Beyond happy! Yesterday I obtained my 🔥PhD🔥 cum laude🔥(highest award) with my work "On Light and Life - Physics of Chloroplast Motion and Bioluminescence"🌿✨ Thanks to so so so many people involved in the work and that have been a huge support to me during this time - especially @mazi1.bsky.social

Join my team for a PhD in Learning in living adaptive networks (Theory). Apply by October 7th through www.portal.graduatecenter.lmu.de/ocgc/qmb

Our science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊

Upcoming Symposium! Physics of Adaptation and Decision making in Biology! When: September 16 Where: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Join us here: www.fluidlab.nl/padm25 Speakers: Ray Goldstein, Sujit Datta, @thomasshimizu.bsky.social, @mirnakramar.bsky.social, @blarson.bsky.social, me

it was already fun to look around the documentation for cmap (cmap-docs.readthedocs.io) but @grosoane.bsky.social just added a very cool feature to toggle between color vision deficiencies. Watch your perceptually uniform color maps gain some kinks 😂 as a mild deutan myself, I appreciate it! 🙏

Automated optogenetic control of hundreds of cells in parallel. Each cell is individually steered, collectively acting as a "tissue printer". Preprint & code out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is an airyscan confocal movie of mitochondria (white) moving around in a mouse astrocyte. Actin filaments are in orange and microtubules are in blue.

📢 After #CBIAS2025, join our hands-on 2-day napari training by @crick.ac.uk @ucl.ac.uk @liverpooluni.bsky.social From conda to plugins to Jupyter, practicals on real data with expert guidance. For Python/ImageJ coders. Apply by 1 Sept – limited to 30! crick.ac.uk/whats-on/cbias-napari-workshop-2025

Now published in @natcomms.nature.com! 🥳 👉 rdcu.be/eATn3 We developed image analysis tools to capture the nematic orientation field of 3D tissue surfaces. Tested on epithelial aggregates, zebrafish hearts, myoblasts on spheres & micro-vessels, we combined soft matter physics with exp. biology.

Yay! My first short TV interview (in Dutch)... Featuring our work on bioluminescence in dinoflagellates and our collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen and Biodesigner Chris Bellamy for Paris Haute Couture week! youtube.com/shorts/Wg2tI...

Paper in Nature 150 years ago. Beats reading any single-cell experiment…

A very late #FluorescenceFriday. Reposting one of my favorite timelapses from the past year: EB3-mScarlet3 in a HeLa cell, look at those microtubules grow!

Our study on endothelial mechanics made the news! 🤩 Super nice and clear article on our findings and their implications. www.snexplores.org/article/how-...

In the last couple of months I helped biodesigner Chris Bellamy in a collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen to make a bioluminescent dress for Paris Haute Couture week. And the outcome was absolutely stunning!!!! www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

PSA: around 5-8% of the population has a color vision impairment for red/green. Many talks at #2025ICDB still use red-green LUTs on slides that are not accessible to everyone. Changing to more accessible colors is doable and easy. We can do better. #devbio #ICDB2025 #WeTheColorBlind

Very happy and excited to share our latest work linking actin nematodynamics and endothelial cell mechanics under anisotropic tension, now published in @natphys.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eigWi @ipparis.bsky.social @polytechniqueparis.bsky.social

🎉 Excited to share our new work: “Adhesion-driven tissue rigidification triggers epithelial cell polarity”, now on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ! A huge thank you to @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social, Bernat, @crisp-c.bsky.social, Adrián, and everyone involved! 🙌 🧵⤵️

Extremely happy that I was awarded with the Emerging Soft Matter Excellence award yesterday!😊 This is a huge honor for me! But most importantly I met all the amazing other finalists and learned all about their cutting edge research! engage.aps.org/dsoft/honors... Thank you @apsdsoft.bsky.social !

Are you at the #APSGlobalSummit2025? I'm extremely honored to be finalist for the @apsdsoft.bsky.social Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award! Curious? Come by on Tuesday 8-11am at the Session MAR-F65 (my talk: 10:24am) 😊 Also just message me if you wanna have a chat :) @apsphysics.bsky.social

Are you at the #APSGlobalSummit2025? I'm extremely honored to be finalist for the @apsdsoft.bsky.social Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award! Curious? Come by on Tuesday 8-11am at the Session MAR-F65 (my talk: 10:24am) 😊 Also just message me if you wanna have a chat :) @apsphysics.bsky.social

We have an open postdoc position in our group! We seek motivated and fun people with a background in theoretical biological physics to work on projects revolving around pattern formation, cell biology, and particularly #condensates. Details: www.ds.mpg.de/4078435/job_... #TheoBiophysicsPosition

+Our paper now out in @nature.com. We designed and built at AMOLF a robot that maps & tracks fungal networks as they trade nutrients with plants. We discovered how fungi build and operate hyper-efficient 'supply chains' for underground ecosystems. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Virtual reality rewrites the rules of the swarm. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that classical models of collective behavior fail to account for collective motion. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Do you LOVE organelles?? Well I am THRILLED to announce that Nellie has been published in @naturemethods.bsky.social! Nellie a fully automated pipeline for organelle segmentation, tracking, and hierarchical feature extraction in 2D, 3D, timelapse, multichannel live-cell microscopy 🧵1/N

