Since #durotaxis was described >25 years ago, most studies report cells migrating from soft → stiff New work from my team at @ub.edu (in collaboration with D. Odde's lab) suggests we may have been missing the point all along... 🔥 Check out our new preprint here 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

International Congress in Biological Physics, Genova, Italy, 28 June to 3 July 2026. URGENT: submission deadline 25 March. Session topics, plenary and invited speakers: www.icbp2026.org IUPAP Physics of Life medal awarded at meeting. Spread the word - and act quickly to submit your work.

Less than a week to submit your abstract for #EESMechanobiology. Mechanobiology across the tree of life, from HeLa cells to weird animals and plants. The submission deadline is 3 March: s.embl.org/ees26-06-bl 🗓️ 9 – 12 June 2026

Best possible lab for a PhD / postdoc! Stay tuned for future openings and wonderful science.

🚨Our first talk this new year would be a joint theory/experiment talk by Prof. Marino Arroyo and Prof. Xavier Trepat @xaviertrepat.bsky.social describing some of their recent work together on active morphogenesis🧫. Sign up to our mailing list for a zoom link to this talk and other upcoming talks🚨

📢 New extended abstract submission deadline: 6 January 2026! Outstanding speaker list, plus many slots for short talks by students, postdocs, and junior PIs. Join us in March in Barcelona! events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

📣Announcing the 4th edition of the EMBL‑IBEC Conference on “Engineering Multicellular Systems”, taking place 11–13 March 2026 in Barcelona. Exploring organoids, mechanobiology, embryo models, organ-on-chip systems, multiomics and more. Abstracts open now! events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

New Review! #devbiol #bioelectricity #CellBiology #tissueregeneration In our new @annualreviews.bsky.social piece, we explore how bioelectricity is generated, sensed & translated into responses that sculpt tissues, guide growth & enable tissue regeneration. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

LMB PhD studentship available in the Baum lab to use informatics to infer cell structure from genomic data in collaboration with the brilliant Tom Williams. If you write to me and I don’t reply - try again - the spam filter is hungry…

Active wetting at work 🤩

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...

SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N

Happy to share our new study @ijmonod.bsky.social and @mpi-scienceoflight.bsky.social with C. Duclut and J. Prost. on forces generated by active fluid transport in epithelia and their role in tissue dynamics. Congrats to Huiqiong Wu, G. Arkowitz and R. Chilupuri! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A ring of cells deforms into a triangular keyhole in just 15 minutes. Meet the hindgut, a model for boundary-driven morphogenesis! Out now in @pnas.org at doi.org/10.1073/pnas... with @zhaoshh.bsky.social, Alex Jacinto, Eric Wieschaus, Stas Shvartsman, @lepuslapis.bsky.social (1/8)

new out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New preprint! 🚨 We uncover a slow adaptation to stretch that links star-bundling of keratin filaments with nuclear escape from its keratin cage. Led by @tomgolde.bsky.social‬ 🙌 @IBECBarcelona www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our new publication in Nature Physics about the mechanical memory of morphology in confined migrating cells by @kyohalie.bsky.social 🥳 Super fun collab with @davidbrueckner.bsky.social and @gcharras.bsky.social 👏🏻 Enjoy the reading www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pathologists have used nuclear & tissue shapes to diagnose #cancer for decades, but what is the molecular basis for this? In our latest work, we develop a computational pipeline to figure this out in #colorectalcancer! Check out 🧵& preprint #mechanobiology #stemcells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

(1/10) I am excited to finally share our work on avian left/right symmetry breaking with you. We reveal a tissue-scale active torque dipole generated at the Hensen’s node, thanks to crazy experiments by Julia @juliapfanzelter.bsky.social and some analysis by me. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New paper from the lab led by @marija-matejcic.bsky.social ! Supracellular force patterns driving intestinal cell extrusion. 👇

Have you ever thought about inflating tissues? Or maybe quickly deflating those inflated tissues? New #EpithelialMechanics pre-print: doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧵 with pressure control, multiscale buckling, controlled wrinkling

🚨 Second preprint of the week! We uncover the multiscale dynamics of active viscoelastic buckling in epithelia. We harness these mechanical instabilities for synthetic morphogenesis. Led by @onenimesa.bsky.social 🙌. Theory by Marino Arroyo etal. @ibecbarcelona.eu www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How to turn a layer of fibroblasts into a tulip 🌷? Check out our new pre-print on shape-programmable living surfaces. Led by @pauguillamat.bsky.social‬ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/14 “Epithelial” & “Mesenchymal” aren’t binary categories—they form a spectrum, or better yet, a multidimensional space. This becomes especially clear in collective cell migration, which often depends on a finely tuned degree of “mesenchymal-ness”. #cellbio #devbio #cellmigration

