Prakash Lab @ Miami

Just under two weeks left to apply for this 3 year postdoc looking at how signalling shapes skeletal development in sea urchins! Please reach out if you’re interested! For lovers of imaging, skeletal development, biomineralization, in situ hybridization, and marine invertebrates!

YouTube video by University of Miami Coral Sonification

Excited to share this "Music from Science" project led my postdoc Melissa! Watch the video (with sound)! These are original music compositions created from research data on corals from our lab! 😀🪸🎼
Here is a news article with more details:
news.miami.edu/stories/2025...

youtu.be/C-JNPIXyKes?...

🎉🎉We’re on the cover of Nature Physics! @natphys.nature.com

Here is the original paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A host of yellow, trumpet-shaped cells gather in a ball shape, with trumpets pointing outward, on a black background. The trumpets move around slightly.

A new study originating from the #MBL proposes that physical forces encouraged the evolution of multicellular life! 🦠 Follow the link to read more about Stentor, a single-celled organism that could offer an early model for multicellularity.

📲 More: bit.ly/4cilZvV

Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics
@naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor!

How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork?

for a little back-story on how this project started in the Physiology course at the @mblscience.bsky.social , including how two of the authors become involved in the project after emerging from the water at "garbage beach" carrying lasers, check this out: wayback.archive-it.org/12248/201508...

Thrilled to be featured in The New York Times! @nytimes.com

Fantastic piece by @jack-tamisiea.bsky.social on our discovery of the role of physical forces in evolution! With insightful comments from @wcratcliff.bsky.social!

Awesome, congrats!!

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics
@naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor!

How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?

Thanks Allan!

And a milestone for the sea urchins too! Congrats to all 🎉

CONGRATULATIONS to my first PhD student Bikram Shrestha for successfully defending his thesis!! 🥳 😃

This marks a major milestone for Bikram, me, and our lab!!

@univmiami.bsky.social

Thanks @focalplane.bsky.social for the highlight, great to show an spiralian larva to all this amazing crowd.

#WormWednesday #DevBio #EvoDevo

In Memory of Andy Acrivos: CEMS Alum and Titan of Chemical Engineering Andreas (Andy) Acrivos passed away on February 17, 2025. Born in Greece in 1928, Prof. Acrivos arrived at Minnesota in 1950 following undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, becoming the  second...

Sad news… A giant in fluid mechanics and particulate flows cse.umn.edu/cems/news/me...

Excited to share our new paper in @pnas.org doi.org/10.1073/pnas...! Ice cubes often appear cloudy because, as water freezes, air bubbles get trapped and scatter light. But how does freezing rate affect the shape of the bubbles?

For the recent coral reef science arrivals, here are two starter packs so you can find your people! If you want to be added, please let me know. I have been adding people as they come through my feed. go.bsky.app/Qo5Gh2H go.bsky.app/QSafBeL 🌎🌊🧪🌐🐟🪸🐙🌿

MUSIC from SCIENCE: "Sonic explorations of coral larvae swimming data" 😀 🎵 🪸 (Please repost)

Come join a musical recital event on Tue April 29 at 7 pm by my postdoc Melissa Ruszczyk Indigo Knecht and colleagues at St. Bede Episcopal Chapel at @univmiami.bsky.social Coral Gables campus!!

the word irony is written on a white background ALT: the word irony is written on a white background

I have been trying to find the time to move away from the polical hellscape we find ourselves in to finish and share a bluetorial about science.

This helps me remember what this is all about.

Ironically, it is about the treatment of pain.

‘The Interview’: Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World The Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer talks about burnout from covering the pandemic and how bird-watching gave him a new sense of hope.

The most achingly beautiful explanation of what science is, from @edyong209.bsky.social: “the idea that much of the world is hidden from us, that we don’t perceive it and don’t understand it, and that it is worth understanding and it is necessary to understand.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...

The evolution of shape diversity through the lens of physics—explored in our new paper! A fruitful collaboration between our lab @EMBL, Salbreux’s lab @unige & others, led by @BailleulRichar1—now independent at @ENS_ULM—& Nicolas Cuny. bit.ly/3WRqdEa

Gene editing technology began by people studying salt marshes. Ozempic began by folks studying the venom of Gila Monsters. Support for basic science has empowered us to understand our world. Tethering it to applications health has transformed and saved countless lives.

On my reading list for tomorrow!! How fun is this?

Thanks Priya! Wow ok, look forward to chatting!

🚨📢 New paper alert! Our work showing that bilateral cellular flows display asymmetry prior to left–right organizer formation in amniote gastrulation is now published in PNAS!! @pnas.org
🥳😃 🐣
Paper link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

News article: news.miami.edu/stories/2025...

Let's look at some cool bilateral cellular flows videos
IMHO: this is a goldmine for #EpithelialMechanics
Movie from Asai et al 2024 shows beautiful counter rotating flows.

Isn't the early chicken embryo the BEST?

Check out the latest thread from @epimechfc.bsky.social , with compilation of fantastic videos from @vprakashlab.bsky.social , @jeromegros.bsky.social, Mikawa, and Weijer labs!

Earth’s Coral Reefs Face a New, Deadly Mass Bleaching. They Can Still Be Saved “A mass bleaching event is, by definition, a mass mortality event,” a leading coral reef expert says

Interview re coral reefs with Scientific American:

“We shouldn’t give up on the world’s coral reefs…. But restoration is not the way to save them.

The way to save them is to deal with greenhouse gas emissions, & that, of course, is much, much harder.”

www.scientificamerican.com/article/eart...

Word clouds summarizing answers to survey questions. (A) Question 1: In your area of work, what is the most common interpretation of the term ‘mechanism’ as applied to research questions? The most common word is 'Gene', followed by 'Process', 'Molecular' and 'Cell'. (B) Question 2: When you assess work in your field, what do you look for in terms of a mechanistic understanding of development? The most common word is 'Cell', followed by 'Look', 'Level', 'Process' and 'Gene'.

A case for broadening our view of mechanism in developmental biology

Read this Perspective Article from B. Duygu Özpolat @biyolokum.bsky.social , Swathi Arur @swathiarur.bsky.social and Mansi Srivastava:
https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/152/2/dev204605/365016/

Poster for the show featuring an iguana (I think)

My colleague Bob Goldstein & UNC Art Prof Beth Grabowski teach an amazing course: Art & Science: Merging Printmaking and Biology. Each time it culminates in a wonderful art show. Today's the day-join us 4-6PM IN UNC's Genome Science Building. More about the class is at:
bio.unc.edu/wp-content/u...

SCIENCE IRL: Community SciComm mini-grant Skype a Scientist is offering $300-1,000 mini-grants to support boots-on-the-ground science communication. The Science IRL mini-grants will support projects that put either 1) important science messa...

I am extremely excited to announce that for the first time ever, Skype a Scientist is offering mini-grants to support IRL science communication!!

Communicating science out in our communities is critical. We want to enable others to get their projects off the ground!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...