An ovarian follicle poised for ovulation, with the oocyte at its centre. Cell membranes are shown in orange and DNA in blue.

How does an ovarian follicle remodel in space and time to release an egg? 💥🥚

We have an exciting PhD project combining follicle culture, advanced imaging and quantitative analysis to understand the cellular dynamics of ovulation. 🔬

Co-supervised by me and @guignardlab.bsky.social. Please share! 🌱

Very pleased with this long effort through last year, now published last week. Thank you very much @apsphysiology.bsky.social and editors @mhverlhac.bsky.social and Michael Caplan for supporting our review article with @wetherall.bsky.social .

Peculiarities of the Mammalian Oocyte Cell Cycle | Physiology | American Physiological Society Oocyte meiosis, the process of egg cell formation, requires a highly regulated cell cycle with many unique features compared to somatic cell division. On the journey to create a healthy embryo, this special cell carries a heavy responsibility and must navigate a remarkable number of complex challenges. Most oocytes will never complete this journey; less than 0.1% are ever ovulated, and fewer are viable. However, the few that do complete it manage by the execution of a series of extraordinary adaptations through two rounds of cell division. In this review, we discuss some of these challenges and the adaptations that have evolved to mitigate them. This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the cell cycle in oocyte meiosis but to highlight some of the differences between oocyte meiosis and a typical mitosis. We discuss features that make this cell unique and the cell cycle regulatory mechanisms that support them. We salute the few that make it and those that are sacrificed along the way.

@suzannemadgwick.bsky.social and I have written a review all about how weird the cell cycle is in our egg cells! 🥚 🔬

It's available now in the July issue of the @apsphysiology.bsky.social Physiology 📖

journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.... (will be on PubMed Central July 1st)

Contact us by 4th May for more details:
@ovarylab.bsky.social
christopher.thomas@univ-amu.fr
@guignardlab.bsky.social
leo.guignard@univ-amu.fr

An ovarian follicle poised for ovulation, with the oocyte at its centre. Cell membranes are shown in orange and DNA in blue.

How does an ovarian follicle remodel in space and time to release an egg? 💥🥚

We have an exciting PhD project combining follicle culture, advanced imaging and quantitative analysis to understand the cellular dynamics of ovulation. 🔬

Co-supervised by me and @guignardlab.bsky.social. Please share! 🌱

Pictures from Fanny Martinez Real and Stefan Mundlos🙏

This year, the annual symposium of my Chaire @college-de-france.fr will be on The Evolution of Developmental Mechanisms. An impressive lineup of speakers and weirds animals, including humans. Free entrance and coffee breaks. Come, have a seat, relax and enjoy the best possible basic science🤘RT🙏

👇🏼🤩

Our institute was delighted to welcome journalists from AJSPI to discuss our research 🧪 We study how organs form — from molecular, cellular and physical building blocks to disease mechanisms affecting the brain, heart, intestine, muscle, reproductive system and pain. Interdisciplinarity is key! 🔬

Sunny hike to Sugiton to welcome @noemimonferini.bsky.social, our new postdoc, and Maha Gammoudi, our new Master’s student! ☀️⛰️🌊 Happy to have you both on the team!

Bravo! 🙌🏼🍾

La Caixa Foundation Award Ceremony 2026 - Barcelona

Honored to receive a La Caixa Junior Leader Fellowship @caixaresearch.bsky.social at @crg.eu. This recognition will support our research on oocyte dormancy and proteostasis for the next three years🥚! Big thanks to previous funders @embo.org & MSCA @ec.europa.eu and to @bokelab.bsky.social @prbb.org!

@petramikec.bsky.social @anitabichisecchi.bsky.social @raphclement.bsky.social @ibdm.bsky.social

Sunny hike to Sugiton to welcome @noemimonferini.bsky.social, our new postdoc, and Maha Gammoudi, our new Master’s student! ☀️⛰️🌊 Happy to have you both on the team!

