(1/n) Does basal stem cell division orientation regulate skin stratification and tissue mechanics? And can tissue mechanics feed back to control division orientation? In our new preprint, we use a 3D vertex model to explore this @manningresearch.bsky.social @somiealo.bsky.social

Thanks to all the students, postdocs, and collaborators over the past 15 years that really did the work that this AAAS Fellowship celebrates. Happy to share it with all of you! news.syr.edu/2026/03/26/3...

See you at @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Physics Summit Denver @agrigas.bsky.social @somiealo.bsky.social @manningresearch.bsky.social

Excited to highlight a new preprint about mechanical contributions to tissue homeostasis, from the Manning group in collaboration with the amazing Carien Niessen and Sara Wickstrom @sarawickstrom.bsky.social labs, spearheaded by Dr. Somiealo Azote: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

❗PREPRINT ALERT❗ doi.org/10.64898/202... The lab of M. Lisa Manning at @syracuseu.bsky.social in collaboration with Ale Mongera at @ucl-cdb.bsky.social show that in the avian presomitic mesoderm, Contact Inhibition of Locomotion has a tissue-wide effect, making tissue act like a fluid under tension.

How do sparse mesenchymal cells, with unique stellate arms spanning large gaps between cells, maintain their network while still flowing during development? In our new preprint we describe the avian PSM as a fluid under tension and develop new theory to explain it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Kelly Aspinwall, Tyler Hain, M. Lisa Manning: Rigidity and mechanical response in biological structures https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18432 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18432 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.18432

Villeneuve, C., Hashmi, A., ... & Wickström, S. A. (2024). Mechanical forces across compartments coordinate cell shape and fate transitions to generate tissue architecture. Nature Cell Biology #EpithelialMechanics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Biology makes materials far more complex that what we can achieve ourselves. It often does this with small parts that come together to assemble into larger structures with defined sizes. Here is a theoretical contribution to solving this problem, funded by the NSF. journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...