Be on the lookout for a new paper from the lab: "InterpolAI: Deep learning based optical flow interpolation and restoration of biomedical images for improved 3D tissue mapping" InterpolAI interpolates and restores defective images for enhanced 3D imaging (3D histology, MRI, confocal, ssTEM)

Happy to share our new publication in @naturematerials.bsky.social on mechanical cell competition! Great collaboration between our CAM team, Chavrier's and Doostmohammadi's. Special congrats @luanger.bsky.social, @andreasschoenit.bsky.social, Siavash Monfared! 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lab’s latest: (mouse) mums grow their guts during pregnancy and lactation: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I am Absolutely delighted to share the preprint of our last collaborative efforts where we investigated the impact of sonostimulation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Thread -1- www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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

Great one-day meeting on #cancer #mechanobiology in Paris (March 14th).

1/7: New paper alert! Excited to share our co-first author paper on Micro Immune Response On-chip (MIRO) a model that recreates the tumour-stroma interface for immunotherapy testing! @oriolmb.bsky.social and I wrote this thread to break it down for you. 👇🧵 Read more: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper from the lab🎈. Introducing Micro Immune Response On-chip (MIRO), a device that replicates tumors and their microenvironment to better understand responses to immunotherapies (cyan=immune cells, red=cancer, green=CAFs). www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ibecbarcelona.eu

How do epithelial tissues develop their diverse, beautiful shapes? Some researchers have been controlling their forces with light to understand it. I’m Guillermo Martínez Ara and today I’ll tell you about how we can use optogenetics to study morphogenesis!

Can we construct mathematical models for psychology? Can phase transitions help understand critical changes in psycho-social systems? Check this fascinating @sfiscience.bsky.social talk by Han van der Maas, youtube.com/watch?v=eujJ...

Our latest: how to generate the notochord "Timely TGFβ signalling inhibition induces notochord" A thread: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mechanics of cell extrusion unlike anything seen before in epithelia. If you are at ASCB #CellBio2024 don’t miss Marija’s talk on organoid mechanobiology.

After five decades of outstanding science and mentorship, Jeff Fredberg is retiring. Today, we gather in Boston to celebrate his career. A truly special day for all of us who had the privilege of growing under his leadership!

👋Hello #mechanobiology community in 🦋! This is the official account of the 10th Edition of the Cell Mech conference! 🔧We will soon announce the invited speaker list! Visit our website, subscribe to the mailing list, and follow us!: cellmech2025.org 😍Join us in Leuven 2025!

A thread on our recent preprint👇👇👇

The IOP Mechanobiology meeting starts strong with @johannaivaska.bsky.social telling us that cells do not necessarily migrate towards stiff and that nuclear YAP does not necessarily correlate with cell spreading. 💪

🎈New preprint! We study how single cells move up, down and about fibronectin gradients. Experiments by @icfortunato.bsky.social, theory by David Bruckner. Collaboration with @raimonsunyer.bsky.social and @ehannezo.bsky.social 👇https://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2024.12.02.626413v1

Let’s understand collective cell migration by breaking it down to its essential elements! I'm Leone Rossetti, and this is a thread showcasing what we can learn from cells journeying along narrow paths, and from the forces they generate. 1/ #EpithelialMechanics

Mix two motors of opposite polarity with microtubules and they will partition space ! Microtubules will get organized in polar and active barriers, sorting the two motors in separated domains, leading to the emergence of a new type of patterns. #morphogenesis doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (1/n)

Next week in London: Mechanobiology Shaping Life. The deadline for registration is tomorrow, 26/11. iop.eventsair.com/msl2025/

I am delighted to share our new preprint in which we reveal the crucial role for mechanical forces in myoblast fusion. Great work from Yoann, Sushil and Aleksandra and great collaboration with Christophe Marcelle and Amin Doostmohammadi! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

And they should all be equipped with a blackboard like those at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna (couldn’t help taking a picture 😅). #BringYourOwnChalk

Pre-announcing the EMBO/EMBL symposium "Mechanobiology Across the Tree of Life", Heidelberg, 9-12 June 2026. It is still very very far away, but save the date 🗓️. With Alba Diz-Munoz, @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social , Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social, Enrique Rojas. www.embl.org/about/info/c...

Wonderful threat on Traction Force Microscopy by the EMFC! Incidentally, it should be called Traction Microscopy, without ‘Force’, because it measures tractions and not forces. I tried to push for this change for some time, but quickly gave up.

A couple of recent multi-author perspectives on the present and future of physical biology. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... www.cell.com/current-biol...

Introducing "3D Micropatterned Traction Force Microscopy", our new joint work with Pere Roca-Cusach's lab, led by amazing Laura Faure and Manu Gómez. Hope you find it useful!👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....