Thomas Lecuit

And here is the link to access the whole pdf. Enjoy! I strongly believe that focusing on information & computation during Development provides an important framework, that encapsulates the genetic, chemistry & mechanics, but focusses on organisation, dynamics & logic. PDF: tinyurl.com/4hn34t8w

You're watching a sand bubbler crab hard at work. And bubbler crabs have one job: make balls. Lots of balls. With your mouth parts. They're filter-feeders/detrivores, combing through damp sand for microscopic food & the balls let them organize the "cleaned" sand so they don't nom it twice.

C'est la rentrée! Programme complet des enseignements, téléphones portables autorisés (sur vibreur).

Michaud, @andrewgoryachev.bsky.social, von Dassow, @xenresearchcenter.bsky.social et al. identify a versatile cortical pattern-forming circuit based on #Rho, F-#actin, Ect2, & RGA-3/4 rupress.org/jcb/article/... 📕 In "Collective Behaviors and Self-Organization in Cells" rupress.org/jcb/collecti...

About eligibility changes at ANR: at least the ERC has a prominent scientist in charge and when something's wrong, they can listen and engage (see their recent reversal on eligibility). ANR has just bureaucrats who make sure their air-conditioned offices will not let them hear researchers screaming

New paper 🧵 What if the "landscape" that guides cell differentiation isn't fixed, but is sculpted, in real time, by the very cells moving through it? We call this a 'sandscape' : grains of sand that carve dunes as they move, while the dunes' shape simultaneously steers where the grains go next.

An auspicious day, today, 14 July for a semi-final 🇫🇷. May the better team win

The videos of the talks from speakers at the conference @college-de-france.fr on Information processing and biological computation on June 26 are available at the link below. Or on YouTube directly. Enjoy!

Final Eastern VGZT session of the season! ☀️ Join us for the keynote by Thomas Lecuit (@thomaslecuit.bsky.social)! “The interplay between geometry and mechanics during Drosophila gastrulation” 🗓️ Wednesday, July 8th ⏰ 9:00 BST / 10:00 CEST / 13:30 IST / 17:00 JST / 18:00 AEST See you there! 👋

We just celebrated with alumni & current members the 25yrs anniversary of our group @ibdm.bsky.social and @centuri-ls.bsky.social. Lots of joy to witness the scientific paths of so many talented ex members. Big smiles, laughs and fun 🤩. So thankful for having had such colleagues. Let’s keep going 😊

It is out 😍 check it out!! Multiscale integration of tissue and chromatin context converts cell heterogeneity into stable intestinal patterning. @cschwayer.bsky.social @silviabarbiero.bsky.social @davidbrueckner.bsky.social @ehannezo.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

It was wonderful to host Mukund Thattai from @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social to give a seminar @centuri-ls.bsky.social. Thank you for entertaining us on how information is encoded at the cell surface. 🙏🏼

L’un des textes à commenter au bac de philo aujourd’hui. « Ils n’ont pas cette défiance instinctive contre les écarts de la pensée »…

This will be on 26 June in Paris! 🤩You are welcome to join and participate in this exciting 1-day conference at the College de France on Biological computational accross areas of biology. Fantastic speakers. Free, no registration, at the heart of Paris on a lovely season. Worth planning a weekend…?

Exciting @embo.org Symposium @embl.org Heidelberg. Congrats to organizers. 🙏🏼 for the invitation! Inspiring to hear from so many systems bacteria, fungi, plants, ciliates, choanos, hydra, nematodes, insects, vertebrates to get at Principles. EMBL is a wonderful place, my Alma Mater 🤩 Great mug!

💪 Great pleasure to host @ardemp.bskyverified.social from @scripps.edu this week. 🧪 Fantastic keynote on PIEZO ion channels as essential pressure sensors for touch, pain and beyond. Excellent discussions on proprioception, pain, parturition, mechanobiology, and cell & molecular biology!

Visiting Duke Univ. yesterday. What a treat to be hosted by @akankshi.bsky.social Munjal (former PhD std) 🤩 and spending time with fantastic trainees & wonderful faculty, such as Stefano di Talia @ditalialab.bsky.social. Many thanks for the invitation 🙏🏼. A place full of talent & energy.

🏆 Le prix Shaw pour les sciences biologiques et médicales 2026 (Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine) a été décerné au Pr Hugues de Thé, titulaire de la chaire Oncologie cellulaire et moléculaire. 👉 https://tinyurl.com/4buh5nmv

Glad to see this out in its final form! www.nature.com/articles/s41... What changed since the preprint? Wonderful experiments disentangling the effect of receptor binding vs tissue porosity on Nodal diffusion, plus one of the smoothest review experiences! Thanks @natcellbio.nature.com & reviewers 🙏

Many thanks @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social from @embl.org Heidelberg for visiting us @centuri-ls.bsky.social and giving a truly exciting talk on cell division timing and phase transition during embryogenesis 🤩! Developmental biology is really cool 😎

Pierre Chambon was a great scientist. And a good man too. He alone opposed to leading British embryologists during the evaluation of a case of scientific misconduct more than 40 years ago, to defend young scientists against an establishment to which he belonged. An unforgettable lesson. RIP Pierre 💐

« Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de mai la rose, En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur, Rendre le ciel jaloux de sa vive couleur, Quand l’Aube de ses pleurs au point du jour l’arrose »

Here is the announcement of a Symposium @college-de-france.fr on 26 June on Information Flow and Computation in Biological systems. A great line of speakers on a variety of topics from embryogenesis to neuroscience, immunology and microbiology. Free entrance, come if you are in Paris end of June 🤩

#TalentsCNRS Découvrez les médaillés d'argent et de bronze 2026 de CNRS Biologie ! Félicitations aux lauréates et lauréats ! 🎉 👉 www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

And of course, ot was good to feel in the path of d’Arcy Thompson at St Andrews, in a place he moved to after publishing his famous opus 😊

Wonderful visit at the university of St Andrews, beautiful campus and city 🤩. Thank you Marcus Bischoff for the invitation, and the great discussions with you and your colleagues, especially Jochen Kursawe.

