fate choices for multilayered tissues! See 🧵 below (1/n) bit.ly/3ZXxJzk

📣 I’m looking for PhD students to work at the intersection of theoretical physics & biology -topics range from active cell mechanics to collective cell migration & tissue patterning! Feel free to reach out for more info (DM/email)! Please repost / share 🙂

🐦➡️🦋 Looking to rebuild your network on Bluesky by reconnecting with your existing X/Twitter contacts? The Skylink browser extension makes it easy! chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-f... Thanks @jmschreiber91.bsky.social! #scicomm #cancer #tumorimmunology

Couldn't find one so made a quick physics of life list, enjoy! go.bsky.app/EA2VsDN