Levayer Lab

Oh no, they are going to experience Lautreculin...😱 (but this is really cool and quite an achievement to bring cytoskeleton there)

Come join us in beautiful Roscoff for this Conference Jacques Monod on Developmental regulation: from molecular to ecological niches
May 18-22, 2026 Roscoff, France
Abstract deadline: January 31, 2026
Apply here: cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en

Reviewing process has always been painfull, but it will just become useless and impossible to publish if we start accepting this (we are not helping science...and better refusing to review if you have no time rather than using these tools without filter)

It's been several times that I am pretty sure to witness during reviewer crosscommenting assesment mostly generated by AI (composed of hundred of unnecessary and finicky points that would lead to years of revision). For the human reviewer out there, speak up to editor if you notice this !

ERC-Plus: jackpot science or missed chance to fix academia? My reflections on ERC-Plus, Europe’s newest ultra-competitive research grant and what it tells us about the academic culture we’re…

I just published: ERC-Plus: jackpot science or missed chance to fix academia?

My reflections on ERC-Plus, Europe’s newest ultra-competitive research grant and what it tells us about the academic culture we’re building.

medium.com/p/erc-plus-j...

I am just afraid how it could be badly used to overfocus on millions of non important details that would make reviewing even worst than it is already...(and to be honnest I suspect I have already seen in crossreviewing reviewer report looking very much like AI style...which is worrying)

This is a nice and very timely piece. I am not sure I would be so optimistic and the long term capacity of IA but for sure its results need to be properly assess to understand the intrinsic bias, the limitation and what it is good for (if anything).

Mid-career Group Leader position in AI in genomics at Institut Pasteur, Paris - Research Institut Pasteur and the CNRS are launching a call for a mid-career group leader position in AI in genomics. We are looking for an experienced researcher (typically with > 8 years of research experien...

There a is a joint call between @pasteur.fr and @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social for a mid career group leader position in AI and genomics (or molecular biology). Don't hesistate to spread the word if you know anyone relevant.

research.pasteur.fr/en/call/mid-...

Probably the most intimidating ceremony I have ever been to...but glad of this recognition from the @academiesciences.bsky.social for the CDEH team ! (and yes I am wearing a suit...).

On the top of my reading list ! Really nice that you can outline the spatial pattern of inhibitor with smFish despite the dynamics of the pattern (that the advantage of slow travelling wave !)

The lab’s first pre-print! We investigated how growth-inducing Erk activity waves are regulated in regenerating zebrafish scales. We discovered that Erk waves are followed by waves of expression of their own inhibitors, as predicted by excitable waves theory. tinyurl.com/26r2cmpj

Great science & fruiful discussions last Friday the 14th Nov. around "the physics of Stem cells" , the 2025 Stem Cell Initiative & QBio joint symposium.

An honour to have Meryem Baghdadi & David Brückner as keynote speakers, who gave inspiring talks.

🙏🙏 to all our speakers & poster presenters.

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

I agree in priniciple, but I am very scared of the natural laziness of mankind that will eventually lead to wrong usage (this is a general huge issue with the current trend of LLM and generative AI ..my AI-xiety is almost topping up my ecoanxiety right now...)

you nail it...exactly my impression (and fear)

You may claim that it is just supposed to assist human decision. But if you want to bring a human input, you will anway have to deep dive in the paper, read it and check the data/results. So...going to my initial claim, will it really help us ?... I am not sure...

If the standard will become that every editor/reader will first "qed" the papers, we'll hand up in some absurd system where the editorial decision and judged quality of a paper will mostly lies in details and how much everyone prepolish the article following black box statements.

Basically, it is not really asking : based on all the observable, which alternative models could be proposed to explain all these data ? (which is the key question when you review an article).

My global impression that that it tends to "comparmentalise" the studies overfocusing on every small statement/observation on their own, while not interogating the global working model with all the experiments/observable as a whole (which admitedly some human reviewers also do)

There are many essential things that we do as reviewer which is not provided here : evaluating the novelty and positioning relative to the field, ponderating the request for experiments with their difficulty and feasibility, and above all judge the statement with the full picture

I am honnestly a bit worried by the latest fuss about qed (the IA driven review). While the results are indeed quite impressive (it is very good at listing the claim and finding potential improvement), I don't quite see how this will eventually reduce the reviewing burden or help us

We are looking for: PhD Student (starting as Research Assistant) and Postdoctoral Researcher in Stem Cell Biology and Mechanobiology. Please RT💕
🔗 About our lab: renew.science/principal_in...
🎓 PhD position: jobportal.ku.dk/phd/?show=15...
🧪 Postdoc position: jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

Cannot agree more with this thread 👇. More supportive grant for early career and junior group + a continuum of supportive landscape is the way to keep science at high level (never been a big fan of the science "mercato"...)

Just had wonderful 3 days of science and connection in Nîmes for our joint lab retreat with @leopoldlab.bsky.social , Laura Boulan lab and @argo-mkhrji.bsky.social. A lots of brainstorming on growth regulation, robustness, plasticity and the future of drosophila (with hopf bifurcations in between)

So the wing disc overgrowth phenotype after all may just a be an ECM phenotype 😱😱😱 (ok there is a bit of a stretch here...). Beautiful story !

Plasticity of ventricle position after heart looping in heterotaxy with right isomerism The left/right position of ventricles needs to be maintained after heart looping, an unexpected step affected in heterotaxy.

New publication | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to announce the first @cshlnews.bsky.social meeting on Cell Modeling in Space and Time, June 2026 💫

meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

Bringing together experiments, computation and theory to explore dynamic, multi-scale cellular organization and function!

1/3

Big thanks for the support of our institution @pasteur.fr @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social and funding agency @erc.europa.eu and @agencerecherche.bsky.social who made this work possible.

Overall, our main message is that there are different flavours of mechanical competition where either growth or interfacial tension can contribute to WT cell compaction and elimination with distinctive geometrical and cell death distribution features.

Checking more carefully MyoII and tension, we found that N-cad induction also triggers a downregulation of MyoII and tension in junctions "orthogonal" to the clone boundary (for reasons we don't quite understand yet). Putting this feature in the vertex model fully recapitulate the pattern of death