Jessica Zhao

Pathologists have used nuclear & tissue shapes to diagnose #cancer for decades, but what is the molecular basis for this? In our latest work, we develop a computational pipeline to figure this out in #colorectalcancer! Check out 🧵& preprint #mechanobiology #stemcells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out our newest manuscript on how chromatin meshwork controls phase separation of nuclear condensates!

brangwinners ❤️

Start of 2025 @mblscience.bsky.social Physiology course! This is the second year of Amy @gladfelterlab.bsky.social and I co-Directing this absolutely amazing and life-changing course: www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Nucleoli as biomolecular bubble tea! Congrats to former Princeton ugrad Holly Cheng (now GS @MIT) ->Holly's senior thesis work, a close collab w Roggeveen Wang & @zs-biophys.bsky.social‬ &Stone. Come for the cool movies & stay for the viscoelasticity! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407423122

Genome-wide mapping of mesoscale neuronal RNA organization and condensation Subcellular RNA organization can affect critical cellular functions. However, our understanding of RNA microenvironments, particularly biomolecular condensates, remains limited, largely due to a lack ...

What drives cytoplasmic mRNA organization? We created unbiased, genome-wide maps of mesoscale RNA-RNA spatial proximity, revealing impact of encoded protein function. Fantastic work from @lindsayabecker.bsky.social @sofiquinodoz.bsky.social @davidaknowles.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/14 “Epithelial” & “Mesenchymal” aren’t binary categories—they form a spectrum, or better yet, a multidimensional space. This becomes especially clear in collective cell migration, which often depends on a finely tuned degree of “mesenchymal-ness”.

#cellbio #devbio #cellmigration

We may not have really squared the circle — but we came close! 😉 In our @NaturePhysics paper w/ @fakhrilab.bsky.social, light-triggered membrane excitability enables programmable shapes — a step toward engineering living matter.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#biophysics #syntheticcell #softmatter

title, authors and abstract Sequence-dependent activity and compartmentalization of foreign DNA in a eukaryotic nucleus https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39913590/

In a remarkable new paper researchers take a very unconventional approach, introducing into yeast cells (S. cerevisiae) entirely new chromosomes whose DNA never existed in a eukaryotic nucleus. They do this by making the entire bacterial genome of two different bacteria into a yeast chromosome 3/n

Large-scale control over collective cell migration using light-activated epidermal growth factor receptors Programmable control over tissue movement is a fundamental challenge for tissue engineering and wound healing. Suh, Thornton, et al. discovered that a light-controlled EGF receptor controls long-range...

I'm so happy to report that our preprint on light-induced collective cell migration has now been published in Cell Systems! This project was a lot of fun and will be the basis for a lot of our ongoing & future work.

Are you—or someone you know—exploring the crossroads of #AI and #CellularPhysiology?

@hhmijanelia.bsky.social is hosting a free, live-streamed conference March 30 - April 1, diving into the latest AI-driven advances in biological research.

Join via Zoom—register now: janelia.news/register

Feeling the force from within – new tools and insights into nuclear mechanotransduction Summary: This Review discusses new insights and technological advances in understanding how the nucleus contributes to the ability of the cell to translate mechanical stimuli into transcriptional resp...

Interested in nuclear mechanobiology, and how advanced genomic tools can shed light on how the cell nucleus might sense mechanical forces? Read our latest review by excellent Julien Morival and Anna Hazelwood, now published @jcellsci.bsky.social:
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article-...

Integrating model systems and genomic insights to decipher mechanisms of cancer metastasis Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00825-2This Review explores how experimental models of metastasis, such as mouse models and cell cultures, can complement the (multi)omics analysis of human metastasis…

New online! Integrating model systems and genomic insights to decipher mechanisms of cancer metastasis

New Preprint ‼️ Work led by the incredible @ananyac2000.bsky.social 💃🏽💃🏽 Mpipi-T is finally here!!! 🥳🥳 👇🏽👇🏽

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#Cellpose 3 paper now out. Not all images are perfect. Restore your images with Cellpose3 to get better segmentations, w/ @marius10p.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/n Excited to share our new preprint! Using live imaging in Drosophila embryos, we show that RNA Pol II clusters switch from sites of initiation to elongation during zygotic genome activation and that they are stably associated with an active gene: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Heading to my first ever GRS/GRC soon! 🌴 Can't wait to learn so much about the field of #PhysicalScienceofCancer www.grc.org/physical-sci...

I put together a small guide on how to get started with Fiji. Please distribute to anyone who might benefit form this! zenodo.org/records/1477... #imageanalysis #fiji #imagej #training

UC, a top recipient of federal research funding, is concerned about Trump pause on grant reviews The University of California, the nation's top recipient of federal research funding in higher education, is raising questions and concerns about the Trump administration's pause in research grant rev...

If you care about the University of California and life-saving biomedical research, read this and be our ally! Thanks for speaking about it @fleabrained.bsky.social and @christineliu.art
www.latimes.com/california/s...

Attention all you fantastic and energetic student and postdocs!!!!!

Excited to share James Jusuf's preprint:

By integrating Micro-C with SuperRes Live-Imaging we can calibrate genomics&imaging to perform absolute quantification of looping (e.g. this loop is present 3%)

We quantify mESC 36k loops: <loops> are generally rare (2.3%)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

6/ Bonus science(?) art because why not!
#squidgame #오징어게임

Squid primary cell culture as a model system and experimental tool Squid primary cells from various tissues and ages are isolated, maintained in culture, and express exogenous genes. This protocol opens up numerous opportunities in molecular biology, neuroscience, an...

HNY! In case you thought 2025 is the year of the snake, it's actually the year of the SQUID 🦑 Excited to present this new protocol paper from the @brangwynnelab.bsky.social on isolating+transfecting squid primary cells 🧫✨! Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share our new publication in @naturephysics.bsky.social on life and death of eliminated cells! Great collaboration between our CAM team and Doostmohammadi's. Special congrats @lakshmib02.bsky.social and Siavash Monfared! 🎉
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share the first paper from my lab 🤩 - a great collaboration with Dani Fachinetti lab - we discover a #mechanosensitive nuclear envelope #checkpoint that arrests cells directly post chromosome mis-segregation rdcu.be/d5AC9 👇🧵 #cancer #mechanics #p53 #chromatin

Is chromatin ordered or disordered? It all depends on the linker DNA length.

Check our latest work with Mike Rosen and Sy Redding. We explore how changes in linker DNA length (as small as 1 bp) fine-tune chromatin structure, between order and disorder, and the properties of chromatin droplets

We often speak about chromatin as being accessible or inaccessible, but what does it mean? We wrote a short review on this, 🔬 focused:

sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A big thank you to Tom Fillot for his efforts on this and to
@hansen_lab

@marcelonollmann
for their help as editors.

Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent antibody response against a pathogen. Could lead to topical vaccines that are applied in a cream. @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social led the charge... @natureportfolio.bsky.social 1/55

Great summary of our recently published paper 🤩

1000 Women in STEM Women in science are no longer invisible. There are many resources available, and all you have to do is spend a little time looking to find fascinating information on hundreds of women scientists f…

My little side project for 2025. To highlight 1,000 portraits of #womeninSTEM #womeninscience from all eras, all nationalities and all disciplines.

➡️ @1000womeninstem.bsky.social

More info here : aninfinityofhypotheses.wordpress.com/2024/12/09/1...