Paulina Morlay

Graphical abstract, showing the principles of conditional labeling with HaloTag

Logic-gating the HaloTag system with Conditional-Halo-ligator 'CHalo' reagents by Oliver Thorn-Seshold and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cartoon of a speculative heterogenous cell population performing mesenchymal collective cell migration.

1/12 A very special moment for me! 🎉

My first paper as corresponding author—a @jcb.org Perspective on how contact-based decision-making in collective cell migration can itself encode blueprints for complex patterns and shapes.

rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#cellbio #devbio #science

🧵for details

we found that nuclear envelope rupture triggers rapid DIAPH3 formin influx to generate a actin mesh to prevent further chromatin leakage from damaged nuclei. thanks to Pitter Huesgen @degradomics.bsky.social and @cibss.bsky.social, @chrkam.bsky.social

A cell finding its way through the matrix, imaged with @joycemeiri.bsky.social on LLS.

Our new preprint is up! This is the main postdoc work of @wiesner-t.bsky.social focusing on exocytosis along the axon shaft and its regulation by the sub membrane actin-spectrin scaffold: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Read the thread below for a summary of our findings 🧵1/11

Autumn 2025 Frontiers of Science talks have started today, and such a great talk we heard from Prof. Hiroki Ueda telling us why do we sleep. The auditorium was full packed!

@inflames-flagship.bsky.social @turkubioscience.bsky.social @utu.fi @dianalehotina.bsky.social

Biosensors to Track Proteins and Inflammation in Our Blood in Real Time A recording from Eric Topol's live video

I've been following the field of biosensors for nearly 2 decades. This may well turn out to be the most important advance yet
erictopol.substack.com/p/biosensors...

Basement membranes at a glance Summary: Basement membranes (BMs) are dynamic assemblies of secreted proteins uniquely tailored for diverse tissue supporting roles. Here, we review our current understanding of BM composition, format...

Basement membranes at a glance
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Tuning collagen nonlinear mechanics with interpenetrating networks drives adaptive cellular phenotypes in three dimensions This work demonstrates that changes in the nonlinear elasticity of collagen in hybrid networks tunes cell-matrix interactions.

Tuning collagen nonlinear mechanics with interpenetrating networks drives adaptive cellular phenotypes in three dimensions | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Piezo1 balances membrane and cortex tension to stabilize intercellular junctions and maintain the epithelial barrier Highlighted Article: Piezo1 regulates timely maturation of cell–cell junctions into tight junction belts in epidermal keratinocytes through balancing of cortical and membrane tension; this is required...

From the lab of @sarawickstrom.bsky.social

Piezo1 balances membrane and cortex tension to stabilize intercellular junctions and maintain the epithelial barrier

journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Previous preprint is now published in RSC Chemical Biology.
If you are interested in plasma membrane labeling, see the paper! 👇
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

A new #UExM probe for #Actin!

Fun times thinking/developing/testing with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @lreymond.bsky.social !

Congrats to all !

If interested in #UExM, or #HAK-Actin, feel free to reach out !

Soon available at @spirochrome.com

#Expansion #Microscopy #ProtistsOnSky

Elias Tillandz Prize awarded at the BioCity Symposium to scientific publications on breast cancer recurrence and cancer gene overactivation The Elias Tillandz prize for the best scientific publication of 2024 was presented for two groundbreaking cancer studies.

Elias Tillandz Prize awarded at the BioCity Symposium to scientific publications on breast cancer recurrence and cancer gene overactivation www.utu.fi/en/news/pres...

Repeated heatwaves can age you as much as smoking or drinking

"Long-term study suggests that the more heatwaves people are exposed to, the more it accelerates body ageing."

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A fascinating paper! I think in hindsight, us scientists are all expecting this to happen when we knockout something. But to actually characterise its effects and see it happening in real time is still eye opening. Watch out for Transcriptional Adaptation!

