Julia Eckert

AJs maintain tissue integrity by maturing in response to actomyosin generated tension at cell–cell contacts. (A) AJs are formed in the apical region of polarised epithelial tissues. Subsequent figures show a top-down view of an x-y plane at the apical region. (B) Schematic defining the key components involved in cell–cell adhesion, as discussed in this Review. Cadherin–catenin complexes (CCCs) hold together the actin cytoskeletons of adjacent cells at regions of cell–cell contact. Clustering of CCCs forms AJs. (C) Pulling forces exerted on CCCs changes their bio-mechanical properties. The E-cadherin trans interaction changes from an X- (left) to a strand-swap (right) conformation and α-catenin recruits vinculin, which strengthens the binding of α-catenin to F-actin. Florette indicate catch bonds, which increase in lifetime with applied force (E-cadherin X dimer, α-catenin tail domain–actin and vinculin tail domain–actin). Created in BioRender by Winn, L., 2025. https://BioRender.com/l1sc933. This figure was sublicensed under CC-BY 4.0 terms.

In their Review, John James, Darius Köster and colleagues consider E-cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion, focusing on recent advances in our understanding how actin cortex dynamics affect adherens junction stability.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club - FocalPlane Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club - News

Meet the Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club @epimechfc.bsky.social
Nimesh Chahare @onenimesa.bsky.social and Julia Eckert @juliaeckert.bsky.social introduce us to the Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club.
Learn how you can get involved with this community: focalplane.biologists.com/2025/12/04/e...

Cytoskeleton shapes tissues during development. What signaling drives these changes?

I'm @onenimesa.bsky.social and let's explore FGF signaling's crucial role with examples.
Trust me, you need to know this!

🧪⚛️ Surface tension—driven by non-equilibrium currents not forces—in pattern formation leads to the same type of interface laws as in liquid foams: Plateau laws, von Neumann evolution; and a new emergent phenomenon: domain splitting akin to cell division. nature.com/articles/s4156…

Hi bsky!

How do cells coordinate fate with migration during development? 🐣 Turns out EMT doesn't just drive cell behaviour changes... it actively primes BMP signalling competence, creating a reciprocal coupling that drives collective invasion!

(@bensteventon.bsky.social lab)

tinyurl.com/2ncc8zap

Are you curious about how @epimechfc.bsky.social started a little over 2 years ago and how it has developed since then?

Do not miss our blog post! Thank you, @focalplane.bsky.social, for reaching out to us and for the opportunity! 👇

Thanks, @focalplane.bsky.social, for giving us the opportunity to write a blog post about our @epimechfc.bsky.social!

Delighted to see my image featured alongside other fantastic contributions in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience coffee table book! 🤩

📜We are thrilled to announce that the latest MorphoNet paper is officially published 🎉 ! Discover 5 varied use cases in which MorphoNet helps segment, curate, evaluate & validate complex 3D+t datasets, and much more 🧑‍💻 ! Read at @elife.bsky.social : doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Clarke, D. N., & Martin, A. C. (2021). Actin-based force generation and cell adhesion in tissue morphogenesis. Current Biology, 31(10), R667–R680. #EpithelialMechanicsReview
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

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...

Congratulations! 🥳 All the best!

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!

Emergent Epithelial Resilience under Cyclic Loading https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.27.691035v1

Cartoon with principle of Flash-away and images of cells

FLASH-AWAY: Intrabody-Directed Targeting of Optogenetic Tools for Protein Degradation: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Prasoon Awasthi, Aniruddh Murali, Ellen Juel P{\o}rtner, Adam Cohen Simonsen, Francesca Serra: Surface functionalization modulates collective cell behavior at integer topological defects https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.23380 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.23380 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.23380

Measuring cellular force using DNA-based tension probes: from ensemble to single-molecule studies - Nature Protocols The authors present a protocol for the use of two advanced DNA-based tension probes, the reversible shearing DNA-based tension probe (RSDTP) and ForceChrono probe, which provide powerful tools for stu...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Above: transverse sections of neurulating chick embryos stained for DNA (methyl green) and F-actin (TRITC-phalloidin), without and with the addition of the phorbol ester PMA. Below: computational simulations of pseudostratified epithelia, with different apicobasal/lateral tension ratios. Either PMA treatment in embryos, or lower ratios in simulations, cause epithelial instability evidenced by extensive cell extrusion.

Paper alert! Mechanical conditions preventing live cell extrusion during primary neurulation in amniotes. @sabr-bio.bsky.social article published as pre-proof in @cellsdev.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

🧪 Geometry beats chemistry: we show that self-assembly can be controlled by tuning large-scale geometric parameters rather than molecular binding energies.
PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Video summary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FS3...
#SelfAssembly #Biophysics #PhysicsOfLife

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

Exciting application of our programmable #CellCulture matrix #DyNAtrix.

By creating a mechanically reconfigurable microenvironment, we can now invert & guide epithelial cell polarity in real time.

#DNAnanotech

1/ 🧵

Congrats Maik!

Karnat, Narayana, Peneti, Guglielmotti, Rahaman, Jain, Ladoux, Lin, Tlili, M\`ege, Rupprecht: Noninvasive rheological inference from stable flows in confined tissues https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20155 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.20155 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.20155

📢 Paper alert 📢

Chirality is known to be important for the movement of microorganisms and active matter. In our new paper out today in @natphys.nature.com, we show that chirality is used by malaria parasites to control their motion patterns:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Here comes a 🧵 ... (1/9)

Optogenetic control of mechanotransduction based on light-induced homodimerization of talin Integrin-based adhesion complexes serve as primary sites for actomyosin force transmission to the extracellular matrix, providing traction that drives cell mechanical responses including adhesion, mig...

Optogenetic control of mechanotransduction based on light-induced homodimerization of talin url: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article-...

Multiplexed imaging of G-proteins and ERK activity upon activation of CaSR We have previously shown that the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) activates different G proteins and second messengers in single cells, and that GPCR and G protein-mediated ERK activity can be highly ...

In our new #Preprint, we pilot a revolutionary new idea: no supplemental data (it has 21 figures, though):
Multiplexed imaging of G-proteins and ERK activity upon activation of CaSR
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fascinating #EpithelialMechanics thread by @jorgealmagro.bsky.social, exploring the connection between tissue geometry and tumor growth 👇

The law of the jungle.
Interactions of cells in a collective lead to global rotation.
In 80% of the case HUVEC cells turn clockwise.
How many cells does it take for this to happen?

Lee, J., Abdeen, A. A., Wycislo, K. L., Fan, T. M., & Kilian, K. A. (2016). Interfacial geometry dictates cancer cell tumorigenicity. Nature materials, doi.org/10.1038/nmat... #EpithelialMechanics