Ale Mongera

Our review on the interplay between metabolism and tissue mechanics is now published in @dev-journal.bsky.social Development!

Mechano-metabolic control of multicellular morphogenesis Bodineau, Pourquié, @mongeralab.bsky.social & co discuss how research into mechano-metabolic feedback loops during multicellular morphogenesis has the potential to drive major advances in our understanding of #DevBio. doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Recruiting! Joint PhD studentship with the laboratory of Silvia Santos @santoslab.bsky.social at the Francis Crick institute to examine the mechanics and growth control of human post-gastrulation amnioids. Deadline: 03/11/2026. Details on the project: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

We would like to add one or two postdocs to our lab in the next couple of years. If you are close to finishing your PhD and interested in the science we do, feel free to reach out to discuss opportunities.

Reciprocal mechanochemical feedback couples neural crest migration and neurulation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.14.744800v1

First published teamwork of the lab 🎉! We wrote a review about emerging concepts of how metabolism promotes, regulates and changes during gastrulation. We hope it will be useful for anyone interested in the emerging field of developmental metabolism. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is going to be awesome!

🎉 A proud moment for developmental biology and scientific discovery! Congratulations to Professor Roberto Mayor, who has now officially received his Fellowship of the Royal Society, one of the highest honours in science. 👏 #RoyalSociety #FRS #ScientificExcellence #DevelopmentalBiology #LifeSciences

UCL's Cell and Developmental Biology are hiring! Come and join us if you're interested in AI, computation and how they can lead to new biological discovery. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Join us to start your independent group!

Ready for the @ucllifesciences.bsky.social Science Fair!! #UCLlifesciences #Futurescientists

I won't pay $4,000 for a ticket to see my Knicks play in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years, but for some reason I routinely pay three times that much for open access to papers that I wrote myself.

The proposed new government rules for politics-based decision making on federal scientific grants will materially impact my ability to due science in the US: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... Please reach out to your congress representatives on this: www.linkedin.com/posts/lisa-m...

Massive congratulations to our Editor-in-Chief for being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society @royalsociety.org. This is an incredible honour for our journal. @ucl.ac.uk @ucl-cdb.bsky.social

‼️MASSIVE‼️ congratulations to Professor Roberto Mayor @mayorlab.bsky.social from UCL, who has been elected as a fellow of The Royal Society @royalsociety.org. Professor Mayor is a Professor of Developmental and Cellular Neurobiology and one of our board of directors. royalsociety.org/news/2026/05...

Great work and thread!

My postdoc work with @pcusachs.bsky.social is finally out! We find that fibrillar adhesions play an important role regulating the timescales of nuclear mechanotransduction. You can read all about it here : www.nature.com/articles/s41563-026-02590-x Huge thanks to everyone involved!!

(1/n) Does basal stem cell division orientation regulate skin stratification and tissue mechanics? And can tissue mechanics feed back to control division orientation? In our new preprint, we use a 3D vertex model to explore this @manningresearch.bsky.social @somiealo.bsky.social

How much information does it take to fold a protein? Not much, if you use the right information! We find that residue burial, a binary label of core vs surface, encodes a protein's fold highly efficiently and even improves ESM2's structure representation. 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Foundational work in #zebrafish can be credited to "fruitful" discussions between #Drosophila researchers such as José Campos-Ortega & Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. By the late 1980s, multidisciplinary approaches honed in flies were finally applied to a vertebrate. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

Join us!

Tissue phase transitions in development: more than just mechanics In this Review, @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social, @laura-rustarazo.bsky.social and @karengrace12.bsky.social discuss tissue phase transitions during development: doi.org/10.1242/dev....

We are hiring! Join the Stapornwongkul lab as a Master's student to develop novel optogenetic tools and investigate how spatiotemporal metabolic dynamics affect patterning and morphogenesis of in vitro human gastrulation. Link below 👇

VGZT is back this Thursday with two exciting talks! 🎉 🗓️ Thursday, February 19th ⏰ 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 UTC / 17:30 GMT / 18:30 CET Our speakers are 👉 Raquel Fueyo (@fueyoraquel.bsky.social) 👉 Margarete Diaz Cuadros (@mdiazcuadros.bsky.social) See you on there! 👋

Two funded PhD positions investigating the evolution of sarcomeres @ibdm.bsky.social in @biancah0406.bsky.social and our lab, together with @cnidevo.bsky.social - Interested to explore how similar or different Jellyfish sarcomeres are to Drosophila or human ones? www.ibdm.univ-amu.fr/ibdm_job/2-a...

