Theory across Biology 2026 on June 12 in Bern, is a one-day meeting on mathematical & theoretical approaches in biology with chalk talks and flip-chart sessions. Ideal for theorists, modelers, and interdisciplinary biologists.
Abstracts by: 10 May 2026: meetings.ls2.ch/theory-acros...
📢Preprint: Positional information (PI) and information flows in dynamic tissues.
Our mathematical framework quantifies, from data, how the coupled stochastic dynamics of cell positions and properties preserve, degrade and generate PI. @alex-plum.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New Pre-Print Alert!
Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity
with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
If you're looking for a PhD position, or know someone looking checkout our PhD Fellowship program! Deadline May 8th.
We are always looking for talented students with a physics or computational background to join our group to work on the physics of living systems!
More info here: shorturl.at/ebGVr
Thrilled to present our comparative study on the evolution of zygotic genome activation (ZGA)!! 🥚🧬
Amazing PhD work of @campobes.bsky.social together with @fedemantica.bsky.social and many collaborators! @melisupf.bsky.social @crg.eu. Thread below 1/15
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Excited to announce Physics of Living Matter 19! To be held in Cambridge 24-25th September 2026:
www.plm-symposium.org
Cancer, Diabetes, Aging - A Personal Story of Discovery in Cell Growth Control #EinblickeBiozentrum: April 28, 2026
Michael N. Hall presents an insider’s view of the discovery of TOR and the importance of curiosity-driven research.
lnkd.in/dqapuz5s
#Science #Research #Cancer #Diabetes #Aging
Join us at the LS2 #Theory #across #Biology chalk talk symposium! 12 June 2026 in Bern, CH. @lifesciswitzerland.bsky.social
No movies that fail, no Mac to PC issues. Only the best ideas and exchange across biology from evolution and ecology to physics of life.
meetings.ls2.ch/theory-acros...
Looking forward to this meeting!
Do different regions in the cell nucleus find each other by random motion or is there a directed component? In short: likely both. Below, I summarize a few predictions from a recently updated preprint from last June: doi.org/10.48550/arX.... (1/9)
#biophysics #theory #active #chromatin #condensates
🗞️Our March issue is live, with killifish artwork by
Dario Valenzano on the cover!🎨Read work on senescence in mammary gland remodelling, structural protein changes as readouts of Alzheimer’s disease, the 201 Parkinson’s disease trial & more ✨https://nature.com/nataging/volumes/6/issues/3
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...
It’s been great working with @raimonsunyer.bsky.social and his group @ub.edu in Barcelona on this #durotaxis project. Postdoc @alonso-matilla.bsky.social, co-advised by colleague Paolo Provenzano and myself, did the modeling work. Our preprint is posted now on biorxiv (link below).
Congratulations!!🥳🥳
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
Congratulations!! 🥳🥳🥳
How do pairs of DNA loci - such as enhancers and promoters - find each other inside the nucleus? 🤔
Most models assume the random forces driving locus motion are independent in space
New preprint by
@janniharju.bsky.social: this assumption fails in living cells 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It's out! Happy to present ITEC, a semi supervised algorithm with an extremely low error rate that can track cells in files of any size (think Terabytes!). We used it in many organisms, including zebrafish, to study how organs form and linked it to gene expression www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... +🧪
That’s a really interesting hypothesis, thanks for sharing! Our model suggests that it’s really 3D distance and not genomic separation that defines correlation, but that could presumably also correlate with being part of the same chromatin domain.
Thanks for the question! We infer a correlation length of approximately 0.6 microns
This work was driven by
@janniharju.bsky.social in a very fun collaboration with Deepthi Kailash, Po-Ta Chen, @thomasgregor.bsky.social (fly exps) and Mattia Ubertini & @lucagiorgetti.bsky.social (mESC exps)
Preprint, data, and code all available www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
SCFs control a trade-off with direct functional implications for gene regulation:
correlated motion slows relative diffusion at short distances, so locus encounters become rarer but longer-lived.
What drives SCFs?
With @lucagiorgetti.bsky.social, we show that ATP depletion reduces both correlation magnitudes and diffusivities ➡️ active flows are crucial
Cohesin perturbation further reduces correlations but increases diffusivities, consistent with a crosslinking mechanism.
We then went back to published tracking data in mammalian cells from @lucagiorgetti.bsky.social & @andersshansen.bsky.social
We find that data from two labs, three genomic separations, different temporal resolutions all match the SCF model predictions.
Key prediction: if correlations are spatial, they should also couple loci on different chromosomes.
In collaboration with @thomasgregor.bsky.social, we tracked alleles of the same gene on separate chromosomes and find the same concave correlation function!
To test this, we infer fluctuation-distance profiles ϕ(R) directly from experimental trajectories
SCFs vs polymer-only correlations make three testable predictions - all three signatures are confirmed in fly embryo data across genomic separations from 58 kb to 3.3 Mb
What causes this?
We show that coupling through the polymer is insufficient to explain the scaling
Motivated by previous observations of nucleoplasmic flows, we propose spatially correlated fluctuations (SCFs): nearby loci experience similar forces from the nucleoplasm and move coherently
Based on uncorrelated fluctuations, the relative diffusion of locus pairs is expected to be simply determined by the sum of their independent motion
In tracking data of fluorescent loci in fly embryos, we found something strange: relative diffusion is much lower than expected & depends on distance
How do pairs of DNA loci - such as enhancers and promoters - find each other inside the nucleus? 🤔
Most models assume the random forces driving locus motion are independent in space
New preprint by
@janniharju.bsky.social: this assumption fails in living cells 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Congrats!! 🥳
