Kirsty Wan

Cool! I didn't even know about #wormwednesday!

Yeah okay i agree... I just like to provoke horror from @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

Thanks!!

Our findings highlight a remarkably modular and robust propulsion mechanism found in a marine larva, which relies on short-range physical interactions to achieve ciliary coordination.

Thanks to Rebecca for all the hard work and @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy for the collaboration!

#platynereis is an excellent model for cilia dynamics and coordination, incl. how metachronal waves emerge - during a process known as ciliary closure. These events are neuronal controlled, allowing the larvae to finely control their position in the water column elifesciences.org/articles/26000

in fact, you can just keep removing cilia, until all but a single wavelength of the ciliary band remains. The tiny patch keeps propagating a metachronal wave! [watch video till the end]
(see paper for other interesting details about these waves)

to test if spatial gaps could break wave transmission, we (Rebecca) started removing more and more cilia from this equatorial ring, finding that spatial continuity of the cilia within a single multiciliated cell is both necessary and sufficient for wave continuity

look at the discontinuities in the following kymograph (space-time plot of beat phase), turns out these come from the natural gaps between neighbouring multiciliated cells (each with several hundred cilia!).

with a single equatorial band made up of many many cilia. These propagate so-called 'metachronal waves', always in the same direction! The wave may look continuous, but in fact it's not!

What is a #Platynereis you might ask? I would never have encountered them were it not for @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

The adult worm is extremely ugly, in contrast, the larvae, is adorned with many cilia, which naturally makes them beautiful. The 2-day old larva is approximately spherical

Final version of our paper on ciliary metachronal waves out now in Science Advances! doi.org/10.1126/scia...

This is the main thesis work of my PhD student Rebecca Poon, who caught many #platnereis larvae and tirelessly ablated them with a laser. THREAD

Join us ! We are looking for creative and motivated scientists at to join the group. We are recruiting candidates from various scientific backgrounds including, but not limited to: biophysics, physics, biochemi...

We have PhD and Postdoc positions open in our group. Join us in Lausanne to explore how cells pull off extreme shape changes and how cilia drive biological flows.

You can find more details on the projects available and how to apply in our website:

www.epfl.ch/labs/lpl/joi...

Thank you @bastinlab.bsky.social and Sylvie Friant for organising this amazing #cilia meeting! 🙏 So many interesting discussions, and not enough time! Just look at this beautiful venue... 🤩

Book cover of "The Riddle of Organismal Agency: New Historical and Philosophical Reflections" (Routledge, 2024). The book belongs to the "History and Philosophy of Biology" series. The editors are Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda, Jan Baedke, Guido I. Prieto, and Gregory Radick. The design features a geometric pattern of interlocking, multicolored triangles and rectangular prisms in shades of red, yellow, teal, white, and pink. The Routledge logo appears in the lower right corner.

Still puzzled by the debate on organismal agency? Our edited collection brings historians, philosophers, and scientists into dialogue—offering a wide array of perspectives. An affordable paperback edition will be out at the end of the month! www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o... #HPS #evobio #philsky

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

Very sad to hear that Sir John Gurdon, former Master of Magdalene College, has passed away at the age of 92. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Here is a powerful reminder that you should never give up on your dreams.

Cryo-EM resolves the structure of the archaeal dsDNA virus HFTV1 from head to tail This structure of an archaeal tailed virus (arTV) provides detailed insights into arTV assembly and infection mechanisms.

Out in Science Advances: Our #cryoEM structure of HFTV1, a virus infecting the halophile #archaea. *First full atomic structure (containing all structural proteins) of any tailed virus!* Congrats and thanks to all co-authors and our fantastic collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

Lacrymaria olor means "swan tear" in Latin, referring to their tear-shape & swan-like neck that can extend 30 times the length of the cell.

They're eukaryotes, like us, but single-celled & ciliated.

They live in pond water, where they're predators of... just about *everything*.

(🔬: Charles Krebs)

Not sure how i got here but here is an epic thread of some 200 facts about clams... 😱

Another season has started as well. We now find many different ctenophores in Byfjorden, a fjord that runs into the city center of Bergen.

Here the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi: it uses a row of cilia called comb plates to swim. When hit by light, they create shimmering rainbows along their bodies.

Happy to share the inaugural paper from the lab. We describe a molecular mechanism for the activation of outer dynein arm motors that power the vital motion of cilia.

Open access link below:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's a cool animated summary

Beautiful drawing of ciliogenesis in airway cells from Sorokin, 1968: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/.... Just shown on stage by @mahjoublab.bsky.social at #GEF25

Kirsty Wan (@micromotility.bsky.social) starts the second day of the workshop with a tour de force overview of the behavioral complexity of single-celled organisms and ways to study and model it. #evosky #cellbio #HPbio

thanks @aria-research.bsky.social for highlighting our research on the computational capabilities of single-celled organisms! #protists Watch this space for more exciting developments @lsiexeter.bsky.social

Using a new workflow, we map ciliated (green) and secretory cells (pink) that line the epithelium of whole human fallopian tube.

With age (menopause), the number of ciliated cells decreases and the number of secretory cells increases.

More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

haha trust you to find this... :P

Love #protists? Then you'd love this! Beautiful collection of hand-drawn critters represented here at the Oxford-Japan symposium on ethological dynamics in diorama environments sites.google.com/view/oxford-... #ciliates #testateamoeba #diatoms

The morphology of notable coccolithophore species. The Scanning Electron Microscopy images are coloured by the ratio between the cellular organic and inorganic carbon (CIC:COC) contents.

New preprint 🌊🫶
"A diverse community constitutes global coccolithophore calcium carbonate stocks"
Three large coccolithophores together hold about half of the global CaCO₃ stock!
G. huxleyi <10%
➡️ climate models need to include this broader diversity!
📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#protistsonsky

congrats Guillermina, Arnold et al! #ciliaarecool

We've had a very active summer of Cilia and Centrosome science!

We had our Annual Network meeting in London this year organised by Prof. Hannah Mitchison and Dr. Dagan Jenkins. Meeting highlights are now available to read on the network website.

www.cilianetwork.org.uk/events/annua...