Edouard Hannezo

From genes to patterns: five key dynamical systems concepts to decode developmental regulatory mechanisms Summary: Dynamical systems theory provides a powerful quantitative and intuitive framework to understand developmental processes. This Primer brings key concepts of this framework to the ever-growing ...

A Summer reading recommendation: new primer in @dev-journal.bsky.social explains how dynamical systems theory unlocks the logic of developmental patterning

Everything from bistable switches & oscillators to phase portraits & more with Python code to explore

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

If you want to discover Vienna, Austria in general (and @istaresearch.bsky.social groups in particular) now have 4-year fellowships for postdocs coming from a US institution (up to 500,000 EUR)! Contact me if interested!

bioRxiv bat signal going up. We have a big backlog of submissions. If any affiliates have time to do some screening, we (and all the authors) would be immensely grateful! 🙏

1/ 🚀 New tutorial alert!
Ever wanted to use your microscope as a multi-angle light scattering device? Our new preprint is out:
📄 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Differential Dynamic Microscopy (DDM)
arXiv: 2507.05058 (link in the last skeet!)
🧵 Thread ⬇️

Evolutionary repurposing of a DNA segregation machinery into a cytoskeletal system controlling cyanobacterial cell shape Bacteria, despite their diversity, use conserved cytoskeletal systems for their intracellular organization. In unicellular bacteria, the ParMRC DNA partitioning apparatus is well known for forming act...

One of the most exciting discoveries from our lab so far is now online as a preprint!

Read a story on how the ParMR and Min systems started to collaborate to create the CorMR cytoskeleton, which now controls cell shape in multicellular cyanobacteria:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks a lot !!:)

Thanks a lot adrien!!

Really honored and excited to be in this cohort! Tons of thanks to all group members and collaborators that have made this possible!!

📸 Gaia Novarino © Peter Rigaud | ISTA 📸 Edouard Hannezo © Anna Stöcher | ISTA

ISTA profs Gaia Novarino and @ehannezo.bsky.social​ have been elected to @embo.org​ in recognition of their outstanding research contributions. Today, they join 67 other biological scientists from 24 countries in their new EMBO membership. Congratulations!
#EMBOMembers2025

🔗 https://bit.ly/3ZV6ZiA

🧵Just out !
We reveal how 4 branched epithelia—mammary, lacrimal, salivary & prostate—use a conserved YAP–Notch–p63 circuit to self-organize during development & regeneration.
Here’s the story👇
authors.elsevier.com/c/1lM285Sx5g...
Work done in @frelab.bsky.social at ‪
‪ @institutcurie.bsky.social

How to turn a layer of fibroblasts into a tulip 🌷?

Check out our new pre-print on shape-programmable living surfaces.

Led by @pauguillamat.bsky.social‬

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

📢 PhD Candidate Alert
@lina0213.bsky.social is *looking for a PhD position* in developmental biology, combining her expertise in:
🧪 Wet lab techniques
💻 Bioinformatics
🔬 Light microscopy

🚨 theory/math devbio preprint alert!!! 🚨

Led by my v. talented PhD student, Daniel Muzatko, we’ve found some rather general and intriguing constraints on reaction-diffusion systems that allow them to self-organize developmental patterns:

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

Dynamic Landscape Analysis of Cell Fate Decisions: Predictive Models of Neural Development From Single-Cell Data Building a mechanistic understanding of cell fate decisions remains a fundamental goal of developmental biology, with implications for stem cell therapies, regenerative medicine and understanding dise...

Our latest "Dynamic Landscape Analysis of Cell Fate Decisions: Predictive Models of Neural Development From Single-Cell Data"

A rigorous mathematical foundation for Waddington's landscape to study cell fate decision making

Applied to ventral neural tube development

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

thanks a lot! we also wonder about this - especially as the ECM has specific structure/mid-range order that seems to be organ-dependent :)

thanks a lot!

Overall: cellular detachments result from local geometrical constraints+global temporal integration of heterogeneity! As it had be shown that spatially disordered stromal compartments -> negative prognosis in human tumor samples, next steps could more realistic data-driven simulations (9/9)

This means that interfaces roughen MUCH faster in disordered environments. And because we find evidence for a critical value of local curvature (tips of tissue "fingers") allowing for detachments, this occurs is disordered environments, but is never reached in free space! (8/n)

Turns out we can map invasion in different environments to different universality classes of interface roughening processes (KPZ vs quenched KPZ) - which predicts very well both exp. and simulation dynamics (7/n)

Long story-short: it's actually not so much local pore geometries driving detachments, but rather a more global effect of temporal integration! The collective cell interfaces gradually roughens over time - and detachments occurs at a critical value of interfacial roughness! (6/n)

So we turned to minimal active particle simulations, and found that this effect of detachments/single cell invasion in disordered environment was a highly robust feature - enabling us to use simulations to do hypothesis-testing! (5/n)

Most of our initial guesses turned out to be wrong! It’s not the challenge due to small pores in disordered environments (no detachments still with small ordered pores), nor simply due to a funnel/traffic jam effect of pore size gradients (no detachments in graded regular environments) (4/n)

Surprisingly, the density of obstacles per se mattered less than the disorder/heterogeneity in their positioning! Cancer cells invaded as a collective in free space+ordered environment, but as single cells in disordered environments! (3/n)

As biological heterogeneity is inherently difficult to control, we here chose a reductionist approach and let tumor cells invade into micro-engineered environments —> obstacles of varying densities, but also with or without disorder! 2/n

Excited about the new work from Z. Dunajova & S. Tasciyan (with the Sixt lab @ISTA) - how the mechanical heterogeneity of the environment can be (by itself!) a driver of tumor cell dissemination! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Combination of in vitro exp, simulations and KPZ stat phys!👇🧵1/n

New paper out in @pnas.org

We followed cells migrating along signalling gradients in 3D, and found they collectively behave as a living droplet - a self-propelling fluid that grows.

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

Very cool week!! Congrats!!

Second preprint from the lab in a week!

This time led by Aurelien.

Combining live imaging, quantitative image analysis and perturbations, he clarifies the mechanisms leading to primitive induction.

👇

US researchers must stand up to protect freedoms, not just funding Curtailment of freedoms and disregard for the rule of law in the United States is destroying the ability of science to serve the nation’s, and the world’s, interests. Researchers can take action.

New op-ed in @nature.com: The Trump administration's assault on freedoms and the rule of law is an existential threat to US science. We urge scientists to speak out in defense of freedoms, not just funding. With Andrea Liu @upenn.edu and Sidney Nagel of UChicago! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Have you ever wondered what happens when a sea star carries a backpack full of beads? You can now find out: « Tube feet dynamics drive adaptation in sean star locomotion » www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...