Julia Sero

Checkout our new preprint 🔬! An eye-opening analysis detailing the adoption of bioimage-analysis tools in microscopy, curated with Bruno Saraiva and @henriqueslab.bsky.social – a thread 🧵: preprint: doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.21.760457 github: github.com/HenriquesLab/mapping-bioimage-software

One can only hope ...

Oh Jumping Spiders! I love them.

To build complex tissues, cells need to produce energy to grow, generate forces and modulate mechanical properties. The role of metabolism and tissue mechanics in development is experiencing a renewed interest. Yet, we know very little about how these systems interact to drive morphogenesis...

🚨 Cary Mitchell, Director of Strategy at Best for Britain: 👏 “Our polling shows clear support for the advantages it would bring. That’s only logical when the reciprocal benefits include opening 27 doors onto priceless opportunities for young British people"

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

This footage shot by a tourist aboard Jacksonville Boat Charters near Amelia Island, Florida shows a leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea). At 2000 lbs (900 kg) & 7 ft long (2.1 m) they're the largest turtles & indeed one of the heaviest extant reptiles on Earth. Here There Be Monsters!

‘It’s magic’: scientists rediscover how to make ancient Roman colour-changing glass. Optical engineering that went into 1,600-year-old Lycurgus Cup has baffled experts for centuries. 🧪🏛️⚗️🏺🌈 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

A significant shift, however much the circular migration point is overdone. Here's my piece on why this matters from two weeks ago www.arguably.uk/p/eu-free-mo...

The final menstrual period is preceded by abrupt ‘cliff-like’ biological changes across multiple body systems, some of which show early signs more than a decade beforehand, according to research published in Nature Medicine. 🧪 🩺 #medsky

Incredibly excited about our latest work on R-bodies, 5+ years in the making! These coiled protein ribbons extend into ~10 µm needles in a pH-dependent manner & we caught them springing open inside amoebae after P. aeruginosa gets eaten. (animation: Jegg Yoon)🧵1/2 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What is going on my seminar syllabus next semester: “You are more than a future source of profit, and humanity's survival depends on all of us understanding this.”

This is a good thread. Importantly, it's also worth noting that all the improvements people are naming were once fiercely resisted by Republicans. Some examples:

Enormous news. A melanoma vaccine, one of the most deadly cancers out there. Science is good and helpful and there should be more of it. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

Fully funded 4-year PhD opportunity @lsiexeter.bsky.social &Bristol! How do cells translate mechanical forces into signals that shape an embryo? Explore the fascinating interplay between YAP, Wnt signalling and tissue mechanics in zebrafish development. Join us! www.swbio.ac.uk/programme/pr...

I’m a Program Officer and scientist at NIH, writing in my own personal capacity, and RFK Jr. is harming the NIH. I look with alarm at the harms he has done to our sister agencies, FDA and CDC, and to public health in general.

Week in wildlife: a bookworm bear, an angelic spider and a bald hedgehog www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Happy #FluorescenceFriday!! Preprint out from the Hudson lab at ECU with some work from his time at the @aicjanelia.bsky.social at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. They used the SiMView to visualize fibrin fiber formation, giving insight into how coagulation can prevent blood loss. tinyurl.com/y3hd7fhr

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Viscous mechanical cues encode metastatic behavior through cytoskeletal-nuclear coupling and chromatin remodeling

Ever see a snake do a barrel roll? Scientists disentangle the locomotor kinematics of this behavior in rolling snakes. Learn more in Current Biology: spkl.io/633287ntaA Yosuke Kojima & colleagues @currentbiology.bsky.social

A month ago, I shared LandmarksWidget, a small experiment in making spatial omics more tangible. Thanks to everyone who reached out—it kept growing. Meet milume (mih-LOOM): a way to explore spatial biology in 3D, right in your notebook. 🔬 1/3

NEW PAPER: How do we make resilient #epithelial barriers? We find that a key #mechanosensitive protein relies on force-dependent unfolding AND phosphorylation to recruit effectors that progressively build #cell-celljunctions. A 🧵: 1/11 doi.org/10.1083/jcb....

