Yu-Chiun Wang

Black and white portrait of John Gurdon, 1971

John Gurdon, former Group Leader and Head of @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social has died.
Despite calling himself a "total non-intellectual” his work to reprogramme somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells transformed the field of developmental biology.
More: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/john-gurdon-...
#LMBNews

🧠 Join us @uzh-ch.bsky.social ! We are a new lab looking for PhDs, Postdocs & Master’s students interested in studying how human neural systems emerge & go awry using brain organoids, light-sheet imaging & genomics. 🚀 Deadline for LSZGS 1st Nov! www.lifescience-graduateschool.uzh.ch/en.html.

How nice! Mechanochemical feedback that shuts it self off below threshold. That is THE frontier of developmental mechanisms. Congrats!

Development does not happen in isolation! Material properties, geometry, stiffness, fluid flows...can all steer how development unfolds. If you’re exploring these kinds of questions, we’d love to see your work @dev-journal.bsky.social
More info below ⬇️

Many thanks to @riken-bdr.bsky.social press team for publicizing our work.

A ring of cells deforms into a triangular keyhole in just 15 minutes. Meet the hindgut, a model for boundary-driven morphogenesis!

Out now in @pnas.org at doi.org/10.1073/pnas... with @zhaoshh.bsky.social, Alex Jacinto, Eric Wieschaus, Stas Shvartsman, @lepuslapis.bsky.social (1/8)

Thrilled to share the first story from my postdoc! 🎉 A wonderful experiment + simulations collaboration. In the Drosophila wing, we find that 3D cell shapes affect signalling range and fine-tune developmental patterning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread below ⬇️

Thanks, Sebastian! Glad that you’re interested in our work and great to reconnect. Hope all is well!

🔔 Proud to share the preprint of my PhD work in the Petridou group @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social @embl.org ✨

“A closed feedback between tissue phase transitions and morphogen gradients drives patterning dynamics” 🐟 🔁 📶

🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#devbio #biophysics

🧵⤵️

Super thrilled to see our review out! It was a great experience to put this together with @sameerthukral.bsky.social and @yuchiunwang.bsky.social. Use it as a primer to the field or as inspiration to brainstorm how rigidity transitions can bridge scales!

Thanks to @liamholt.bsky.social @fredchanglab.bsky.social for inspiration during the 2023 RIKEN symposium & @itaiyanai.bsky.social @nightsciencepod.bsky.social for encouraging us to blend day & night science,using a review not only to recap but also generate new perspectives!

From crowded cytoplasm to flowing tissues:how material properties changes across scales shaping development,especially during transitions?
We provide primers on tissue scale & cytoplasmic rigidity,control parameters,new hypotheses on possible cross-scale feedback,linking scales rarely integrated.

Although direct evidence remains ahead of us, smoking guns are all over the place. Cross-scale feedback of material properties could be the next frontier in #mechanobiology. A harbinger of exciting work to come from @sameerthukral.bsky.social and @bipashadey29.bsky.social.

Taking advantage of organizing the often intellectually disjointed BDR symposium, we hijacked a session & turned it into a coherent & stimulating session with Kinneret Keren, @heisenbergcplab.bsky.social, @liamholt.bsky.social, and @fredchanglab.bsky.social, who inspired us to write this review.

Tissues transition between solid & fluid states in development & disease; cytoplasm turns crowded or inert to literally 'solidify'. Any connections? Turns out nothing's known. @sameerthukral.bsky.social & @bipashadey29.bsky.social pulled this review off brilliantly with a conceptual synthesis.

New preprint! 🚨 We uncover a slow adaptation to stretch that links star-bundling of keratin filaments with nuclear escape from its keratin cage. Led by @tomgolde.bsky.social‬ 🙌
@IBECBarcelona
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The complex microscopic dynamics of cells in high-density epithelial tissues Epithelial tissues line the surfaces of vital organs and are often densely packed in a disordered, mechanically arrested state, referred to as jammed or glassy state. While collective migration at low...

Very happy to share our new study from CAM team @ijmonod.bsky.social and @mpi-scienceoflight.bsky.social (MPZPM) on the unanticipated “hidden fluidity” in jammed epithelia. Congrats to Yuan Shen and great collaboration with Walter Kob.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Flies evolved a shock-absorber tissue used during embryonic development The role of tissue that forms between the head and trunk of a fly embryo has been unclear. It turns out that it absorbs forces when nearby cells move and divide.

A long-standing mystery in the development of fly embryos has been resolved

go.nature.com/4nhVxaa

Patterned invagination prevents mechanical instability during gastrulation - Nature In Drosophila, the cephalic furrow counteracts mechanical stress as the developing head and the trunk tissues meet, providing evidence for how mechanical forces influence the evolution of morphogenetic innovations in early development.

Nature research paper: Patterned invagination prevents mechanical instability during gastrulation

go.nature.com/420lbIj

Divergent evolutionary strategies pre-empt tissue collision in gastrulation - Nature Flies have evolved two distinct strategies for managing mechanical stresses during embryogenesis: out-of-plane cell division in midges and transient out-of-plane tissue folding in fruit flies.

Nature research paper: Divergent evolutionary strategies pre-empt tissue collision in gastrulation

go.nature.com/4m3exrU

Thanks so much. Super nice to have you here and such a great talk. So many things to talk about. I hope the conversation continues!

Fascinating observations and beautiful physical modeling from our very own @tomokiishibashi.bsky.social and Tatsuo Shibata. Do check it out.

@bipashadey29.bsky.social we wouldn’t have pulled it off without you. So lucky to have you head our effort.

One of my all time favorite quotes, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, since the tender age of a skinny undergrad. (I’m still kind of skinny…) 🤣

Thanks so much, Juan. Steffen and I are very lucky to count you as our friend. We are rooting for you to bring #mechanobiology and #morphogenesis to the next level with #Brillouin microscopy and #proteomics with embryos.

We are excited to share our recent preprint on how tissue spreading guides extracellular matrix changes during early morphogenesis @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

Thanks so much. It has been quite awhile, no? Hope all is well. Let’s find some ways to see each other, shall we?

Forgot to tag @verenakaul.bsky.social. Verena’s following up on this brand new discovery of out of plane division, linking cell biology, tissue mechanics to evolution with Steffen. Stay tuned!

The #cephalic #furrow story from @yuchiunwang.bsky.social perspective. The saga is even longer than what’s in my thread. Worth reading 👇

Like "this is just the cephalic furrow. Why would you ask what it does?" Turns out, one needed an evolutionary approach. Congrats @bruvellu.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social @yuchiunwang.bsky.social et al and @endofthepier.bsky.social for shepherding this to publication!