Make #ZebrafishZunday part of your Sunday routine! 🧪

Science 🤝 Art 🤝 #Zebrafish

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 ⬇️

In this weather @ceitec.eu MU atrium is pretty special.

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

He has a reputation for inappropriate behavior toward women. I am surprised that no one has yet spoken publicly about his harassment.

Job Alert! The University of Tübingen is hiring a FULL PROFESSOR (W3) in FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY! Come and join our institute, and maybe our new excellence clusters @terra-cluster.org and @greenrobust.de. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Please repost!

Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Genetics - Montréal, Quebec (CA) job with Institut de recherche en biologie végétale (IRBV) | 12844852 A full-time tenure-track assistant professor position at the IRBV, Université de Montréal.

Join us at the Plant Science Research Institute of the University of Montreal to develop your research group in Plant Molecular Genetics:
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Job Alert! We're hiring a BIOINFORMATICIAN / NGS SPECIALIST to support our new Molecular Biodiversity Lab in the @terra-cluster.org at @unituebingen.bsky.social. Like the idea to use your skills for understanding biodiversity? To work on diverse questions in a wonderful place? Apply!
Please repost!

We’re looking for curious, innovative science leaders at EMBL Heidelberg! 🔬🧬🦠

Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community where collaboration and innovation are nurtured at all levels.

Take a look at these four open positions 👇

Research Associate (100%)
Starting from 1 November 2025 or as per agreement

Group @erikvannimwegen.bsky.social

@biozentrum.unibas.ch
@unibas.ch

www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/open-positio...

#job #research #biology #microbiology #science #basel #recruiting #career

An image of frog rod photoreceptor outer segments. They look round and soft, like a shag carpet.

Shag carpet or frog photoreceptor outer segments! 🐸🧪

Taken during the visual neuroscience course @mblscience.bsky.social

📣 Massively proud of this ⬇️ great study, led by the brilliant @mesny.bsky.social surprisingly uncovering that many pathogen effectors stem from ancient antimicrobials 🤯 #EffectorWisdom #EvoMPMI

Interactive effects of ocean acidification and warming disrupt calcification and microbiome composition in bryozoans - Communications Biology Ocean acidification and warming threaten bryozoan populations by altering skeletal properties, disrupting key microbial communities, and increasing mortality, with consequences for the benthic ecosyst...

🌊 Ocean warming and acidification hit bryozoans hard

A new study found that warming and acidification together weaken bryozoan skeletons, shift their microbiomes, and reduce their cover, threatening benthic ecosystems.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

#SciComm 🧪 #MarineBiology

Exclusive: Harvard University lays off fly database team The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.

www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

Today, the @fwf-at.bsky.social honors Elly Tanaka, IMBA's Scientific Director, with the Wittgenstein Award – the premier research award of Austria - for her groundbreaking discoveries in the field of regenerative biology. Congratulations, Elly!

More on the award: imba.science/43Y93sC

Exciting news - Elly Tanaka, director of @imbavienna.bsky.social , received the #Wittgenstein award of the @fwf-at.bsky.social today, Austria's top research award. Congratulations to Elly, and thanks so much for being not only a great scientist, but also a wonderful role model!

Horizon Europe 2028 - 2034: twice bigger, simpler, faster and more impactful Research and innovation news alert: As part of the next long-term EU budget 2028-2034, the Commission is proposing to double the budget of the research and innovation framework programme to €175 billi...

Very promising news on the next seven-year EU budget, with a proposed substantial increase for Horizon Europe including the ERC.

We are analysing the other parts of this proposal in more detail.

@Vonderleyen @EZaharievaEU

research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-res...

The report identifies factors that limit innovation in Europe: fragmentation, both of markets and of regulatory frameworks, incl different national implementations of EU legislation, no true financial union, incompatible standards, insufficient R&D funding, risk-averse regulatory culture.

Group Leader – Molecular Systems Biology Unit Are you ready to lead groundbreaking research in Molecular Systems Biology? Join us at EMBL! We are seeking a motivated scientist to lead an independent research group, addressing original biological ...

Ready to lead pioneering research that bridges systems-level investigations of biological systems to molecular mechanism? The EMBL Molecular Systems Biology Unit in Heidelberg is hiring a Group Leader!

Group Leader - Genome Biology Unit Are you ready to lead groundbreaking research in Genome Biology? Join us at EMBL! We are seeking a motivated scientist to lead an independent research group addressing exciting and original biological...

To all post-docs: The Genome Biology dept ‪@embl.org
has an Independent faculty position. Fantastic place to set up your lab –great package: core funding, fantastic Ph.D. students, cutting edge core facilities & great colleagues. Closing date Sept 19th
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

I’ve been mystified for years why my line of research (which includes genetic engineering of plants) makes (German) people so much more upset than the AI work of my campus neighbors.

And why does eco-anxiety have a @wikipedia.org page, but not AI-anxiety?

Host-adapted enzymatic deconstruction of acetylated xylan enables mutualistic colonization of monocot roots Intracellular accommodation of mutualistic fungi in plant roots depends on selective remodeling of host cell walls while minimizing activation of plant immune responses. In this study, we identify a h...

Our latest article in bioRxiv. A very good and comprehensive paper by Mathias Brands, Vicente Ramirez, Laura Armbruster et al. on the deconstruction of acetylated xylan in symbiosis. If you would like to learn more, please talk to Mathias at #2025ISMPMI, poster P-239.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Using Brillouin microscopy, we measured changes in stiffness within the whole-cell of an intact organism.
We focused on the most important event in our life: gastrulation, which in Drosophila is really fast (~30'):

Thanks to everyone who contributed: Carlo for BM, Julio & Abhisha @ncstate.bsky.social for the physical model, @marialep.bsky.social for your feedback and Robert @prevedel-lab.bsky.social for your supervision and allowing me to work freely.

BTW: I am looking for GL positions! 👨‍🏫 😃

This is the second simulation, with contractility and stiffness increasing over time (the latter derived from what we learnt using Brillouin microscopy):

Finally, we developed a physical toy model of mesoderm folding to test if the dynamic, localised increase in stiffness facilitates folding the mesoderm? The answer is YES!. See the simulations ⤵️: first movie: ✅contractility ❌stiffness; second movie: ✅contractility ✅ stiffness.

We wanted to understand what makes the mesoderm transiently stiff during its folding & invagination. We did not see a correlation between actomyosin and the increase in stiffness. But surprise!: We depolymerised microtubules using Colcemid (right panel) and mesoderm cells remained in a softer state😱

How do microtubules make mesoderm cells -transiently- stiffer? Using live imaging & 3D-SIM, we found microtubules reorganise within the cell's sub-apical compartment, -where we measure the stiffening- by becoming increasingly aligned with each other during mesoderm folding:

On the contrary, the ectodermal cells located on the dorsal side of the embryo become softer! In sum, the embryo undergoes two diverging mechanical transitions: mesoderm: stiffening followed by softening; ectoderm: softening. See ⤵️ the softening of dorsal cells when they flatten and stretch:

Gastrulation starts when the mesoderm (bottom in ⬆️), folds and invaginates, and next, undergoes EMT. Here, we measured fast and biphasic mechanical dynamics: during mesoderm invagination, cells stiffen (Brillouin shift map -bottom panel-, transient yellow); during EMT, mesoderm cells soften.