Claire Dessalles

YouTube video by CellMorphoJSero Introduction to CellProfiler - by a biologist, for biologists!

If you or your trainees are just getting started with image analysis of cells & are #CellProfiler -curious, here is a fairly thorough walk-through demo I did recently. Loading files, extracting metadata (fun with Regex!), identifying objects, measuring, filtering, QC, exporting:
youtu.be/fO5nJdhj_7I

Exciting new #Zebrafish research from the #WeinsteinLab, led by Jong Park!
“Specialized gas-exchange endothelium of the zebrafish gill” —

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Amazing to see red blood cells moving through the gills! Don’t forget to check out the supplemental movies ;-)

New preprint! Do you like ocean waves? We found similar waves on bacterial colonies! We found that this collective behavior, known as rippling, is nothing but surface waves on an active nematic. @princeton.edu @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social

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

Super excited to start as an ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona! Really happy to join fantastic colleagues at @icreacommunity.bsky.social and @ub.edu.

www.icrea.cat/community/ic...

📢Internships on cellular nematics!

🔬Come for the pretty images, stay for the cool physics: each project combines in vitro experiments with advanced microscopy and image analysis.

📧Feel free to DM or email me with any questions.

New paper from the @rouxlab.bsky.social on Nature Communications! We study how membrane tension is spatially organized in cells. Using the mechanosensitive probe Flipper-TR to visualize tension across the plasma membrane of adherent cells and to dissect the conditions needed for a gradient to happen

Tissue stress measurements with Bayesian Inversion Stress Microscopy Cells within biological tissue are constantly subjected to dynamic mechanical forces. Measuring the internal stress of tissues has proven crucial for our understanding of the role of mechanical forces...

Tissue stress measurements — our latest preprint is out: arxiv.org/abs/2512.00550
(publication coming soon!)
Fantastic work by the three musketeers — @luanger.bsky.social, @andreasschoenit.bsky.social and @fanny-wodrascka.bsky.social — in collaboration with P. Marcq!

Molecular basis for cellular compartmentalization by an ancient membrane fission mechanism The emergence of cell compartmentalization depends on membrane fission to create the endomembrane compartments. In eukaryotes, membrane fission is commonly executed by ESCRT-III, a protein complex con...

New preprint from the lab!!🎉
We show that Asgard archaea ESCRT-III proteins can trigger membrane fission and reveal its molecular mechanism, offering clues to how these cells may have built internal compartments. But do these organisms even have these compartments?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Vous faites des études de physique mais vous ne savez pas quel métier faire ? J'ai rédigé pour la Société française de physique @sfp-physique.bsky.social une description de nombreux métiers accessibles, à travers les témoignages de celles et ceux qui les exercent.
www.metiersdelaphysique.fr

Hi, I’m David Brückner @davidbrueckner.bsky.social.

I’ll take you through how cells in a tissue can use information distributed by biochemical gradients to make decisions, and how we can measure such positional information.

buff.ly/RFxVeHh

Active nematic pumps | PNAS Microfluidics involves the manipulation of flows at the microscale, typically requiring external power sources to generate pressure gradients. Alte...

Microfluidic pumping with active nematics! Self-organized and self-sustained. No external pumps.

@pnas.org @ub.edu

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#ActiveMatter #Microfluidics #SoftMatter

Launching celldynamicslab.com, the homepage of our new group at EPFL working on cell fragmentation, membrane and cortex mechanics, FLIM imaging, and microfluidics tools. MSc/PhD or postdocs interested in quantitative cell biology are welcome to reach out. We're also hiring a lab manager in 2026!

Amazing story 😍
Just scan through it. Sophisticate, delicate and elegant 💥
Will read it in details again when time allows😋

Really excited to present the results of a fantastic collaboration with Jesse Veenvliet @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social 🤩

We find a unique mechanism for body axis elongation in mammals, different from other vertebrate species

➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Borges, A., Miranda-Rodriguez, J. R., Ceccarelli, A., Ventura, G., Sedzinski, J., Lopez-Schier, H., & Chara, O. (2025). ForSys: non-invasive stress inference from time-lapse microscopy. iScience, 28, 113685. #EpithelialMechanics
buff.ly/jQ96TCK

If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back.