⚡The "electric clam": electricity, bioluminescence, or an optical illusion?👀 It looks like it's glowing, but 𝑪𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒔 actually reflects light in a unique way!💡 This trick could inspire new underwater communication and lighting sensors. #OceanVitalPulse #biomimetica #biomimicry #marinesciences

1/n Wanted to share this latest piece of work that came online today on how Scale-independent and Topological interactions govern the spindle orientation and in turn the decision to become embryonic/yolk nuclei. Freely available to read here: rdcu.be/ebb0l

Building off @afreedma.bsky.social's scoop, I had word yesterday that NASA killed the IPCC WG3 TSU contract. (Story below.) NASA now says it was stopped to be "consistent with guidance issued to agencies from the General Services Administration to eliminate non-essential consulting contracts."

Quick thread on our new study doi.org/10.1101/2025...! 👇 Most ciliated epithelia exhibit some form of synchrony, this can help minimise energy dissipation, increase flow generation and improve efficiency. Review on why ciliary coordination is important for function here doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... 1/

Proud to win the @apsphysics.bsky.social DBIO Image contest for my tomato leaf trichome photo! Trichomes break on contact with insects, defending against predation 🐛🌿🔬🧪 Congrats to my co-winners, including labmate @nicoschramma.bsky.social for his stunning chloroplast networks in Pyrocystis Lunula!

Yay! I won the @apsphysics.bsky.social DBIO Image contest alongside two others! My colleague @jaredpopo.bsky.social is another winner showing the beauty of plant trichomes! My picture shows the chloroplast network of the marine dinoflagellate Pyrocystis Lunula! engage.aps.org/dbio/resourc...

Mitochondria keep surprising me! Absolutely beautiful work!

#Phytochromes: The 'eyes' that enable #microalgae to find their way in aquatic depths phys.org/news/2024-12... #Diatom phytochromes integrate the underwater light spectrum to sense depth: Carole Duchêne et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Protists #ProtistsOnSky #Algae #Diatoms #Microbes

🍾Our small #UExM adventure is only starting! #ProtistsOnSky We are happy to announce that the Moore Foundation will be funding our efforts in creating an Expansion Microscopy atlas of #Microbial #Eukaryotes with @gautamdey.bsky.social @UNIGE @embl.org LINK: www.unige.ch/sciences/chi... 1/4

Advances in microscopy mean we can now do more than just observe biology—we can control it. But how far can we really push this in mammalian cells with all their (beautiful but annoying) heterogeneity? 🧪🔬(🧵)

Fresh off the press, our work on wing deployment in Drosophila 🪰: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Work by: Simon Hadjaje, Ignacio Andrade-Silva, Marie-Julie Dalbe and Raphaël Clément

Hot off the press A super fun collaboration and paper. All you ever wanted about the squirting cucumber but never dared to ask. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

First Microscopy Post on here 🥳🥳!! Single molecule protein dynamics at ER-Mito contact sites😬...here we are looking at Individual VAPB molecules, an important contact site tethering molecule. From our recent paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Polymerizing actin creates fireworks that are a sight to behold. This excitable medium produces polymerizing waves similar to those observed in other context. The parallels I tried to lay out in this perspective piece last year: tinyurl.com/53cbxm4v (LifeAct-GFP in Endothelial Cell)

Starting a theoretical biophysics starter pack, feel free to (self-) nominate, I’ll keep updating this in the next days/weeks! go.bsky.app/RMF7jUK

I thought of a sneaky way to find my people on this thing. Self-identify and I will add you... See you at APS-DFD! go.bsky.app/8Njfprh

How do organelles fit together inside a crowded cell? Answering this question requires a way to image many organelles in a whole cell at high resolution with high throughput. Our new preprint shows how to do this in yeast using soft x-ray tomography www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic thread about a remarkable organism - Stentor coeruleus - and its habituation to mechanical stimuli! Suggests great questions about single cells' capacity to learn. 😲

Single cells can learn without a brain, but how? Our new preprint from @deeparajan.bsky.social describes a model for habituation in Stentor coeruleus, based on receptor internalization and recycling, along with new experiments inspired by the model. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

With the help of @ostratodd.bsky.social and @emilylau.bsky.social we have put together a Bioluminescence (etc) starter pack. Please let us know if you would like to be added, especially as more people migrate here. go.bsky.app/9wFuWB9

This is a fantastic thread about some illuminating work that is well worth the read, & the addendum at the end about mechanistic-luminescent bio-gel is brilliant (apologies for the puns).

Spread the word! Lots of exciting PhD studentships open under the SWBio scheme (doctoral landscape award) www.swbio.ac.uk Including this one with our group @lsiexeter.bsky.social on programming cyanobacteria motility www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Apply by 11 Dec 2024 (email/DM for details)!

💥Beyond happy 💥 Our work is now published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... With Gloria Canales & @mazi1.bsky.social we studied how the single celled alga Pyrocystis lunula 🌙 move their chloroplast in response to strong light. Get ready for some fun mechanics, signals and organelle motion! 🧵

We strongly suggest that academic publishers and other platforms that host research rapidly implement a Share to Bluesky button for their articles. Here's how: docs.bsky.app/docs/advance... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics