How do tissues maintain their integrity?
Let's discuss epithelial fractures!
High tissue tension can cause cells to break their contacts, leading to rupture!

Happy to share that the study is now published in Advanced Science 🙌🥳 :
advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I want to thank my co-authors and my amazing PI @lauraschaedel.bsky.social for all the help, lovely discussions and encouragement😀

Hello epithelia enthusiasts!

I’m @inesfournon.bsky.social and I study epithelial mechanics in sea anemones 🪼

Did you know epithelial cell extrusion had never been described outside bilaterian animals before? Well… not anymore 👀

Read ⬇️🧵1/9

Faure, L. M., Gómez‐González, M., Baguer, O., Comelles, J., ... & Roca‐Cusachs, P. (2024). 3D Micropatterned Traction Force Microscopy: A Technique to Control 3D Cell Shape While Measuring Cell‐Substrate Force Transmission. Advanced Science, 11(46), 2406932. #EpithelialMechanics
buff.ly/Mpt1o3g

Injury-induced electrochemical coupling triggers organ growth Organ repair and growth rely on coupling tissue-wide membrane depolarization with intracellular proliferative signaling.

New paper alert!🤩Super proud that our story led by superstar postdocs @liujinghui.bsky.social and @nerlielisa.bsky.social is finally out! We found how electrical signals are key for promoting organ regenerative growth!!! A thread 🧵https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec0687

How do epithelial cells organize uniform polar orientation during long-range collective migration?
I'm @emmalaang.bsky.social , and my research focus on collective cell behaviors. In this thread, I will take you through the concept of topology-guided polar ordering of collective cell migration

We had covered the history of traction force microscopy (TFM) earlier:
bsky.app/profile/epim...

But what about applying TFM into more physiologically relevant systems, such as those in 3D?

I am @barrasa-fano.bsky.social and I'll be your guide through this thread on #3DTractionForceMicroscopy.

Since #durotaxis was described >25 years ago, most studies report cells migrating from soft → stiff

New work from my team at @ub.edu (in collaboration with D. Odde's lab) suggests we may have been missing the point all along...

🔥 Check out our new preprint here 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Here's a beautiful #microscopy image from our PoL Photo Competition 📸

👨‍🔬 🔬©️ Image taken by Yogishree Arabinda Panda, PhD student in the Fischer-Friedrich group @fischerfriedriclab.bsky.social

🔍 Caption: A SEM micrograph of a mitotically arrested HeLa cell with visible filopodia membrane reservoirs

Great essay on a timeless question! "The complexity of life is not pre-encoded in the genome, but emerges through development in a way that is not fully captured by the mechanical metaphors of blueprints and computer codes".

Hello epithelial mechanics fans!! I’m Juanma @juanmagararc.bsky.social 👋 I work on cell mechanics (see celldynamicslab.com) and use Flipper-TR FLIM to probe membrane biophysics in cells.

Join me on this tour about Flipper: what it measures, strengths, advice, cool case studies, and cute drawings!

Roffay, C., Molinard, G., ..., & Roux, A. (2021). Passive coupling of membrane tension and cell volume during active response of cells to osmosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(47), e2103228118. #EpithelialMechanics
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Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium reducing macromolecule diffusion | PNAS Intracellular transport of macromolecules is crucial for the proper functioning of most cellular processes. Although intracellular crowding is know...

Happy to highlight our collaborative work from our @ijmonod.bsky.social team with @destriano.bsky.social, B. Goyeau and M. Chabanon.
Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium that hinders macromolecular diffusivity.
Plus: a clever way to measure cell volume.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This weekend we projected cells and filaments on the roof of the @museeorsay.bsky.social in Paris, then we contracted it with a pinch of myosin.
And it was fabulous!

Grateful to have been part of this art/science project & thx to @manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social & the CytoMorphoLab

Alberto Dinelli, Ludovic Dumoulin, Karsten Kruse: Active topological strings in renewing nematopolar fluids https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18307 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.18307 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.18307

Thanks for the nice thread ! 👏
I was wondering how podosomes differ from lamellipodial protrusions ? Do they protrude more transversaly towards the substrate ?

How do cells orchestrate themselves to achieve a directional movement as a group?

Hi, I’m @sayukihirano.bsky.social. In this thread, I’ll highlight key mechanisms of how cells communicate with each other to perform directional collective migration.

New preprint! We show how mesoscopic nonequilibrium fluctuations in active gels emerge from the breaking of detailed balance at the molecular scale. Warning: Long technical paper ahead! Enjoy! @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @ubics.bsky.social @icreacommunity.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2601.20483

Scientists measure cellular membrane thickness inside cells for the first time

Reported in #JCellBiol, a method developed in the lab of Associate Professor Danielle Grotjahn (@nanigrotjahn.bsky.social) measures membrane thickness directly inside intact cells and identifies ATP synthase clusters in curved, unusually thick membrane regions.

Guillaume Pernollet shows that epithelial cells adjust their shape to locally flatten, forming scutoids for any geometry, changing our view of cell packing. Thanks to all! @clairedessalles.bsky.social @juanmagararc.bsky.social @sciencesunige.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How can embryos use pulsatile contraction to shape tissue development during morphogenesis? I'm @weiyiqian.bsky.social and with this thread I want to introduce the roles of pulsatile actomyosin in animal development and the mechanisms that drive actomyosin to pulse

How can structures at the vertex of 3 cells have effects at the tissue level?

Join me, @laura-rustarazo.bsky.social, to explore how tricellular junctions (TCJs) act as local tension sensors and regulators of global tissue organization. 🧵⤵️ doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Happy 2026!
May this year be good for your cells,
Discovering all the cool
#EpithelialMechanics as well.

Janssen, V., & Huveneers, S. (2024). Cell–cell junctions in focus–imaging junctional architectures and dynamics at high resolution. Journal of Cell Science, #EpithelialMechanicsReview doi.org/10.1242/jcs....

New paper out!
We show how mechanosensitive adherens junction proteins link actomyosin contractility to actin assembly using in vitro reconstitution.
Huge congrats to Aurélie Favarin, Rayan Said, & all authors!
In Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#actin #myosin #mechanobiology

Malboubi, M., Esteki, M. H., Vaghela, M. B., Korsak, L. I. T., Petrie, R. J., Moeendarbary, E., & Charras, G. (2025). The cytoplasm of living cells can sustain transient and steady intracellular pressure gradients. Elife. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
#EpithelialMechanics

Gradients, waves and nematics: quantitative perspectives on regeneration Regeneration restores a damaged body part to its original size, shape and structure. Research over the last decades identified signaling pathways, cel…

Tristan Guyomar and I wrote a review on physical mechanisms coordinating regeneration - Featured: signalling/mechanical gradients, travelling waves and nematic fields - Dramatis personae: axolotls, hydra, planaria, spiny mice and zebrafish (ofc) with a jellyfish cameo

tinyurl.com/3upzrdbs

Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework".

Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288

Leybova, L., Biswas, A., Sharan, R., Trejo, B. M., Kim, K., ..., Phillips, B. K., & Devenport, D. (2024). Radially patterned morphogenesis of murine hair follicle placodes ensures robust epithelial budding. Developmental cell, 59(24), 3272–3289.e5. #EpithelialMechanics
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Now that you have gathered you raw data from a cell migration assay, how do you analyze that data?

In our review, we describe methods - including AI methods - to track migrating cells and extract as much information as possible.

Read our paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...