I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support

New preprint from the lab! We discovered a transient fluidization in the basal region of human forebrains by tracking microdroplets in cerebral organoids.This “basal fluidization”, absent in gorilla and mouse, may contribute to greater surface expansion in human forebrains
1/
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Frequency dependence of fast-lifetime FLIM and fits for C2C12 cells.

Fluorescence lifetime estimation: a practical approach using Flipper-TR FLIM by Juan Manuel Garcia-Arcos and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An incredibly comprehensive and meticulous study of Flipper-TR lifetime analysis to make your membrane tension measurements using Flipper-TR more robust and reliable.

Thanks to @juanmagararc.bsky.social and @rouxlab.bsky.social for this very valuable resource!

All you've ever wanted to know about FLIM analysis (and its application in Flipper-TR)!😱🤩🔬

Figure 2 - Gene expression patterning and transcriptional profiles in hydrogel-grown gastruloids. (A) Representative immunofluorescence images of gastruloids at 120 h. Gastruloids were grown in standard culture conditions (Ctrl, no hydrogel) or embedded in hydrogels with increasing concentrations (0.7 mM, 0.8 mM and 1.0 mM) at 96 h post-seeding. Nuclei (blue), BRA (purple) and SOX2 (yellow) are labeled. (B,C) Normalized expression profiles of SOX2 (B) and BRA (C) along the AP axis, demonstrating consistent expression patterns across conditions. (D) Principal component analysis of bulk RNA-seq experiments (three replicates), revealing clear separation between Ctrl and noCHI (red), a negative control for gastruloid formation, while hydrogel-embedded conditions cluster near Ctrl. (E) Number of significantly differentially expressed (DE) genes compared to Ctrl, showing substantial transcriptional changes in noCHI and minimal changes in hydrogel-embedded conditions (0.7 mM, 0.8 mM and 1.0 mM). Shown here are representative data and analysis for one experimental replicate. See Fig. S3 for two additional replicates.

Modifying mechanical constraint guides gastruloid patterning

This Research Highlight showcases the work from Judith Pineau @judithpineau.bsky.social, Jerome Wong-Ng @jeromewongng.bsky.social, Thomas Gregor @thomasgregor.bsky.social and colleagues:

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

In this beautiful system, we could show uncoupling of gene expression profiles, morphology and patterning… #NotInTheGenes 😉 (also includes a method to do long term 🔬 of elongating gastruloids)
Thank you to all involved @jeromewongng.bsky.social @thomasgregor.bsky.social @alexandremayran.bsky.social

#FluorescenceFriday: getting ready for #GEF25, playing with Ciarán's stunning ExM data

👩‍🔬J'ai commencé un kit de démarrage "chercheuses en France" go.bsky.app/TBEzKC #FemmesEnScience

J'ai besoin de votre aide pour le remplir et donner de la visibilité aux chercheuses que vous connaissez et qui sont sur Bluesky !
▶️Taguez celles que vous connaissez, je les ajoute !

Super clear thread for super cool science!

I love the pearling instability at the end ! 😍 What happens in the happy attached flagellum to stabilize its tubular shape?

Most striking, in some instances of spontaneous flagellar detachment, the flagellum can glide on its own - mercilessly leaving the cell body behind, stabbing it on the way if need be (don't do this at home).

#SmoothMuscleCell #Piezo1 Small intestinal motility

SMC Piezo1 KO in 4~6 wk-old🐭
👉Muscularis thinning
👉⏬Food consumption
👉⏬SMC density w/o⏫apoptosis
👉⏬small intestinal motility
👉⏬Muscularis Orai1/3 Trpc4 IP3R ⏫Cav1.2 Ano1
👉⏬carbachol-induced tension

#CommsBio 2025
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

In the New and Notable "Pulling Frank-Starling into another dimension,"
Megan L. McCain highlights the paper "Biaxial length-tension relationship in single cardiac myocytes ." buff.ly/XliGXNu