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Toby Andrews

@tobyandrews.bsky.social

380 followers 770 following 17 posts

Embryologist interested in how organs grow, adapt and evolve 🫀🔬 Transition Fellow at IDRM, University of Oxford. Previously postdoc Francis Crick Institute, PhD University of Cambridge. Pumped about hearts, microscopes and morphospaces.

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Thrilled to bits to see our latest work online in Dev Cell! 🥳

We wanted to know how cells build functional organs with precision🫀🫁📏 Here we show how coupling of cell shape and organ function fine tunes the form and contractile power of the developing #zebrafish heart 1/n

tinyurl.com/cell-stretch

Mechanochemical coupling of cell shape and organ function optimizes heart size and contractile efficiency in zebrafish

Andrews et al. demonstrate that multiscale feedback between mechanical and chemical cues builds a functional heart to support zebrafish embryonic life. Cell recruitment and organ-scale forces drive tr...

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Biomedical Picture of the Day BPoD @bpodaily.bsky.social · Aug 18

How the functional architecture of the zebrafish heart is shaped during development

📹 @tobyandrews.bsky.social et al @rashmi-priya.bsky.social
lab @crick.ac.uk in @cellpress.bsky.social Developmental Cell

➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2025...

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Julia Eckert @juliaeckert.bsky.social · Aug 15

Now published in @natcomms.nature.com! 🥳

👉 rdcu.be/eATn3

We developed image analysis tools to capture the nematic orientation field of 3D tissue surfaces. Tested on epithelial aggregates, zebrafish hearts, myoblasts on spheres & micro-vessels, we combined soft matter physics with exp. biology.

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Rita Mateus @ritamateus.bsky.social · Aug 9

Hot off the press!!! Proudly presenting our lab's new review on how do cells communicate to control organ size :) We focus specially on dynamic connections that operate at different timescales to regulate organ growth and morphogenesis. #devbio #SizeandShape www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Start-Shape-Stop: Cell communication mechanisms controlling organ size

Accurate growth control is critical for the achievement of proportional organs during animal development and repair processes. Either extra or deficie…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Heartiest congratulations and thanks to @rashmi-priya.bsky.social on the first of many studies from the lab, and for supporting me through its morphogenesis from start to finish 🫀

Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

A huge thanks to all authors for their work in bringing this project to life @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social @mcramel.bsky.social @kirtigupta.bsky.social @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social and our colleagues and facilities @crick.ac.uk 13/n

Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Looking forward - a deeper understanding of these design principles will give us better insight into what makes development robust, and how it can be steered to produce diversity, novelty, and disease 12/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Together, we learn that the shape and size of the heart aren’t hardwired, instead they’re worked out through a flow of information across scales, giving rise to self-organising and emergent features 👀 11/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Not only this, they were also more functionally efficient, owing to a greater blood filling capacity. 10/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

To test the model, we came up with a neat genetic approach to disrupt actin turnover in the Notch+ population. Following the model predictions, when activated at sufficient density, this made hearts bigger... 9/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

To understand how coherent changes in organ shape and size could arise from stochastic signalling @jcornwallscoones.bsky.social developed a 3D vertex model, which predicted the ventricle should grow suddenly, when enough cells soften 8/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Looking more closely, we found intrinsic changes in actomyosin tension enable stretched cells to change shape in response to organ scale forces. This is a local response to Notch, activated in a stochastic pattern 7/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Using drugs to disrupt the heartbeat, we found cells stretch in response to the force of ventricle contraction. This also traps them in the compact layer, meaning trabecular density stabilises at a threshold of force production 6/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

meanwhile, by unwrapping the heart, we found that compact layer cells stretch. This allows the heart to grow in size despite losing cells from its outer layer 5/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Using single cell tracking, we found trabecular cells don’t just divide to form ridges. Instead, they recruit cells from the surrounding compact layer... 4/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

As the embryo grows, the heart expands in size and forms two layers – an elastic compact layer, and an inner layer of muscular trabecular ridges that help to power heart contraction 3/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

The heart is a remarkable organ, where form and function arise in parallel – in this case, the heart wall remodels to form a complex architecture, while the heart beats to support blood flow to the peripheral organs 2/n

