Kate Cavanaugh

This poses an intriguing question: how is cytoplasm robustly and accurately organized in absence of physical barriers, and how is cytoplasmic partitioning achieved within the constrained time window of rapid embryonic divisions? (2/9)

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to highlight a new preprint about mechanical contributions to tissue homeostasis, from the Manning group in collaboration with the amazing Carien Niessen and Sara Wickstrom @sarawickstrom.bsky.social labs, spearheaded by Dr. Somiealo Azote: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Registration is OPEN for the 2026 Santa Cruz Meeting on Developmental Biology!!! Please spread the word!

@mads100tist.bsky.social @socdevbio.bsky.social @bsdb.bsky.social @xenbase.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social @devbiol.bsky.social @the-node.bsky.social

scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

Microscopy image of a mouse embryo

I’m happy to announce that I joined @umich.edu Department of Cell & Developmental Biology as an Assistant Professor and I will open my lab this month! My lab will investigate the genetic and cellular mechanisms underlying digestive and respiratory organs with a focus on the trachea and esophagus 1/2

How do migrating cell groups balance force and flexibility?

Our new preprint shows that RhoGAP15B downregulates RhoA–Myosin activity to stabilise protrusions and enable efficient collective migration in vivo.

Happy New Year!

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

RhoGAP15B RNAi collapses leader protrusions, while RhoGAP15B OE stabilises and extends them, underscoring tight control protrusion dynamics.

Modeling human embryo implantation in vitro Building an in vitro model of receptive endometrium allows investigation of human embryo implantation and early post-implantation development and recapitulates the earliest stages in establishing the ...

Christmas has come early. Fantastic to see this beautiful study from Peter Rugg-Gunn's lab at The Babraham Institute published today. Congratulations to Matteo Mole, Sarah Elderkin, Irene Zorzan and all other authors!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Stacked lineup just dropped. I know where I'll be 👀

The 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting website is LIVE!!! Go see the incredible list of scientists who will be speaking at the meeting next summer! (...and check the site early next year for info on registration and abstract submission.)

scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

I don't always get pretty, isolated, AND transfected primary neurons in culture, but when I do I take advantage.... Rat hippocampal neuron overexpressing ThymosinB4-mScarlet and imaged for 16hr on a @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social LSM880 with Airyscan. #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known"
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.

Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

Image of cell junction puncta from https://www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10.1091/mbc.E23-03-0077

To build the body plan of an animal, cells must adhere to one another via cell-cell junctions. We now know these assemble as punctate protein complexes containing thousands of proteins, but how this occurs remains mysterious. 1/n 🧪
www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....

😍 What a beaut! 😍

another old one...a microtubule (MT) movie - EB3-GFP label of MT plus ends growing...thanks to Vlad Costache (if interested, black holes = yolk granules, Ascidian Phallusia embryo)

I like this movie, but a friend of mine likes to complain about the obvious stitching artifacts. I'll try harder next time, Michael. Vimentin (orange) and ER (blue) in an overnight acquisition.

Ovarian follicles🥚are influenced by biochemical signals and the physical mechanics of their surroundings.

A study from Joe Chan's group (NUS) reveals that surface stiffness and internal compressive stress are key for follicle development.

📖Read more: https://go.nature.com/4ptpMvE

🚨 Link up with me at #Cellbio2025 ! 🚨 Excited to present the majority of my postdoc work in the Physical Cell Biology from Molecules to Organisms Minisymposium. Thanks to the organizers for putting together such an exciting session 🤩

Featuring @katecavanaugh.bsky.social @yusuke-mori.bsky.social @fengtongji.bsky.social @liamjrussell99.bsky.social Gavin Schlissel, June Ho Hwan, Yuxuan Rain Xiong, Rohit Joshi, and myself!

Sun 10AM–12PM, Room 120 (The app is missing the first few talks, but I assure you talks start right at 10AM!)

If you're at #cellbio2025, @atmolines.bsky.social Hernan Garcia and I invite you to attend our Minisymposium “Physical Cell Biology from Molecules to Organisms” for incredible talks on epigenetic mechanical memory, viscoelasticity, cortical flows, morphogenesis, tissue wetting, size scaling, et al!

Definitely did not write this book...

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

I'm thrilled to be able to share this new paper from post-doc Camilla Teng @xsciteng.bsky.social and our collaborators in the Leslie-Clarkson lab @emorygenetics.bsky.social on mechanisms of tissue fusion and cleft lip url: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

🔬🍀

A timelapse movie (unpublished data) from the lab.

In the movie, the nucleus is moving towards the base of the polarized root hair cell.

A versatile cohesion manipulation system probes female reproductive age-related egg aneuploidy - Nature Aging To study pathways that lead to aneuploidy during aging, the authors provide a system that enables cohesion protein depletion in mouse oocytes, mimicking effects that occur during aging. They uncover a...

We built a targeted protein degradation–based system to mimic reproductive age-related aneuploidy in young eggs - revealing how chromosome errors associated with female infertility arise with age. 🧬✨
With @jiyeonleem.bsky.social and our team at Yale MCDB.

Read: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Sorry wrong tag .. I definitely did NOT write this book

📣 New preprint! Stoked to share a fantastic collaboration with @campaslab.bsky.social!

We discover a unique mammalian mechanism for body axis elongation using mouse and human gastruloids, and confirm central findings in mouse embryos.

Check out the 🧵 👇

@mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social

Thrilled to announce the launch of my lab
@cri-utsw.bsky.social at UTSW this January!

We will explore how cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, focusing on membrane mechanics to reveal how tension and signaling work together to shape cell behavior.

Induction of menstruation in mice reveals the regulation of menstrual shedding During menstruation, an inner layer of the endometrium is selectively shed, while an outer, progenitor-containing layer is preserved to support repeated regeneration. Progress in understanding this co...

I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵

Happy Fluorescence Friday with this new preprint 👀