Stephane Vassilopoulos

One of my favorite images: a platinum replica electron microscopy shot of an unroofed cancer cell migrating along collagen fibers (blue). It beautifully captures the clathrin-coated pits (red, ~100 nm) and the intricate network of branched actin filaments (orange) 🔬

🖤 Remembering Françoise Helmbacher, who led a research team at IBDM (2005–2024), then at Marseille Medical Genetics. A passionate scientist dedicated to studying neuromuscular development and disorders. Thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues. 🫂 www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

Happy for the image of distinction in this year's Nikon Small World Competition, and congrats to all the winners!

Arp2/3 iso-complexes strike again! Axonal actin ring assembly and maintenance involves different iso-complexes that change expression during neuronal maturation 🎉 Great collaboration with Ana Rita Costa & Monica Sousa @ i3S in Porto www.i3s.up.pt/research-gro... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In a new preprint we provide evidence that biophysical properties of protein condensates can explain the order of events in the endocytic pathway, and that these events are tuned by protein condensate phosphorylation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Great to see this finally out! ✨ A real pleasure to contribute to this special issue celebrating 50 years of #Clathrin and to revisit how this superstar coat keeps surprising us ⚽🔬

Dysfunction of #caveolae in muscle disease: a cell biological perspective. From Harriet P. Lo, Robert G. Parton and colleagues (The University of Queensland) rupress.org/jcb/article/... #Organelles #Development #Membrane #lipid #Disease #SkeletalMuscle

Perspective: Harriet Lo, Robert Parton et al. provide a perspective on the role of #skeletalmuscle #caveolae, focusing on the cellular processes impaired by caveola dysfunction in muscle disease. They propose a new classification for disease-associated CAV3 variants. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

We are recruiting two experimentalists with interests 1) in stem cells, organoids and/or immune cells, and/or 2) in protein and/or cell engineering, to work on mechanobiology projects and develop the next generation of force sensors and force transducers. forms.gle/zKLGsPzpJoLf...

Well, well, well, here we go again. A tutorial is coming. In the meantime: we have found that Piezo1 adapts the endocytic machinery to sustain clathrin mediated endocytosis of EGFR on stiff substrates. No Piezo1, the textbook example of EGF triggering EGFR internalisation via CME goes kaputt.

The @agencerecherche.bsky.social 2026 results are in (pdf link): anr.fr/fileadmin/aa.... Wowowowow I got funded! @stefvass.bsky.social and I got founded! Drinks are on me!

Excited to share our latest work linking Cdc42 waves to mitotic cell size sensing and spindle length. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🔬🚀 Updated #VLab4Mic preprint. Rebuilt the clathrin models from full-length triskelions, dome+flat lattice toy simulations share a common motif. Wanna see how it looks across microscopy methods? (Thank you for the advice @stefvass.bsky.social) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.02.729521v3

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Want to hear about axons, endo-exocytosis, and fancy microscopy? My recent talk to the Helmholtz Information & Data Science School For Health is available on youtube:

The architecture of carriers formed by AP3:ARF1 for lysosomal membrane protein transport: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Work from @jggkaufman.bsky.social, in collaboration with @dgershlick.bsky.social and David Owen. @mpibiochem.bsky.social @thecimr.bsky.social

@mhakala.bsky.social shows that HRS forms bidimensional condensates onto endosomal membranes to flatten clathrin/ESCRT-0, an observation unexplained since the 2000s. Thx to Kukulski lab, @stefvass.bsky.social @colomlab.bsky.social @kaksonen.bsky.social @mishakudryashev.bsky.social rdcu.be/fihKk

Great to see this new review on super-resolution approaches to study the cytoskeleton doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2026.04.056 And very glad to see our correlative STORM/PREM images of endocytic “clearings” with @christlet.bsky.social highlighted doi.org/10.1126/science.ado2032

A review on Super-resolution Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM) to study endocytosis: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... Featuring our live-cell SIM of proximal axons showing frozen clathrin-coated pits within clearing of the spectrin mesh (doi.org/10.1126/scie...)

Glad to see this out in the open! Preprint from Anna Brachet and colleagues from @iins-bordeaux.bsky.social looking at the relative organization and roles of ßII-/ßIII-spectrin in the dendritic membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS), including cool MINFLUX data: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Here's a hint...

Tune in next Thursday and listen to @wiesner-t.bsky.social awesome project on exocytosis along the axon shaft!

