🧪 Last chance! Registration for the #RigiWorkshop 2026 closes next week! Our guest speakers include @dudinlab.bsky.social, @michaelraissig.bsky.social, @annikaguse.bsky.social, @gautamdey.bsky.social & @jandevries.bsky.social. More details here 👉 biol.scnat.ch/rigiworkshop26

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 🧵

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

Be our new colleague! 🎉
The Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Geneva is hiring an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor.

👉 More details here: lnkd.in/e8Z9eAm4
👉 Our department: mocel.unige.ch

Please feel free to share this opportunity with your network.

🧵1/14 Preprint thread! Can we predict a cell’s fate based on its dynamics? 🔮 Our new study unveils a framework for watching development unfold in real-time, revealing how a cell's shape and movement encode info about its future fate. 🔬📄 Preprint: tinyurl.com/4shf8v4x

IG Nobel Prize in #Physics 2025 to @mpipks.bsky.social researchers for elucidating the phase behaviour of cacio e pepe sauce. The work highlights how physics can also be applied to solve daily-life problems!

nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03045-0

Compared to other species Didinium spans a much wider range of swimming speeds and trajectory shapes, highlighting how dense cilia bands can power high speeds for prey capture, while metachronal waves and their asymmetries provide striking maneuverability.

We develop a model to understand how these metachronal wave asymmetries can give rise to the wide repertoire of swimming behaviors of these cells.

By imaging metachronal waves across entire cilia bands we observe two main mechanisms that contribute to steering: Inhomogeneous wavelengths across the cell and glitches in coordination that can extend to large portions of the cilia array.

These agile cells are able to execute these rapid motions thanks to two circumferential cilia bands where metachronal waves propagate stably. In this work we explore how do the dynamics of these waves can encode a wide repertoire of behaviors.

We look at Didinium nasutum, a predatory ciliate that can execute a wide repertoire of swimming behaviors

In another exciting development our new preprint is online:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

This is the work of my brilliant graduate student Katerina Kourkoulou in collaboration with Maggie Liu and Arnold Mathijssen. Here is a video of the subject of our study:

Looks like I am late to this party but have exciting news. I’ve been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study #XtrmCells! Thankful to @erc.europa.eus for this opportunity, and to my collaborators, mentors, and group for their support. Looking forward to exploring the mechanics of these cells!