Automated optogenetic control of hundreds of cells in parallel. Each cell is individually steered, collectively acting as a "tissue printer". Preprint & code out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Pathologists have used nuclear & tissue shapes to diagnose #cancer for decades, but what is the molecular basis for this? In our latest work, we develop a computational pipeline to figure this out in #colorectalcancer! Check out 🧵& preprint #mechanobiology #stemcells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mapping of endosomal proximity proteomes reveals Retromer as a hub for RAB GTPase regulation - Nature Communications The endosomal retrieval subdomain organizes recycling of endocytosed proteins. Here, using proximity proteomics, the authors reveal that this recycling subdomain regulates switching of specific RAB GT...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

When is a Monomer not a Monomer? The Top Three Ways Your Favorite Fluorescent Protein Oligomerizes in Cells Many commonly used fluorescent proteins form dimers producing artifacts in a variety of experimental settings. Learn how to avoid these artifacts.

💡 Always a good time to be reminded: "if you fuse your protein of interest to GFP or EGFP to study the protein's behavior ... you are using a tag with a serious drawback."
Same goes for anything that doesn't have 'm' in its name (looking at you, dTomato and StayGold)

It has taken medical science 200 years to advance humans to the point where people are so healthy and living so long that they can deny that science and medicine is what got us here.

This is figure 1, which shows early detection of infectious avatars by the PPS system.

A paper in Nature Neuroscience suggests that the brain detects when a potential source of infection enters the immediate surroundings and prepares the body’s immune defenses. This may occur even before physical contact is made, in a virtual reality environment. go.nature.com/45cCSF7 #medsky 🧪

Endosome–ER contact sites in phagophore formation Autophagy is a crucial ‘self-eating’ mechanism used by eukaryotic cells to degrade and recycle cytosolic materials. A recent study by Da Graça et al. reports that the dynamic mobilization of endosome–...

Endosome–ER contact sites in phagophore formation: Trends in Cell Biology www.cell.com/trends/cell-...

Check out the recent spotlight published in @cp-trendscellbio.bsky.social about our study on ER-endosome contacts in autophagy by @julianedagraca.bsky.social

Differential roles of cyclin–CDK1 complexes in cell migration and invasion Highlighted Article: Cyclin–CDK1 complexes have a previously undiscovered role in regulating normal and cancer cell migration in 3D matrices.

Pleased that our latest paper is now out in @jcellsci.bsky.social, in collaboration with @drmcjones.bsky.social and others from Manchester and Plymouth: Differential roles of cyclin–CDK1 complexes in cell migration and invasion url: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Outside influences: The impact of extracellular matrix mechanics on cell migration “No cell is an island” – highlights the interconnectedness of cellular behavior and the extracellular matrix (ECM). Cell migration is inherently conte…

Chapter Two - Outside influences: The impact of extracellular matrix mechanics on cell migration
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

EPLINα controls integrin recycling from Rab21 endosomes to drive breast cancer cell migration Epithelial protein lost in neoplasm (EPLIN), an actin-binding protein, has been described as both a tumor promoter and tumor suppressor in different c…

Excited to share our most recent study on #integrintraffic #cancer #migration #focaladhesion by @ivaskalab.bsky.social @drpaulinamoreno.bsky.social Niklas Jäntti et al www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And thanks to our funders, in my case @SuomenAkatemia (Research Council of Finland) for supporting our research!

Thank you to everyone involved @mchastney.bsky.social @midibu.bsky.social @jrwconway.bsky.social @ivaskalab.bsky.social @johannaivaska.bsky.social and our collaborators & coauthors not on bluesky!

EPLINα controls integrin recycling from Rab21 endosomes to drive breast cancer cell migration Epithelial protein lost in neoplasm (EPLIN), an actin-binding protein, has been described as both a tumor promoter and tumor suppressor in different c…

Very happy to share Niklas Jäntti's PhD work on EPLIN /LIMA1 isoforms (α/β) in breast cancer (spoiler: both have opposing roles in integrin traffic, cell migration & clinical outcome). This might explain why EPLIN sometimes has been reported as pro- and sometimes as anti-tumorigenic: bit.ly/3Iwjtau

Super-resolution microscopy for structural biology - Nature Methods This Perspective introduces a framework for defining, measuring and reporting resolution in super-resolution microscopy and details the current state of the art in using fluorescence microscopy for st...

Really excited to share this Perspective from John Danial covering how technology is moving the field of fluorescence microscopy toward structural biology. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do you know what happens if you squeeze a #cell?

If the #confinement is high, the nucleus (green) will be super tense & the compressed cells will react like this👇🏽changing their #cytoskeleton (magenta)

Full: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#scicomm #microscopy #sciencesky @focalplane.bsky.social 🧪🔬