Heisenberg Lab

Just back from our group retreat in the beautiful Wachau 🍇! Two days of inspiring scientific presentations on tools and techniques, a fun game night 🐺, and a trip to Rosenburg Castle 🏰 with a breathtaking falconry show 🦅 Here’s to more science and adventures together! 💪✨

Ever wondered what happens to developing embryos during hypoxia? 🤔

Find out from our PhD student @k-roksolana.bsky.social at poster #45 at the @embo.org Workshop 'Developmental metabolism: flows of energy, matter & information!' 🐟🧬 #EMBODevMet

Heading to Biomatter: From Cytoskeleton to Embryo in Arolla?
Don’t miss our PhD student @prajwal08.bsky.social at poster #44! Come hear about his cool work on #osmoregulation during #embryogenesis.

#Arolla2025

Heading to the International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology in Chile? 😄
Don’t miss the talk by our PhD student Alena Kizenko on Aug 12, on how an ancient cytoskeletal gene found a new role in tunicate development 🧬 #EvoDevo #Invertebrates
🎥👇 Developing Phallusia embryo

Last week we hosted our annual @hfspo.bsky.social catch up meeting with @paveltomancak.bsky.social, Cassandra Extavour & ‪@hejnol.bsky.social!

Fascinating discussions on the evolutionary functionalization of intermediate filaments shaping animal development 🧬 #EvoDevo

Seeing is indeed believing!🧐🤩

Congratulations to our postdoc @tushnakapoor.bsky.social on winning the 'Best Microscopy-based Discovery' prize 🔬,sponsored by @focalplane.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social,for her talk at the
@embo.org Workshop #EMBOcellpolarity25! 🐟👏🥳

Those of you attending #EMBOcellularmatters, make sure to head to our postdoc @gayasinga.bsky.social' s poster (#47) TOMORROW! Building on insights from Drosophila and Xenopus, she uncovers new mechanisms on how exclusion zones form and persist in 3D #syncytial #embryos in #zebrafish 🐟

Are you attending #EMBOcellPolarity25? Our postdoc @tushnakapoor.bsky.social will talk about her work on how #polarity controls #epiboly movements in #zebrafish, TOMORROW at Session 1, 11:15am! 🐟

In preprints: expanded insight into epithelial spreading during zebrafish epiboly

Donna Guan and Ashley Bruce discuss two recent #preprints from Suyash Naik & @heisenbergcplab.bsky.social et al. and Sharon Minsuk & James Glazier et al.:
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Congratulations to our postdoc @nikhil-mishra.bsky.social for winning an award for his fantastic talk on 'Zygote geometry-driven asymmetric cell divisions pattern cell cycles and zygotic genome activation' at #DevStem2025 @impvienna.bsky.social! Way to go, Nikhil! 🥳🙌

Woohoo! Work by our former postdoc @stetavano.bsky.social is now published in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social !! 🥳🥳https://tinyurl.com/cjszcphs
Read the summary below to learn more. 👇🐟
Congratulations to all the authors! 👏👏☺️

Highlights include the latest works from Bluesky peeps (Bleeps?) @heisenbergcplab.bsky.social & @nikhil-mishra.bsky.social, @vprincelab.bsky.social, @bruceappel.bsky.social, Riddle Lab & @pavaniperera.bsky.social among others! #zebrafish

There’s no age limit to curiosity for #science, science is for everyone! 🤩 Our PhD student Laura Hofmann spoke to senior citizens about her research on Balbiani body in #zebrafish oocytes, & needless to say they were super excited and curious! #Lifelonglearners 👵👴

Thanks @zebrafishrock.bsky.social! Go read @nikhil-mishra.bsky.social 's preprint on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social if you still haven't 😉👇
tinyurl.com/Biorxiv-nmis...

Heisenberg Lab 2025

Who said Santa arrives only on Christmas Eve? 😏 Sometimes 🎅 comes even in February, like at the Heisenberg lab yesterday 😉 We played Secret Santa, exchanged gifts 🎁 , and ate great food 🍕🍪, to beat the February blues ❄️

This work was the result of a fruitful collaboration with Yuting I. Li and @ehannezo.bsky.social.
Also thanks to the support provided by
@istaustria-iof.bsky.social 🔬 and the Aquatics Facility 🐟 @ISTA
Congratulations to all the authors! Excellent work!! 👏👏

Finally, the N:C gradient and the resulting gradient of cell cycle length lead to an earlier onset of zygotic transcription at the margin, thereby establishing a novel, ‘symmetry-breaking’ function of early embryo geometry in zygotic transcription onset.

… and those with a steeper cell volume gradient due to artificially increased blastodisc curvature show slower propagating waves and decreased synchrony. SM6, SM7

Indeed, altering embryo geometry, and therefore the N:C ratio, perturbs the mitotic waves. Embryos with two 'APs' produce two waves, one from each ectopic AP.

The N:C ratio becomes graded due to the specific geometry of the early embryo, which causes patterned asymmetric cell divisions, producing smaller daughter cells at the blastoderm margin. This causes greater S-phase lengthening in these marginal cells.

Mitotic waves propagate largely independently of cell-cell coupling. In fact, increasing coupling through embryo syncytialization reshapes the wave and causes it to originate at the margin rather than near the AP.

We investigated the spatial patterning of early cell cycles in the zebrafish embryo and discovered that a gradient of nucleocytoplasmic (N:C) ratio within the embryo spatially patterns S-phase length along the animal pole (AP)-margin axis, producing radial mitotic waves near the AP.

📢‼️ Exciting new preprint from the lab by @nikhil-mishra.bsky.social et al, now out on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social, reveals that the early embryo geometry spatiotemporally patterns zygotic genome activation (ZGA) in zebrafish. 🐟 tinyurl.com/Biorxiv-nmis...

Read on to learn more... 👇

The Heisenberg Lab is now on Bluesky! Follow our account to learn about our latest work, lab news, and more. #zebrafish, #ascidian #drosophila #development #mechanics