New preprint out:
arxiv.org/pdf/2604.01057

Together with JF Joanny and Sudipta, we introduce a "new" kind of active phase separation inspired by experiments with motors and microtubules and based on transport of species along a polar "pump"!

@manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social

Topological control of spontaneous failure in active nematic solids - Nature Materials Topological defect quadrupoles orchestrate predictable failure patterns in active nematic solid networks.

So proud of my amazing previous colleague at Yale, Sheng Chen and all the colleagues for this paper on topological control of spontaneous failure in active nematic solids! It's on @natmater.nature.com .
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The @gdraqv.bsky.social "Approches Quantitatives du Vivant" is organizing its annual conference, "AQV Days 2026".

🗓️ From the 11th to 13th May
📍 At the @cnrs.fr centre of Aussois (Savoie)

👉 registration, and other practical information :
🔗 aqv-days-2026.sciencesconf.org/%60

#AQVDays2026

a drawing of a stick figure next to a soap box ALT: a drawing of a stick figure next to a soap box

Saw a few papers recently in CNS injury using transgenic lines to target 'pericytes' in the CNS & broad markers that are not specific, also label fibroblasts - imprecise tools & language = assigning functions in fibrosis to pericytes when other cells like fibroblasts are primarily involved 1/4

Espadas, J., Souza, D. P., Hakala, M., García-Arcos, J. M., Tran, J., Kumar, A., Marcuello, C., Merino, A., ..., Toret, C. P., & Roux, A. (2025). Molecular basis for cellular compartmentalization by an ancient membrane fission mechanism. bioRxiv. #EpithelialMechanics
buff.ly/OQv9qMw

Glad to see this project out! Huge effort of all and in particular Guillaume for the 3D segmentation of cells. 👏

If you are interested in how cells pack themselves in 3D, please check it out 👀 👇

How does a ball of cells become an embryo? Genes matter—but physics (forces, geometry, topology) drives self-organization. Hervé Turlier's research vision on the physics of embryogenesis👇
shorturl.at/761x9

#Embryogenesis #Biophysics #Morphogenesis
@college-de-france.fr @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social

Multiscale curvature!

Analysis of 3D epithelial tissue packing reveals correlated patterns of cell height and skewing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01...

Cells can sense the geometry of their environment, from tiny subcellular features to whole-tissue patterns. How can we engineer environments to systematically probe these responses?

🧵 I'm @lhinderling.bsky.social from @olivierpertz.bsky.social lab, let’s do a short tour on microfabrication!

Introduction to CellProfiler - by a biologist, for biologists! YouTube video by CellMorphoJSero

If you or your trainees are just getting started with image analysis of cells & are #CellProfiler -curious, here is a fairly thorough walk-through demo I did recently. Loading files, extracting metadata (fun with Regex!), identifying objects, measuring, filtering, QC, exporting:
youtu.be/fO5nJdhj_7I

Exciting new #Zebrafish research from the #WeinsteinLab, led by Jong Park!
“Specialized gas-exchange endothelium of the zebrafish gill” —

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

Amazing to see red blood cells moving through the gills! Don’t forget to check out the supplemental movies ;-)

New preprint! Do you like ocean waves? We found similar waves on bacterial colonies! We found that this collective behavior, known as rippling, is nothing but surface waves on an active nematic. @princeton.edu @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Super excited to start as an ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona! Really happy to join fantastic colleagues at @icreacommunity.bsky.social and @ub.edu.

www.icrea.cat/community/ic...

📢Internships on cellular nematics!

🔬Come for the pretty images, stay for the cool physics: each project combines in vitro experiments with advanced microscopy and image analysis.

📧Feel free to DM or email me with any questions.

New paper from the @rouxlab.bsky.social on Nature Communications! We study how membrane tension is spatially organized in cells. Using the mechanosensitive probe Flipper-TR to visualize tension across the plasma membrane of adherent cells and to dissect the conditions needed for a gradient to happen

Tissue stress measurements with Bayesian Inversion Stress Microscopy Cells within biological tissue are constantly subjected to dynamic mechanical forces. Measuring the internal stress of tissues has proven crucial for our understanding of the role of mechanical forces...

Tissue stress measurements — our latest preprint is out: arxiv.org/abs/2512.00550
(publication coming soon!)
Fantastic work by the three musketeers — @luanger.bsky.social, @andreasschoenit.bsky.social and @fanny-wodrascka.bsky.social — in collaboration with P. Marcq!

Molecular basis for cellular compartmentalization by an ancient membrane fission mechanism The emergence of cell compartmentalization depends on membrane fission to create the endomembrane compartments. In eukaryotes, membrane fission is commonly executed by ESCRT-III, a protein complex con...

New preprint from the lab!!🎉
We show that Asgard archaea ESCRT-III proteins can trigger membrane fission and reveal its molecular mechanism, offering clues to how these cells may have built internal compartments. But do these organisms even have these compartments?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Vous faites des études de physique mais vous ne savez pas quel métier faire ? J'ai rédigé pour la Société française de physique @sfp-physique.bsky.social une description de nombreux métiers accessibles, à travers les témoignages de celles et ceux qui les exercent.
www.metiersdelaphysique.fr

Hi, I’m David Brückner @davidbrueckner.bsky.social.

I’ll take you through how cells in a tissue can use information distributed by biochemical gradients to make decisions, and how we can measure such positional information.

buff.ly/RFxVeHh

Active nematic pumps | PNAS Microfluidics involves the manipulation of flows at the microscale, typically requiring external power sources to generate pressure gradients. Alte...

Microfluidic pumping with active nematics! Self-organized and self-sustained. No external pumps.

@pnas.org @ub.edu

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#ActiveMatter #Microfluidics #SoftMatter

Launching celldynamicslab.com, the homepage of our new group at EPFL working on cell fragmentation, membrane and cortex mechanics, FLIM imaging, and microfluidics tools. MSc/PhD or postdocs interested in quantitative cell biology are welcome to reach out. We're also hiring a lab manager in 2026!

Amazing story 😍
Just scan through it. Sophisticate, delicate and elegant 💥
Will read it in details again when time allows😋

Really excited to present the results of a fantastic collaboration with Jesse Veenvliet @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social 🤩

We find a unique mechanism for body axis elongation in mammals, different from other vertebrate species

➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Borges, A., Miranda-Rodriguez, J. R., Ceccarelli, A., Ventura, G., Sedzinski, J., Lopez-Schier, H., & Chara, O. (2025). ForSys: non-invasive stress inference from time-lapse microscopy. iScience, 28, 113685. #EpithelialMechanics
buff.ly/jQ96TCK

If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back.

I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support

New preprint from the lab! We discovered a transient fluidization in the basal region of human forebrains by tracking microdroplets in cerebral organoids.This “basal fluidization”, absent in gorilla and mouse, may contribute to greater surface expansion in human forebrains
1/
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Frequency dependence of fast-lifetime FLIM and fits for C2C12 cells.

Fluorescence lifetime estimation: a practical approach using Flipper-TR FLIM by Juan Manuel Garcia-Arcos and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An incredibly comprehensive and meticulous study of Flipper-TR lifetime analysis to make your membrane tension measurements using Flipper-TR more robust and reliable.

Thanks to @juanmagararc.bsky.social and @rouxlab.bsky.social for this very valuable resource!