Zena Hadjivasiliou
@zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
190 followers 210 following 19 posts
Group Leader Mathematical and Physical Biology Lab @TheCrick and @UCL Physics. Interested in how size, shape and patterns develop and evolve; https://www.hadjivasilioulab.com/.
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zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
🚨New Preprint🚨

How do morphogens integrate dynamically with other modes of signalling+what can this do for pattern precision and robustness?

We used the Drosophila visual system as our muse to dive into this question with the amazing Vil Fernandes @ucl.ac.uk 🧠🪰 👇

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
crick.ac.uk
We're now recruiting early career group leaders at the Crick to lead ambitious research programmes and explore bold scientific questions.

Hear our Director, Edith Heard, explain why the Crick is a unique place for curiosity-driven research.

Apply now ➡️ www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
aeloseguiartola.bsky.social
Don’t miss the exciting ISSCR Webinar: Integrating Biophysics into Stem Cell Biology next Tuesday October 14!
The webinar features paired tandem talks that brings together experimentalists and theorists working at the interface of stem cell biology and biophysics. 1/2
www.isscr.org/upcoming-pro...
www.isscr.org
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
thibautbrunet.bsky.social
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 🧵
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
crick.ac.uk
Motivated graduates with backgrounds in biological or biomedical sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering and/or computer science are invited to apply to our 4-year fully funded PhD programme.

Apply by 05 November 2025

www.crick.ac.uk/careers-and-...
PhD students
Our PhD programme attracts the brightest scientific minds and is an opportunity for talented people to embark on their career in biomedical research.
www.crick.ac.uk
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
sdrsd.bsky.social
We have a PhD project here, along with many other cool projects:

"Characterising and predicting seizure onsets from longitudinal sEEG data",
www.crick.ac.uk/careers-and-...

with @flor-iacaruso.bsky.social (Crick), Torsten Baldeweg (UCL) and Martin Tisdall (UCL).

Apply by: 14 November 2025.
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
buzzbaum.bsky.social
LMB PhD studentship available in the Baum lab to use informatics to infer cell structure from genomic data in collaboration with the brilliant Tom Williams. If you write to me and I don’t reply - try again - the spam filter is hungry…
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
embl.org
EMBL @embl.org · 13d
New research from EMBL scientists is shedding light on how shape transitions help tissue boundaries form during development.

The results reveal a new class of adaptive material dynamics & could provide design principles for smart materials that respond to changing environments.
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
davidbrueckner.bsky.social
Come join us in Basel! @biozentrum.unibas.ch is an amazing place to start your group.
biozentrum.unibas.ch
Assistant/Associate Professor in Structural Biology, Biophysics or Biological Imaging

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

#biozentrum #University #Basel #Professor #Structural #Biology #Biophysics #Biological #Imaging
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
gcharras.bsky.social
Can pressure gradients persist over long timescales in animal cells? We induced intracellular pressure gradients and examined the resulting flows in single cells. We reveal surprisingly long lasting pressure gradients.

More here: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
elifesciences.org
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
akankshi.bsky.social
Our latest preprint! Into morphogenesis, Yap, ECM, signaling, vertex models, feedbacks/robustness? There is something here for everyone. We discovered a positive feedback loop that extends inner ear canals, and a built-in mechanism that shuts it down when morphogenesis is done. tinyurl.com/464wsjhd
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
Kudos to Alicia Donoghue from the Fernandes lab for the beautiful experiments, our own Lewis Mosby who was behind most of the theoretical work and everyone involved, it's been such fun putting the pieces together for this one. Would love to hear feedback!
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
So juxtacrine and temporally dynamic signals can themselves carry and refine positional information, augmenting that provided by morphogens to enable robust, fine-grained patterning.
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
This is all orchestrated by Glia morphogenesis: wrapping glia act as timekeepers, ensuring that cells differentiate after Hh and Notch patterns are established in each lamina column.
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
But the relationship between Hh and Notch goes beyond that: Notch restricts Hh expression in lamina cells, which results in the first, and only the first, cell in each column in the lamina expressing Hh, and does so at the right time.
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
It turns out that the Hh gradient is not sufficient on its own to specify all neuronal fates (also see elifesciences.org/articles/78093). Instead, we show that the combination of Notch and Hh activities together determine what neuron a cell is destined to be
Photoreceptors generate neuronal diversity in their target field through a Hedgehog morphogen gradient in Drosophila
Photoreceptors diversify their target field at long range through a graded signal.
elifesciences.org
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
This is a great system to explore how morphogens drive patterns at high resolution: a Hh gradient specifies neuronal fate at the single cell resolution repeatedly in the Drosophila lamina. Or does it?
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
🚨New Preprint🚨

How do morphogens integrate dynamically with other modes of signalling+what can this do for pattern precision and robustness?

We used the Drosophila visual system as our muse to dive into this question with the amazing Vil Fernandes @ucl.ac.uk 🧠🪰 👇

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
rashmi-priya.bsky.social
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 ⬇️
dev-journal.bsky.social
📢Call for papers. Submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – The Extracellular Environment in Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Guest Editors: Alex Hughes and Rashmi Priya

📅 Deadline: 1 March 2026

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex...

#DevBio
zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social
I love the Ig Nobel prizes, asking questions for the sake of curiosity is so inherent to being human and the reason I love doing science. Make some notes for your pasta protocols y'all!
nature.com
Highlights of this year’s Ig Nobel recipients include a nutrition prize for studying the preferred pizza toppings of rainbow lizards at a seaside resort in Togo

go.nature.com/4n5HQv7
Tipsy bats and perfect pasta: Ig Nobels celebrate ‘improbable’ research
The annual awards are a celebration of weird but thought-provoking science.
go.nature.com
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
levayerr.bsky.social
We only had a very minor contribution to this story with Alexis, but definitly worth a reading for those interested by patterning, precision and refinment. Nice combining of quantitative live imaging, modeling and optogenetics to dissect vein patterning dynamics
www.cell.com/developmenta...
Signaling-dependent refinement of cell fate choice during tissue remodeling in Drosophila pupal wings
Herszterg et al. show that during morphogenesis of the Drosophila pupal wing, a wave of Notch signaling activity updates cell fates to ensure robust and precise patterning of wing veins.
www.cell.com
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
janrombouts.bsky.social
Please allow me to introduce... our new preprint 🎉 Together with Michael Zhao, Anna Erzberger and Alexander Aulehla, we investigate pattern formation due to aggregation in confined systems.

You can find it at arxiv.org/abs/2509.08533

@michaelzhao.bsky.social @erzbergerlab.bsky.social
Reposted by Zena Hadjivasiliou
wbialek.bsky.social
We have been fortunate to have a stream of extraordinary Fellows as part of our community. They have gone on to wonderful positions .. It is time, once more, to renew. Our annual search is a chance for us to understand what the brightest young people in the community are doing! Please apply!