Levayer Lab

Somatic cells compartmentalise their metabolism to sustain germ cell survival To ensure success in reproduction, organisms dedicate substantial resources to supporting the germline. In testes, somatic gonadal cells form a barrier that isolates germ cells from circulating nutrie...

🆕🧪‼️
New lab preprint!
We study how germ cells (the cells that give rise to gametes, in this case sperm) are supported by somatic (non-germ) cells of the gonad. This matters for our understanding of reproduction - without germ cell development, animals are sterile.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🔬 The next international Developmental Biology course, organized by Institut Curie with @sorbonne-universite.fr, will focus on "From stem #cells to #morphogenesis".

📅 Apply by:
• July 20 (3.5 weeks with hands-on workshop)
• Aug 31 (10 days of seminars)

🔗 training.institut-curie.org/courses/deve...

Majority of fruit fly immunity studies can be replicated, huge analysis finds Verification of 50 years of data bolsters immunology research, but identifies “suspicious” papers that don’t hold up

Comment on our @Reproducibility project in @Drosophila immunity. It is a normal that findings—however exciting and important at the time—may later prove to be more complex than initially believed. Re-evaluations is essential to the self-correcting nature of science. www.science.org/content/arti...

That's great ! I know ressources are scarce, but seems worth the investment for the community as a whole. Something to consider maybe for european funding scheme as well

This is quite impressive (curious to know if funding agency would support this, for sure they should).

Come and Join our Dpt in Beautiful #Geneva !

We are looking for a #Microscopy & #Image #Analysis expert to help all of us at the Dpt.

Registration is now open!

Gastrulation Reloaded: Developing, engineering & evolving the body plan

📅 October 14–17, 2025
📍 Paris, France
🗓️ Abstract & early bird deadline: July 15, 2025

www.gastrulation-reloaded.conferences-pasteur.org/home

Exceptional lineup of speakers & many selected talks

Check out my first #preLight on the work of Sokol's team exploring PCP and mechanosensation! It was so much fun to pick a preprint, read it, write about it, and even get to ask the authors questions directly. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of many more preLight posts to come! 🙌

On cell extrusion in the #intestine!
After 80 years of observations, we finally took a deeper look thanks to 2D #organoids. We report:

3D #forces, #extrusion still only in the villus even without curvature, #lamellipodia generate 3D force.. and more. Have a look!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrat Ina ! Great news indeed (and happy to have a chance to keep witnessing what will come out of your tenured lab)

🚨 Hey #gastrulation folks!

The early bird registration and the abstract submission are coming up very soon.

Please register now for this nice #conference in @pasteur.fr, it will be super cool!
👇👇👇

Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Sham Tlili, winner of the CNRS 2025 bronze medal - IBDM | Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille A distinction that rewards a promising and already fruitful scientific career.

🥇Sham Tlili has been awarded the CNRS 2025 Bronze Medal! She studies how physical forces shape living tissues by using mouse stem cell models known as gastruloids. A unique blend of physics & biology.

🔗 Read more: www.ibdm.univ-amu.fr/sham-tlili-w...

Automorphy as a self-organizing DPP-dependent process that translates patterns into mechanical programs during Drosophila embryogenesis Automorphy gets the morph into the morphogen.

My PhD work is out in Science Advances! We show how DPP drives tissue morphogenesis by encoding local mechanical programs iteratively, unraveling a self-organizing mechanism linking morphogen gradients to tissue dynamics.

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

#DevBio #Morphogenesis #Drosophila

Funny that the virtual cell virtually encapsulate everything except....cell biology...(yes, there is a full world of complex behaviour outside the realm of gene expression) 🤷‍♂️

This process is long and painful and quite often requires long "internal" thought debates before coming to a decision. Judgment is a long process that constatnly improve and change as we practice, and we have so much to lose by delegating it... (and yes...I do like reviewing articles ...🤷‍♂️)

AI, peer review and the human activity of science When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

Fully in line with this opinion article on the value of human judgement in peer review. Down the line, reviewing is not about making a good summary, but providing a hierarchy of what is really important and not, weighted by the estimated pain/cost of the requests
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Beautiful!

The Cordero Lab has openings for two post-docs positions. Please contact me if you are interested in doing cross-species research on local and systemic intestinal biology.

Students (Master's/PhD), do not miss this fantastic Developmental Biology course of @sorbonne-universite.fr and @institutcurie.bsky.social - It is FREE and open to international students, however, room and board + travel are not included.

training.institut-curie.org/courses/deve...

Very nice piece bringing a lot of food for thought on how to rationalise our practices with fly pushing. It's been a long standing discussion on our side and I am gratefull someone did all the work estimating the impact of various practices.

Cell-type-specific nucleotide sharing through gap junctions impacts sensitivity to replication stress in Drosophila Boumard et al. demonstrate gap-junction-dependent tissue-scale nucleotide sharing, which impacts cellular sensitivity to perturbation of nucleotide homeostasis and replication stress. Drosophila wing ...

Very happy to share our latest lab publication!
The hard work of @bboumard.bsky.social, Gwenn Le Meur and collaborators!
Cell-type-specific nucleotide sharing through gap junctions impacts sensitivity to replication stress in Drosophila: Developmental Cell
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lDFi_Yv6z...

🎉 Congratulations to David Bikard @pasteur.fr on his 2025 @embo.org Gold Medal win!

🧬 He's pioneering phage-CRISPR tools to edit gut #bacteria in vivo, reshaping the #microbiome from within and opening the door to targeted therapies.

👉 europa.eu/!HQbHTw
👉 europa.eu/!KtWf33

@dbikard.bsky.social

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

E-cadherin mechanotransduction activates EGFR-ERK signaling in epithelial monolayers by inducing ADAM-mediated ligand shedding Epithelial stretching promotes the release of EGF receptor ligands that stimulate ERK activation.

A new #ScienceSignaling study interrogates crosstalk between mechanical and biochemical signals in epithelial cells, illustrating how mechanical stretching activates a kinase that regulates cell growth, migration, and differentiation.

What is buckling, and why is it relevant in understanding epithelial morphogenesis? 🧐

I am @onenimesa.bsky.social and I will share some papers to understand this aspect of #EpithelialMechanics

🔥 We've already received over a third of pre-registrations!

#Mifobio2025 is already shaping up to be a highly attractive event...

Don't delay in pre-registering!
👉 imabio-cnrs.fr

@cnrs.fr @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social @cnrsingenierie.bsky.social @cnrs-inist.bsky.social

📣Next
@devstempasteur.bsky.social
Seminar this Friday : Fiona Doetsch from the Biozentrum University of Basel will speak about :

Adult Neural Stem Cells: Regulation & Heterogeneity

Invited by Shahragim Tajbakhsh

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.

👇

You will even get extra details later then : ) (thanks for accepting this by the way)