JOB ALERT! We are excited to announce that we are recruiting three new academics at lecturer level! Click the link below for more info on how to apply, and don’t forget to explore our research themes too! We look forward to receiving your applications! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

🎉 The Developmental Mechanics Seminar Series is back! 🗓️ Thurs, Jan 22 🎙️ Opening talks: 🧬Guy Tanentzapf (UBC) — How cell adhesion molecules wire into the cytoskeleton 🌀Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff (EMBL) @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social — Mapping tissue mechanics with Brillouin microscopy

Using fluorescence live imaging and an in vitro implantation model, we show that human embryo attachment begins with direct cell fusion via syncytin-2–MFSD2A interaction. With @hansclevers.bsky.social. Great work by @tnoordzij.bsky.social & @martinacelotti.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Super cool paper! Presomitic mesoderm, oxygen levels, segmentation clock

🚨Seeking developmental or cell biologists🔬!🚨 Our department @ucl-cdb.bsky.social is looking to support scientists seeking to establish their lab with a fellowship. Deadline: 30 Jan. Apply here: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Congrats to the leading author @agrigas.bsky.social!

❗PREPRINT ALERT❗ doi.org/10.64898/202... The lab of M. Lisa Manning at @syracuseu.bsky.social in collaboration with Ale Mongera at @ucl-cdb.bsky.social show that in the avian presomitic mesoderm, Contact Inhibition of Locomotion has a tissue-wide effect, making tissue act like a fluid under tension.

Contact Inhibition coordinating tissues made sparsely of mesenchymal cells. From Alex Grigas @ ManningGroup and @mongeralab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very excited about this new paper out on bioRxiv, spearheaded by the fantastic Dr. Grigas in collaboration with @mongeralab.bsky.social and Galea labs.

Check out this new preprint on PSM mechanics! Very nice work!

How do sparse mesenchymal cells, with unique stellate arms spanning large gaps between cells, maintain their network while still flowing during development? In our new preprint we describe the avian PSM as a fluid under tension and develop new theory to explain it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

With more than 2.1k citations, 'The identification of genes with unique and essential functions in the development of the zebrafish, Danio rerio' by the CNV Lab highlighted the arduous work that took place during 'The Big Screen'. In total, 1163 mutants were described. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

So called microtubule organizing centers (MTOCs) are not "organizing centers". They don't control their position (network center), nor MT orientation, length and shape (network shape). The actual organizers are MTs, molecular motors and regulators of MT +ends. MTOCs nucleate MTs. Let's rename MTOCs.

Thought I was being really novel when I designed and 3D printed this mold for zebrafish transplants based on the microinjection one, but found out today it already exists… Bottom: my PLA mold that’s bent from warm agarose Top: a very kind (more robust looking) gift from @mongeralab.bsky.social

Cell type-independent timekeeping gene modules enable embryonic stage prediction in zebrafish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.12.688039v1

Stationary and germ layer-specific cellular flows shape the zebrafish gastrula https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687746v1

How can we organize current theoretical approaches for developmental biology - from information to dynamical systems & GRNs - into a common framework? We propose to think along Marr's 3 levels: computational problem, algorithm, implementation Check out our review: arxiv.org/abs/2510.24536

We are looking for: PhD Student (starting as Research Assistant) and Postdoctoral Researcher in Stem Cell Biology and Mechanobiology. Please RT💕 🔗 About our lab: renew.science/principal_in... 🎓 PhD position: jobportal.ku.dk/phd/?show=15... 🧪 Postdoc position: jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

🚨 Come join us @sheffielduni.bsky.social for a PhD on the evolution and development of feathers and flight! 🐣🔬 This project is supervised by @matt-towers.bsky.social & @alexgfletcher.bsky.social, and I'm excited to be involved as a project advisor. Please share! www.findaphd.com/phds/project... 🧪

Had the pleasure of working with @mohannad-dardiry.bsky.social to rethink what it means to develop for life. Many thanks to @dev-journal.bsky.social! @embl.org #LifelongDevSI

Happy birthday to #LaskerLaureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard! She identified 120 genes involved in specifying embryonic pattern development. Read about the epic screen that yielded her Lasker Award-winning results: ow.ly/Pz2050PYFsz #WomenInSTEM 🧪

We are hiring ! If you want to become professor of Bioinformatics in the best city of North America, check the announcement below ! Also you do need to speak French (as long as you commit to learning it :) ) www.umontreal.ca/public/www/d...