Tumours aren’t just a messy mix of cells—they’re highly organised and hierarchical societies!
Just like in all societies, small chats between individuals can drive collective emergent behaviours - we reveal how these sustain tumour growth and cellular heterogeneity. 🧵👇

Using quantitative 3D mapping of cell state and cell neighbourhood in whole tumours, we show that cancer stem cells probability to differentiate is a quantifiable function of their neighbourhood, and that the differentiation signal is emitted by the surrounding differentiated cells.

Super happy to share the exciting work of Emma Legait, showing how neighbourhood composition determines cancer stem cell fate in hierarchical tumours. A great and long-standing collaboration with @cedricmaurange.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Big welcome to our new PhD students @anitabichisecchi.bsky.social and @petramikec.bsky.social !! 🙌🏼💥🥚📸

Very happy to introduce jsPCA, a fast and interpretable computational framework for spatial transcriptomics that simultaneously identifies spatial domains and variable genes across multi-slice and multi-sample data.

Thank you Adrien :)

Mechanosensation and fast reorientation of ciliary structures: Marvin's work on the surprising locomotion capabilities of Trichoplax, an animal without neurons!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sham Tlili, winner of the CNRS 2025 bronze medal - IBDM | Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille A distinction that rewards a promising and already fruitful scientific career.

🥇Sham Tlili has been awarded the CNRS 2025 Bronze Medal! She studies how physical forces shape living tissues by using mouse stem cell models known as gastruloids. A unique blend of physics & biology.

🔗 Read more: www.ibdm.univ-amu.fr/sham-tlili-w...

Déployer ses ailes : la première étape cruciale de l’insecte adulte 🪰🦋🐞 Un article grand public avec @simonhadjaje.bsky.social et édité par Elsa Couderc

🚨 PhD Opportunity! 🚨

Passionate about ovarian biology? This cutting-edge PhD project combines live-cell microscopy & biophysical modelling to explore the dynamic ovary! 🧬🔬

I'm happy to chat more—DM or email me to set up a Zoom call 📩 And please share! 🙌🏼

christopher.thomas@univ-amu.fr

Single-cell morphometrics reveals T-box gene-dependent patterns of epithelial tension in the Second Heart field Nature Communications - The embryonic heart tube undergoes elongation via the addition of progenitors from the second heart field, though how epithelial mechanics and genetics interact during this...

Very happy to see our paper published! rdcu.be/dY48Q

We developed a new spatial data analysis approach, "joint spatial PCA", to analyze the single cell morphometrics pattern in the early heart development. Our approach revealed the role of T-box genes in the second heart field. 1/n

How insects unfold their wings !
rdcu.be/d28vT