Our multi-immersion oblique plane microscope manuscript is online now. A light-sheet system that can be adapted to different imaging tasks, including a volumetric correction for imaging in media of any refractive index. @amsikking.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New from me on Political Sandbox: The Racism Firehose I've been around politics for over 20 years and heard my share of off-colour remarks. Nothing prepared me for ITV's film on Reform. It was like being blasted with a racism firehose. https://politicalsandbox.substack.com/p/the-racism-firehose

A new study from the @squeezycellslab.bsky.social lab shows that the same cell population can experience completely different physical challenges within an embryo. Unlike the cranial counterpart, the trunk NCCs adapt as their nuclei are deformed during migration 👏 #ECR www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper by Harshath Amal @harshath.bsky.social shows how TGF-β signaling controls epithelial permeability by regulating actomyosin contractility and adhesion. Surprisingly, elevated adhesion can maintain barrier integrity independently of contractility tinyurl.com/ywenrexy @jcellsci.bsky.social

Laith Bahlouli, Marc Edwards and colleagues identify atypical PI3Ks as specialised regulators of signal attenuation, cAMP relay organization and membrane uptake in Dictyostelium. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Trying Cellpose-SAM in FIJI, and this is really something! 🎉🔬 #FluorescenceFriday

I like to collect curious microscopy moments so I caught this cell-cell fusion event of ectodermal cells in a 🐸 embryo in vivo. The nucleus split and cytokinesis finished. But then a moment later, the 2 cells fuse back together to form 1 bigger cell with 2 nuclei! How cool? #FluorescenceFriday

Happy #FluorescenceFriday. This video shows a group of neural crest cells (🟣) remodelling a mesh of fibronectin matrix (🔵). This is part of a biorxiv paper showing the reciprocal relationship between NC and neural tube morphogenesis. 📹: Kai Weißenbruch, UCL 👇👇👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Immune cells don't only interact with the ECM, they also interact with surrounding cells in tissue as they migrate. This video gives me so much joy because there is just so much biology here to be discovered. Sticky cells! Here, immune cells are 🔴, ectodermal cells are ⚪. Happy #FluorescenceFriday

We found that the most gendered experience wasn’t work-life balance, the focus of most retention efforts. It was feeling devalued, in formal evaluations, but particularly in everyday interactions. Unlike every other topic, the gender gap in devaluation was larger among more senior faculty.

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Latest paper from our lab is now out in @embojournal.org! If you want to know how 3D cell shape changes promote #woundhealing, and see a 3D vertex model that allows #scutoids to form, read this article: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Many thanks and congrats to all co-authors!

Bloop 🫧 bloop 🫧 bloop 🫧 Fluid-filled lumens are everywhere in our body How do they get soooo big? We find that osmotic pressure vastly dominates mechanical forces in controlling lumen swelling in mouse embryos biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @louise-dagher.bsky.social @matteo-bassanini.bsky.social

Curious about Optical Coherence Microscopy (OCM)? Within the #IMAGINEproject, join us for a 2-day workshop to get hand's on experience using your sample on an OCM system. 🗓️ December 14-15 📍 Vienna, Austria Apply by October 26⤵️ www.eurobioimaging.eu/events/imagi...

UKRI is on paper and arm's length body but, as someone recently pointed out to me, those arms seem as long as a T-rex's. Full story in today's Research Fortnight: bsky.app/profile/resp...

So I did my Year 1 Cell Bio Light Microscopy lecture and as we were leaving a student said, "You guys, I *love* fluorophores!" ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 She was also keen to read about how a young chemist's efforts to synthesize quinine led to revolutions in both biomedical science & fashion. 🥰

STING drives NF-κB signaling by recruiting the IKK complex in an M1-linked ubiquitin-dependent but IRF3-independent manner science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is Nigel the Eastern Screech-Owl at the Avian Behavior Conservancy in Escondido, CA. Screech-owls have fairly complex vocalizations & Nigel has specific mews & trills he uses with humans to direct them to give him mealworms. It's =highly effective=. Meaning: He's domesticated his humans.

OMG

This is excellent. Great presentation, eye opening, and makes you think. sheets.works/data-viz/hol...

Have you ever wondered how cells in developing embryos manage to squeeze through tiny spaces? And how do they cope with mechanical stresses imposed by surrounding tissues? Check out our paper, now out @natcellbio.nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s the middle of the night here, I haven’t slept more than four hours in a night for 6+ weeks, but here’s a video that’s been bringing me joy:

last night eyewitnesses saw Oscar Belgal — the man shot by ICE with his 5 year old in the car — discharged from the hospital into ICE custody, with feds speeding off as NYPD cleared the roads for them of protesters. his attorneys don't know where he is; he's seemingly been taken out of NY state.