It's funky axons time 🔬 🧪

📢 Registrations are open for the 𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔! 🗓️ Oct 26–30, 2026 📍Institut d'Études Scientifiques de Cargèse, Corsica Topic: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚-𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨: centuri-livingsystems.org/csm-2026/

A question I get asked all the time by @dev-journal.bsky.social authors "Why does it cost so much to publish a paper?" We break down the finances and explain where the money goes Spoiler: quality publishing takes a village (people + infrastructure) journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

This was a terrific talk. Thank you for visiting us in Marseille. 🤩🙏🏼

The mistral was very strong yesterday… this iconic pine tree near our home, so majestic that the street was built around it, is a sad victim 😢. No human casualty and the house was left intact…

🧫 Et si la science devenait une œuvre d’art ? Au @museeorsay.bsky.social, des images de cellules observées au microscope deviennent une performance visuelle pour faire sortir la biologie du laboratoire et révéler l’architecture du vivant. 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNQM...

Our study on shape diversity in cnidarians is now published. The final version includes extensive new data that substantially extend the original bioRxiv preprint. Congrats to everyone who contributed to this work! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... @embl.org

Thank you Jose Pastor-Pareja and colleagues for writing a nice comment in @currentbiology.bsky.social on the article by Stefan Harmansa and Alex Erlich: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

New piece on the mechanics of squamous epithelial shape transition highlighting the role of tensile forces, force transmission by Dumpy & elastic resistance by the ECM in the developing wing. Terrific work from Stefan Harmansa @morphomechanics.bsky.social with Alex Erlich🍾👏: tinyurl.com/2p58b3w3

The cell biology community mourns the loss of Catherine Rabouille, an exceptional scientist whose determination, innovation, and fearless engagement with ideas reshaped how we think about cellular organization. #InMemoriam from @adamgrieve.bsky.social and colleagues: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

I really enjoyed a lot visiting @ISTAustria, discussing intensely many interesting problems with the students and posdocs all day long 🤓, and for giving a talk. Thank you 🙏🏼 @ehannezo.bsky.social for the invitation and for the very nice dinner with Gasper Tkacik 🤩. Wonderful day, and see you soon!

Applications open for the CENTURI Hackathon for Quantitative Biology 2026! 🧬💻 Join us in Marseille (June 5–7) for a weekend of coding at the interface of CS & life sciences. 📝Apply by May 6: centuri-livingsystems.org/application-... Event Details: centuri-livingsystems.org/hackathon-20...

A 16h sur @franceculture.fr Sciences Chrono parle de "Forme et croissance" de D'Arcy Thompson. Comment ce livre paru en 1917 a-t-il transformé l'histoire de la biologie et de notre compréhension de la morphogénèse? Quelles lois physiques et mathématiques sous-tendent les formes multiples du vivant ?

Wonderful to be part of exciting Program at Harvard University & CMSA, Mathematics &Biology: Morphometry, Morphogenesis and Mathematics. Thank you 🙏🏼 and congrats to organizers for their invitation. Great to see and discuss with wonderful colleagues, not least @akankshi.bsky.social! 🤩

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

New paper out! In this project, we focused on the question how tissue mechanics is spatially controlled during development. We show that the GPCR ligand Fog acts as a “mechanogen” during Drosophila gastrulation, driving a self-organized wave of tissue invagination: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spring is just around the corner in Marseille 😊

Very sad news. Gail Martin (1944-2026) was a figure in developmental biology. She pioneered the field of ES cells. A great colleague, a friend and a lovely person.

Huge congrats to @manuelthery.bsky.social and all the Cytomorpho lab. The "Living Architectures" performance at @museeorsay.bsky.social was breathtakingly beautiful

A few seconds of eternity: From microscope to museum❣️ It was truly delightful to be part of this project, celebrating life as a continuous dance of creation, collapse, and renewal. 🔄 Kudos to @manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social #cytomorpholab members, and @museeorsay.bsky.social

This weekend we projected cells and filaments on the roof of the @museeorsay.bsky.social in Paris, then we contracted it with a pinch of myosin. And it was fabulous! Grateful to have been part of this art/science project & thx to @manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social & the CytoMorphoLab

Very nice dinner with colleagues from Institut Pasteur, Francois Schweisguth, Romain @levayerr.bsky.social , Thomas Gregor and @jeromegros.bsky.social 🤩. I look forward to more discussions and to giving my seminar tomorrow ! Thank you for the great invitation.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Last but not least, @NCBS_Bangalore hosts remarkable plants and biodiversity. The garden is beautiful, at any season. Always refreshing to be exposed to nature while working on « life in a lab »… a glimpse below 🤩

Another treat visiting ICTS, welcomed & stimulated by @vijaykrishnamurthy.bsky.social Exciting work on non-trivial & remarkable interactions btw mechanics & geometry in morphogenesis. Check what will come out… + Do visit ICTS biological physics groups. 🙏🏼 for hosting me!