Mathieu Dedenon

Roffay, C., Molinard, G., ..., & Roux, A. (2021). Passive coupling of membrane tension and cell volume during active response of cells to osmosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(47), e2103228118. #EpithelialMechanics
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Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium reducing macromolecule diffusion | PNAS Intracellular transport of macromolecules is crucial for the proper functioning of most cellular processes. Although intracellular crowding is know...

Happy to highlight our collaborative work from our @ijmonod.bsky.social team with @destriano.bsky.social, B. Goyeau and M. Chabanon.
Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium that hinders macromolecular diffusivity.
Plus: a clever way to measure cell volume.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This weekend we projected cells and filaments on the roof of the @museeorsay.bsky.social in Paris, then we contracted it with a pinch of myosin.
And it was fabulous!

Grateful to have been part of this art/science project & thx to @manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social & the CytoMorphoLab

Alberto Dinelli, Ludovic Dumoulin, Karsten Kruse: Active topological strings in renewing nematopolar fluids https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18307 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.18307 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.18307

Thanks for the nice thread ! 👏
I was wondering how podosomes differ from lamellipodial protrusions ? Do they protrude more transversaly towards the substrate ?

How do cells orchestrate themselves to achieve a directional movement as a group?

Hi, I’m @sayukihirano.bsky.social. In this thread, I’ll highlight key mechanisms of how cells communicate with each other to perform directional collective migration.

New preprint! We show how mesoscopic nonequilibrium fluctuations in active gels emerge from the breaking of detailed balance at the molecular scale. Warning: Long technical paper ahead! Enjoy! @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @ubics.bsky.social @icreacommunity.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2601.20483

Scientists measure cellular membrane thickness inside cells for the first time

Reported in #JCellBiol, a method developed in the lab of Associate Professor Danielle Grotjahn (@nanigrotjahn.bsky.social) measures membrane thickness directly inside intact cells and identifies ATP synthase clusters in curved, unusually thick membrane regions.

Guillaume Pernollet shows that epithelial cells adjust their shape to locally flatten, forming scutoids for any geometry, changing our view of cell packing. Thanks to all! @clairedessalles.bsky.social @juanmagararc.bsky.social @sciencesunige.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How can embryos use pulsatile contraction to shape tissue development during morphogenesis? I'm @weiyiqian.bsky.social and with this thread I want to introduce the roles of pulsatile actomyosin in animal development and the mechanisms that drive actomyosin to pulse

How can structures at the vertex of 3 cells have effects at the tissue level?

Join me, @laura-rustarazo.bsky.social, to explore how tricellular junctions (TCJs) act as local tension sensors and regulators of global tissue organization. 🧵⤵️ doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Happy 2026!
May this year be good for your cells,
Discovering all the cool
#EpithelialMechanics as well.

Janssen, V., & Huveneers, S. (2024). Cell–cell junctions in focus–imaging junctional architectures and dynamics at high resolution. Journal of Cell Science, #EpithelialMechanicsReview doi.org/10.1242/jcs....

New paper out!
We show how mechanosensitive adherens junction proteins link actomyosin contractility to actin assembly using in vitro reconstitution.
Huge congrats to Aurélie Favarin, Rayan Said, & all authors!
In Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#actin #myosin #mechanobiology

Malboubi, M., Esteki, M. H., Vaghela, M. B., Korsak, L. I. T., Petrie, R. J., Moeendarbary, E., & Charras, G. (2025). The cytoplasm of living cells can sustain transient and steady intracellular pressure gradients. Elife. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
#EpithelialMechanics

Gradients, waves and nematics: quantitative perspectives on regeneration Regeneration restores a damaged body part to its original size, shape and structure. Research over the last decades identified signaling pathways, cel…

Tristan Guyomar and I wrote a review on physical mechanisms coordinating regeneration - Featured: signalling/mechanical gradients, travelling waves and nematic fields - Dramatis personae: axolotls, hydra, planaria, spiny mice and zebrafish (ofc) with a jellyfish cameo

tinyurl.com/3upzrdbs

Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework".

Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288

Leybova, L., Biswas, A., Sharan, R., Trejo, B. M., Kim, K., ..., Phillips, B. K., & Devenport, D. (2024). Radially patterned morphogenesis of murine hair follicle placodes ensures robust epithelial budding. Developmental cell, 59(24), 3272–3289.e5. #EpithelialMechanics
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Now that you have gathered you raw data from a cell migration assay, how do you analyze that data?

In our review, we describe methods - including AI methods - to track migrating cells and extract as much information as possible.

Read our paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you Nimesh for the nice thread, very useful indeed 🙏👏

Cytoskeleton shapes tissues during development. What signaling drives these changes?

I'm @onenimesa.bsky.social and let's explore FGF signaling's crucial role with examples.
Trust me, you need to know this!

Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club - FocalPlane Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club - News

Meet the Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club @epimechfc.bsky.social
Nimesh Chahare @onenimesa.bsky.social and Julia Eckert @juliaeckert.bsky.social introduce us to the Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club.
Learn how you can get involved with this community: focalplane.biologists.com/2025/12/04/e...

New paper alert! We report that #zebrafish endodermal cells use contact inhibition of locomotion as a dispersal and spacing mechanism. It’s a neat example of large-scale patterns emerging from local interactions using a simple set of rules. Summary in the thread below 1/9
doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Ruppel, A., Wörthmüller, D., Misiak, V., Kelkar, M., Wang, I., Moreau, P., Méry, A., ..., Schwarz, U. S., & Balland, M. (2023). Force propagation between epithelial cells depends on active coupling and mechano-structural polarization. eLife, 12, e83588. #EpithelialMechanics
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Hinderling, L., Hadorn, R., Kwasny, M., Frei, J., Grädel, B., Psalmon, S., Blum, Y., ..., Riveline, D., & Pertz, O. (2025). Teach your microscope how to print: low-cost and rapid-iteration microfabrication for biology. Lab on a chip, 25(16), 4091–4105. #EpithelialMechanics
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Keeping up with the neighbours: local synchronisation of cell fate decisions during development - EMBO Reports Even before the advent of multicellular life, unicellular creatures would communicate with their neighbours to coordinate their behaviours. Multicellular organisms have the particular challenge of orc...

Hello, here is a review I wrote about how cells sometimes try to synchronise with surrounding cells so that they can do a good job of building tissues during development. It is called "Keeping up with the neighbours"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#DevBio 🧪

Cells can sense the geometry of their environment, from tiny subcellular features to whole-tissue patterns. How can we engineer environments to systematically probe these responses?

🧵 I'm @lhinderling.bsky.social from @olivierpertz.bsky.social lab, let’s do a short tour on microfabrication!

Hi bsky!

How do cells coordinate fate with migration during development? 🐣 Turns out EMT doesn't just drive cell behaviour changes... it actively primes BMP signalling competence, creating a reciprocal coupling that drives collective invasion!

(@bensteventon.bsky.social lab)

tinyurl.com/2ncc8zap

Are you curious about how @epimechfc.bsky.social started a little over 2 years ago and how it has developed since then?

Do not miss our blog post! Thank you, @focalplane.bsky.social, for reaching out to us and for the opportunity! 👇

Tissue fluidity mediates a trade-off between the speed and accuracy of multicellular patterning by cell sorting The organization of cells into spatial patterns is a fundamental aspect of multicellularity. One major mechanism underlying tissue patterning is adhesion-based cell sorting, in which a heterogeneous…

Too fluid, too rigid, no patterning. Garner et al. identify tissue fluidity—how freely cells move within a tissue—as a critical regulator of adhesion-based cell sorting. Read their study to learn how tissues can tune their fluidity to enable patterning.