Congratulations Pau!!

Congratulations for this beautiful story!!

DIGS-ILS Fellow Awards 2026 Awards given to five DIGS-ILS PhD candidates

Very proud of Joana Vidigueira from the lab, who won one of the DIGS-ILS Fellow Awards 2026!

www.digs-ils.phd/news/2025/06...

Every PI

🚀 Are you planning to secure funding to start your own research group? (e.g. ERC, Emmy Noether, etc).

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We are launching a new Program to host and support third-party funded junior groups.

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Congratulations, this looks amazing!

Congratulations!!

I love the kiwi! 🙂

Check out my newest Research highlight on work by @brugueslab.bsky.social on how the cytoplasm of early embryos retains its partitioning prior to cellularisation - and what workarounds different species have developed against an inherent cytoskeletal instability!

Congrats!!

Really nice highlight of our recent paper on cytoplasmic partitioning by physical instabilities!

We are #Hiring! Our lab is looking for a LabTech/Lab Manager! Take a look to our research here!
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Drop a line if you are interested to know more details!
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Our latest ‘Imaging spotlight’ is from Jan Brugués @brugueslab.bsky.social & Alison Kickuth @alisonkickuth.bsky.social where they discuss the microscopy & microrheology techniques that they used in their research dissecting the mechanics of cytokinesis.
focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/10/i...

Thank you Simone!

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Thank you!

It was great to work with you guys!

interestingly zebrafish and Drosophila embryos have roughly the same size at the one cell stage, but use the different partition strategies (unstable and stable), so it is more about regulating nucleation and timing I think!

Thank you! Yes, to the extend that organism size may regulate aster growth/size, but smaller organisms could potentially have the instability if autocatalytic growth dominates turnover. Temperature will certainly have an effect in both growth and cell cycle timing (which prevents instability).

Thank you Pavel!

Thank you André!!

Thank you! 😊

Thank you Otger!

We thank @minclab.bsky.social, @buzzbaum.bsky.social, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive feedback! This work has been a great collaboration between Melissa Rinaldin, @alisonkickuth.bsky.social, Adam Lamson, Benjamin Dalton, Yitong Xu, Pavel Mejstřík, and
@ditalialab.bsky.social (9/9)

Our results indicate that the temporal control of microtubule dynamics could have driven the evolutionary emergence of species-specific mechanisms for effective cytoplasmic organization, revealing a fundamental synergy between physical instabilities and biological clocks. (8/9)

In zebrafish embryos, unstable microtubule waves fill the geometry of the entire embryo from the first division. In contrast, in Drosophila embryos, stable microtubule asters resulting from reduced microtubule nucleation gradually fill the cytoplasm throughout multiple divisions. (7/9)

These regulatory mechanisms give rise to two possible strategies to fill the cytoplasm, which we experimentally demonstrate in zebrafish and Drosophila embryos (6/9)

We found two distinct solutions: embryos can either
• match cell cycle duration to the time needed for the instability to unfold, or
• limit microtubule nucleation. (5/9)

This instability arises from a competition between autocatalytic microtubule nucleation and microtubule turnover. How do embryos achieve robust cytoplasmic partitioning despite this instability? (4/9)

Cytoplasmic organization is orchestrated by microtubule structures that traverse the embryo, partitioning it into physically distinct and stable compartments. Despite robustness of embryonic development, we uncover an intrinsic instability in this process driven by the microtubule cytoskeleton (3/9)