A full, buzzing auditorium as EMBO / European Cytoskeleton Forum Workshop takes off in Paris.

Congrats, Clinton! Didn't you only just start your lab yesterday?

Registration deadline for our motors and filaments meeting is tomorrow - not a 1st April joke! Thanks to our generous sponsors supporting sustainable scientific conference organisation @embo.org @biologists.bsky.social we also offer registration for a free livestream, supported by bsky discussions!

The text is largely correct, but the video is pure AI fantasy and does not reflect anything we know about kinesins or microtubules. Please research your material better before posting. There are many very good kinesin animations out there that are based on scientific knowledge

CMCB talk this morning featuring Isaac Wong as part of our ECR seminar series. We learned a lot about centrosome architecture and marvelled at high speed cytoplasmic flows in rectangular diatomes.

We're still accepting submissions for our upcoming special issue - Imaging Cell Architecture and Dynamics - which is being coordinated by @franbottanelli.bsky.social and Giulia Zanetti, working alongside our Editor @guijacquemet.bsky.social
Deadline: 1 April
journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/im...

BSCB members, you have ONE WEEK left to:

- submit your summer studentship applications
- submit you image competition entries
- submit you science writing competition entries

There are prizes to be won!

All details on our website
bscb.org

Deadlines are 31st March

Indeed an exciting programme. Registration open for another two weeks. We are also able to accommodate a few late abstracts and bursary applications. If you would have usually gone to the UK microtubule meeting early May, come to Warwick instead. tinyurl.com/mechanochemi...

🌷Spring has sprung... and our website has had a refresh.
The same #ListerPrize info. All those great stories about #ListerFellows. Just a new, clean look and feel. Go check it out!
👉 lister-institute.org.uk

Are you a budding science writer? ✍️

Then enter our science writing competition! Entries can be fiction or non-fiction. For more info and how to enter visit our website:
bscb.org/competitions...

Deadline 31st March

We encourage you to travel by train if at all possible. Please apply for sustainable travel bursaries when you submit your abstract. We will also consider waiving registration fees for presenters who can demonstrate a need. All info here: tinyurl.com/mechanochemi...

The abstract deadline for our Motors and Filaments Meeting is approaching fast - 1st March. We have plenty slots for 15/10min talks and 3min flash talks to allocate. Thanks to generous support from @embo.org and @biologists.bsky.social, we can offer sustainable travel bursaries and a free livestream

Imaging spotlight: ShapeSpaceExplorer - FocalPlane Imaging spotlight: ShapeSpaceExplorer - News

In our latest ‘Imaging spotlight’ we learn about ShapeSpaceExplorer, a tool for measuring cell shape of migrating cells, developed by Samuel Jefferyes, Anne Straube @annestraube.bsky.social and colleagues.
focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/05/i...

Need any more reasons to come to Warwick campus? How about "The Good and The Bad" roaming campus near the spectacular sport centre facilities sometimes even under a wonderful blue sky...

Mechanochemistry of molecular motors and cytoskeletal filaments - a meeting at the university of warwick, 8-9 May 2026

Early bird registration including on campus conference accommodation for our #motors and #filaments meeting will close 29th January 2026. You can still register after that, but need to find your own accommodation. Grateful to @embo.org
and @biologists.bsky.social for sponsoring this event!

I think the main advantages are that diffusion map embedding uses non-linear reduction and preserves primarily the local structure, while classic dimension reduction methods such as PCA and multidimensional scaling assume linearity of the original data space.

As far as I can see, CellPLATO uses feature-based shape analysis, which won't capture all possibly relevant characteristics, so integrating our landmark-free shape similarity measure into the larger cellPLATO framework might be useful. Also scope to analyse trajectories both in shape and real space.

Help me spread the word about an opening for the Furino Chair in Bioengineering in the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University. We seek candidates focused on developing biotherapeutic approaches to cancer, including but not limited to mRNA vaccines, CAR-T, and immunotherapy. (1/3)

Shape changes are movement in shape space. We trained a Hidden Markov Model with sequences of cell shapes that depolarise and repolarise during directional changes and show that shape information alone can reliably predict cell migration behaviour.

Once the shape map is done, the user can explore this shape space and visualise average shapes from any region of interest, partition shape space to analyse shape distributions from different experimental conditions or measure the speed of shape changes between two regions of shape space.

To compare our Best Alignment Metric with Fourier Descriptors we asked both to find the 5 closest shapes in a large dataset of RPE cell shapes. BAM selects reliably shapes with the same typical characteristics such as central tail on D-shaped cell in line 5, gentle left bend of cell in line 8 etc.

We construct a map of shape space by determining the difference between two shapes using a new, rapid, and landmark-free shape difference measure. Pairwise distances from all shapes in the dataset are then used to position each shape in a low-dimensional map of shape space.

Our paper describing the development of ShapeSpaceExplorer is now out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... The software and documentation is available here: github.com/cmcb-warwick... Explainer thread below.

We set registration rates as low as possible (just £30) and offer sustainable travel bursaries for those who come to the meeting by train. What's more, accessing the livestream is completely free. So, sign up now. tinyurl.com/mechanochemistry

Mechanochemistry of Molecular Motors and Filaments. 8-9 May 2026 at University of Warwick.

Calling all #MotorsInQuarantine fans: Please join us for 1.5 days of science on motors and the cytoskeleton as we celebrate the career of Rob Cross. More info and sign-up here: tinyurl.com/mechanochemi... #kinesin #dynein #myosin #microtubules #actin #cytoskeleton

Make a long weekend of it, combine with the UK Microtubule meeting in Edinburgh on 11th May 2026 (biology.ed.ac.uk/microtubule) and see some of the best bits of the UK on the way. Both meetings will offer oral presentation opportunities and sustainable travel bursaries.

Get out your calendars! The motors are out of quarantine and we plan to assemble in person on 8th May 2026 at University of Warwick Campus for a fun day on motors and the filaments they walk along. Livestream is planned too. More details on registration, travel bursaries etc. will be revealed soon.

Structure and Function of the Cytoskeleton The cytoskeleton, a dynamic and intricate network of protein filaments, is found within the cytoplasm of all cells, from bacteria and archaea to complex eukaryotes. This essential cellular component …

Learn all things #cytoskeleton #research in an interdisciplinary environment at EMBO Workshop "Structure and Function of the Cytoskeleton" in Paris, FR, 7–10 April 2026.

Deadline: 20 December 2025

https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-cytoskeleton
#EMBOCytoskeletalFunction #EMBOevents #conference 🧪

This has been a very long time coming, but we have finally released our cell shape and shape dynamics visualisation and analysis tool. Preprint is out, Github is public, datasets are on Zenodo, all linked from bioRxiv. Any trouble using it, let me know.

Don't forget that applications for the Lister Prize remain open until midnight on Monday 29 September! lister-institute.org.uk/applications...