Médaille de bronze 2025 : Sham Tlili, décrypter les lois physiques de la formation des tissus YouTube video by CNRS

🎥 Our researcher @shamtlili.bsky.social explores the physical laws governing tissue formation in this video, following the CNRS Bronze Medal she received last year 🏅

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-22F...

A pleasure to welcome Nikolaos Konstantinides from Institut Jacques Monod today. 🪰🧠 A great talk on the evolution of neurodevelopmental mechanisms in the insect visual brain, with amazing omics data spanning more than 400 million years of insect evolution. 🧬

We will have the pleasure of welcoming @manuelthery.bsky.social from @cea.fr to Luminy, Marseille as a keynote speaker.

🕧 Friday 17th April 2026, 11:30, Amphi 12
🔬 From Morphogenesis to Space Partitioning by Microtubules and Motors

Save the date! 🙌

Poster for Young Embryologists Network Conference 15th June 2026. Invited speakers: Kay Elder, Diana Pinheiro, Christopher Thomas.

This is not an April fool's! The YEN 2026 Conference is really happening on June 15th!

We are excited to have Kay Elder, Diana Pinheiro and Christopher Thomas. We are looking forward to your abstract submissions!

Sign up here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🕸️April Architecture: Image of the Month 📅

Self-organized human #myofiber bundles cultured with the Culture-Insert 4 Well, imaged using @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social LSM880 & pseudocolored in ImageJ.

Artwork by @qiyanmao.bsky.social @ibdm.bsky.social, @univ-amu.fr

#sciart #bioart #scienceisfun

Apply by May 1st to join an outstanding #PhD program in a cutting-edge international scientific environment and highly livable city @uni-muenster.de !
Apply at www.uni-muenster.de/CiM-IMPRS/ap...
#CiM-IMPRS @mpi-muenster.bsky.social @sfb1348.bsky.social

I'm happy to present our new tool, EpiCure, a napari plugin to ease correction of segmentation and tracking of epithelia movies, developed in @devstempasteur.bsky.social

Chromosomes stuck behind the spindle are ticking time bombs for aneuploidy. We uncovered a mechanical rescue mechanism where microtubule pivoting repositions these high-risk chromosomes! Out last week in @natcomms.nature.com, here's a thread 🧵
shorturl.at/OD89x

Congratulations to the shortlisted candidates at section 24 of CNRS!
c3n-cn.fr/2025/12/12/c...

March also means Brain Awareness Week — the 28th edition in 2026! 🧠 Our researchers and students visited schools across the Aix-Marseille-Provence area to share how the brain works, explore neurons, and introduce neuroscience careers to pupils from primary school to sixth form. 🏫🔬🙌🏼

New piece on the mechanics of squamous epithelial shape transition highlighting the role of tensile forces, force transmission by Dumpy & elastic resistance by the ECM in the developing wing. Terrific work from Stefan Harmansa @morphomechanics.bsky.social with Alex Erlich🍾👏:

tinyurl.com/2p58b3w3

🚨Attention #postdocs! Applications for our Excellence Postdoctoral Fellows Program open on April 1.

👩‍🔬Are you an early career researcher interested in working at the interface of biology & physics? We offer a 3+ year position, generous resources, and mentoring opportunities!

Apply: tud.link/y3djda

We are hiring POSTDOC now!🚨please repost! Fully-funded 5-year position 👩🏻‍🔬👨‍🔬🧬Looking forward to your application!✉️

We’re looking for a new team member! 🚀
Only 3 more weeks to apply to the fantastic Vienna BioCenter PhD program

12 days left to apply!

@bokelab.bsky.social @crg.eu @prbb.org

See here:
recruitment.crg.eu/content/jobs...

Les propositions d’admissibilité aux concours CR et DR de la section 26 sont publiées ⬇️⬇️⬇️

🤩🤩🤩