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Aug 6

Mechanochemical coupling of cell shape and organ function optimizes heart size and contractile efficiency in zebrafish

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Gareth Fraser @garethjfraser.bsky.social · Apr 8

New Pre-Print Alert! "Teeth Outside the Jaw: Evolution and Development of the Toothed Head Clasper in Chimaeras." We use fossil evidence, development and CT scans through ghost shark ontogeny to describe the emergence of the tenaculum! 👻🦈🦷 @karlycohen.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CT scan of the head clasper (tenaculum) from the Spotted Ratfish (Hydrolagus colliei), compete with its rows of shark-like teeth!

Our paper features fossil reconstruction art (of Helodus simplex) by Ray Troll - https://www.trollart.com/

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

James Hammond @jamesehammond.bsky.social · Mar 24

Latest work:

Review on the evolvability of vertebral number, and the developmental processes underpinning it

Written by Callum Bucklow, @bertaverd.bsky.social, and myself

Check it out here: doi.org/10.32942/X2K...

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Feb 5

A fantastic opportunity to take on evolution with experimental embryology

Great lab, mentor, department, and model system 🐠 don't miss out!

Berta Verd @bertaverd.bsky.social · Feb 5

I am recruiting an #ERC funded PostDoc to work on the evolution of vertebral counts in cichlids. This is an experimental project & will be looking for candidates with experience generating reporter lines, live-imaging and experimental embryology.
Application deadline: 25th Feb.
tinyurl.com/33jbu8fa

Reposted by Toby Andrews

Prakash Lab @ Miami @vprakashlab.bsky.social · Feb 5

🚨📢 New paper alert! Our work showing that bilateral cellular flows display asymmetry prior to left–right organizer formation in amniote gastrulation is now published in PNAS!! @pnas.org
🥳😃 🐣
Paper link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

News article: news.miami.edu/stories/2025...

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Toby Andrews @tobyandrews.bsky.social · Jan 31

An ancient patterning system co-opted to position the chordate forebrain 🧠

Amphioxus spilling more evolutionary secrets - beautiful and rigorous work from @giacomogattoni.bsky.social (but no surprises there!)

Giacomo Gattoni @giacomogattoni.bsky.social · Jan 27

For my first post on 🦋, I am incredibly excited to share that my PhD paper has been published in #ScienceAdvances!

We compared the development of the anterior neuroectoderm to uncover how the chordate #forebrain evolved 🧠. Have a look at the summary 🧵 below!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An ancient apical patterning system sets the position of the forebrain in chordates

A conserved Wnt-regulated molecular signature sets forebrain position and identity in chordates.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Young Embryologist Network @yen-network.bsky.social · Jan 30

Registration and abstract submission for YEN 2025 is officially open!

We are looking forward to seeing you at the 17th Young Embryologist Network Conference on the 19th May 2025.

Attendence is FREE thanks to our amazing sponsors: @biologists.bsky.social @10xgenomics.bsky.social and Azenta.

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Jan 30

Tools to analyse early heart morphogenesis in detail are limited. @noelresearchlab.bsky.social &co develop computational package called morphoHeart that allows for integrated 3D analysis of both #heart & extracellular matrix morphology in live #zebrafish embryos 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/42DlqtJ

Maximum intensity projection of a live embryonic zebrafish heart at 72 hours post fertilisation, showing myocardial actin (green; Tg(myl7:LifeActGFP)) and endothelial actin (magenta; Tg(fli1a:Ac-TagRFP)). The image is overlaid in the atrium with 3D reconstructions of the myocardial (light blue), endocardial (pink) and extracellular matrix (orange), and in the ventricle with a 3D reconstruction of the myocardium colour-coded to visualise myocardial thickness.

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Reposted by Toby Andrews

Julia Eckert @juliaeckert.bsky.social · Jan 29

Spheroids are simple systems with only convex curvature. What about more complex systems?

We teamed up with @tobyandrews.bsky.social & @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, and analyzed the ventricular myocardium of Zebrafish hearts ... and it works! 👇

(Directors: high alignment = red, misaligned = blue)

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