Beautiful EM image but check that perfect clathrin-coated pit photobombing the shot...😂

#VAMP7-dependent late endosomal #secretion of #ER and #mitochondrial proteins impacts the #tumor #microenvironment and #macrophage engagement www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our article on how to use micropatterned presynapses-on-glass is out in its final form in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience @sfnjournals.bsky.social: www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8... The cover went to the special section on social neuroscience, so here's our #notthecover attempt

Gotta love Nature's opinion pieces "Science funding needs fixing - but not like that" "Academic publishing is broken - but publishing less is not the solution" "AI will kill science - how can researchers use it to be more efficient?"

FCHo2, not talin, enables inside-out activation of integrin ɑvβ5 in curved adhesions www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A menagerie of COS cells for #MicroscopyMonday 🧪

My personal obituary for Richard Hynes now live on the Manchester Cell-Matrix Centre website. www.manchester-matrix.org/news/profess...

This is finally out in J Neuroscience! A micropatterned presynapse-on-glass approach to resolve the nanoscale architecture and function of presynapses www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Excited to share our work engineering caveolin-derived nanoparticles “caveospheres”. We show their use for targeted transfection in cultured cells and effective targeted delivery and tumor killing in vivo. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

🚨The Neurocyto lab is branching out in our latest preprint! We used tubulin microinjection to directly visualize microtubule turnover in developing hippocampal neurons, demonstrating the presence of in-lattice repair and a selective stabilization in the nascent axon. Check below, or read on 🧵 1/9

Latest paper is now out and features on the cover of Science Advances 👉 tinyurl.com/vea5862x Very grateful Igor Bonacossa Pereira, Dat Le & Massimo Hilliard @hilliardlab.bsky.social for their creativity & passion. Read more about it 👉 tinyurl.com/56awjda5 & 👉 tinyurl.com/2vp8p8uk

What a great start for 2026 for the EVICAT team!!! Everything you need to know about extracellular vesicles' recipient cells and how to harness these pathways for therapeutic purposes Thanks to all co-authors! bit.ly/3N9InyW

New paper out! We show how mechanosensitive adherens junction proteins link actomyosin contractility to actin assembly using in vitro reconstitution. Huge congrats to Aurélie Favarin, Rayan Said, & all authors! In Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #actin #myosin #mechanobiology

Optogenetic SH3 nanoclustering of SRC and HCK uncovers the functional specificity of these redundant kinases in macrophages. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.27.692121v1

A comprehensive article for our unique Live-to-HPF CLEM workflow in Scientific Reports!🔬❄️ Thanks to all who supported our long journey! Images are taken @ImagoSeine @ijmonod.bsky.social @imagerie-gif.bsky.social @i2bcparissaclay.bsky.social @jeoleurope.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@natcellbio.nature.com - Finally out! Skin cells mechanically protect their genome from UV by positioning melanin above nucleus. Keratin filaments & microtubules drive the process. Led by Silvia Benito-Martinez & @laurasalavessa.bsky.social @membramics-lab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#LivingArchitectures We put cells and cytoskeleton filaments on the architecture of the musée d'Orsay. www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/agenda/ev... Scientists of the #CytoMorphoLab adapted their protocols to illustrate the questions that keep them awake at night. -> Two shows on the 24th and 25th of January.

Today, our animation synthesizing decades of research on actin-mediated endocytosis in budding yeast was published: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/... The result of a fantastic Iwasa-Drubin lab collaboration. @margotriggi.bsky.social @jiwasa.bsky.social movie.biologists.com/video/10.124...

Great collaborative work led by Christopher Toepfer and his team at the University of Oxford

is there a direct crosstalk between actin and vimentin intermediate filaments? Our work shows that vimentin promotes actin assembly by stabilizing ATP-subunits at the barbed end. Fantastic work done by @lilianpaty.bsky.social with @romet-jegou-lab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am thrilled to share our new article entitled 'Alternative splicing of SORBS1 affects neuromuscular junction integrity in myotonic dystrophy type 1 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @cecilemartinat.bsky.social

PhD student management tip from his advisor René Couteaux, discoverer of the neuromuscular junction: "*points at 50 cm of lab bench* here's where you'll work. I'll be back in three months to see what you've done"

I'm at the French Society for Myology meeting with @stefvass.bsky.social! He just made a book about the late Michel Fardeau, first president of the society, pioneer of electron microscopy for muscle and muscle disease en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_...

Want to hear a mid-career PI pontificate about science, career and cooking? Today's your lucky day thanks to The Microscopists podcast! Thanks Peter @yorkbioimaging.bsky.social for having me 🎙️🎧 themicroscopists.bitesizebio.com/episodes/chr...

New NeuroCyto preprint about to drop! @wiesner-t.bsky.social 😎⏳

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... check out the recent dispatch on endolysosomes and melano-biology interplay in @currentbiology.bsky.social by @delevoyecedric.bsky.social & @laurasalavessa.bsky.social from @membramics-lab.bsky.social