Philipp Niethammer

Intruiging!

Membrane potential mediates the cellular response to mechanical pressure Cells in tissues need to know when to start growing and when to stop growing to quickly heal wounds but prevent tumorous overgrowth. Membrane potential allows cells to sense physical forces, including...

Membrane potential mediates the cellular response to mechanical pressure: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Apparently, there are no easy solutions to this. 20 years ago, when I decided to remain in the US, the concerns were largely similar. Something must have changed for the better-no?

Supporting a few “flagship” researchers with “flagship ideas” that already dominate their fields may be a safer bet when it comes to justifying the investment to politicians and the public (see also MPG in Germany)? Broadly fostering scientific creativity is a much more difficult task…

So cool!!!

YouTube video by EMBL Alumni Éric Karsenti, EMBL Group Leader 1985-2013

Eric Karsenti about EMBL's Golden Age of innovation and biological vision - was exciting to witness a small part of it as a young PhD student.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5QY...

What’s the old form?

Take this, biorender and AI slop! Lack of talent is still better than lack of soul 🤣

Looking forward to this!

Fascinating book!

Targeting RhoA nuclear mechanoactivity rejuvenates aged hematopoietic stem cells - Nature Aging Mejía-Ramírez, Iáñez Picazo, Walter et al. explore how nuclear biomechanical changes limit the regenerative capacity of aged hematopoietic stem cells and show that targeting RhoA rejuvenates aged hema...

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Friedrich Hoelderlin about a critical, non-genetic step of human evolution (Hyperion).

Divergence of immune cell types in chordate blood Innate immune cells are found in almost all metazoans, but the evolution and conservation of these cells is poorly characterized. Scully et al. present a transcriptional and morphological atlas of blo...

Very interesting data!

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders: Graduate Education at GSK Since its founding 19 years ago, the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences has attracted bright minds drawn to its connection to MSK. Learn more about how we're training tomo...

If you are interested in persuing a PhD in basic biology or bioengeneering, check out our MSK graduate school. MSKCC runs two highly curated PhD programs that cater to open-minded students curious about applied or fundamental biological research.

Systems Biology

Thrilled to visit my old postdoctoral home-base, where I spent some of the most exciting years of my career in Tim Mitchison’s lab! sysbio.med.harvard.edu

The most unclear part of the frequently used term "self-organization" (in biology) is undoubtedly the "self".

What kind of cognitive complexity can a cell display? What is the role played by nonlinear dynamics of signalling networks? Check this wonderful review paper by Aneta Koseska @koseskalab.bsky.social & Philippe Bastiaens @jgojalvo.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social www.embopress.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Wound healing is a hallmark feature of all life, including single cells. In a new preprint, Ambika Nadkarni @biochembika.bsky.social investigates a new dimension in cellular wound healing: how cells recover AFTER the wound has been closed

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

RIP James Watson. Reading The Double Helix in high school was one of the first times I felt the thrill of scientific discovery. But his later statements were also a stark reminder that great science and deeply flawed views can coexist in one person.

The Logical Clustering Suite (LCS) is a MATLAB-based application for the conceptual clustering of gene expression data. Instead of grouping genes by mutual similarity (as in hierarchical clustering or k-means), LCS defines clusters by experimentally derived logical phenotypes (IPs). Each IP is a binary vector (0/1) representing the expected activation pattern across groups. Genes are assigned to the IP they best match, and their assignments are supported by multiple statistical tests and an integrated ranking system.

There was a parsing error in the sGEA module of v2.2 that affected the gene list outputs (not the stats). It is corrected now in v2.3. Sorry for the inconvenience.

github.com/niethamp/Log...

Cool stuff!

Clearly, a swelling nucleus 😊

Roosevelt Island, open air art ❣️

Daniel‘s lectures at our GSK Cancer Science Graduate School are always a curriculum highlight! Contemplating the implicit assumptions of modern biological science can foster new ways of thinking, as some of our old go-to concepts become unwieldy and show their limitations. Students loved it!

The revised version (a.i.p. @ NCB) features super-resolution imaging of ER vesiculation as well as a quantitative, long-term time lapse analysis of nuclear membrane mechanotransduction (NMMT) during cell death, besides various other critical improvements.

After some limbo, paper #1 finally accepted (i.p.). Watch out for a comprehensively updated version of pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39711539/.
coming soon. My gratitude to the reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and critical but fair review. Kudos to Joe and Zaza for all the hard work!

Looking forward to Florida, where my brilliant PhD student Zaza Gelashvili and I are giving back-to-back talks. Among other things, we'll talk about our work on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5..., which will hopefully come out soon in much improved versions!

Your reminder that many of the muscles, nerves and bones you use to hear and talk with correspond to gill structures in fish. 🧪 #evolution #paleontology

Moment of halt during my morning run: Our Four Freedoms veiled in strongman camo (Camouflage by Ai Weiwei, Roosevelt Island, NYC) - sober testament to civil society regression around the world and my complacency/compliance in witnessing it. fdrfourfreedomspark.org

Looking forward to www.phagocytes2026.com/programme