iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

#Twisting embryos and multiple #attachment sites in #Drosophila - now both available as #preprints. Proud of @giuliaserafini.bsky.social & @cuencam15.bsky.social, who worked together & established theory collaborations with @lepuslapis.bsky.social & @carldmodes.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de at its best

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

giuliaserafini.bsky.social @giuliaserafini.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Thank you @prelights.bsky.social for this interesting discussion! Our preprint is indeed out 🎉, and we are so happy to talk about it! @paveltomancak.bsky.social @lepuslapis.bsky.social

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Apply by May 20th to do research @mpi-cbg.de or @biohub.org. For example, my lab is open to your #ideas that loosely align with the theme of the #evolution of #morphogenesis. The name of the game is #freedom. Join us to develop an independent research line. I provide support, mentoring & technology

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Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Do not miss this amazing conference! And if you are interested in mechanical forces in Evo-Devo, there is a symposium for you!

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Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Great essay on a timeless question! "The complexity of life is not pre-encoded in the genome, but emerges through development in a way that is not fully captured by the mechanical metaphors of blueprints and computer codes".

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

The genome isn't a blueprint. But what is it? I originally imagined this as a reported feature on metaphors of the genome, but it ended up being an essay. And at the end I share the metaphor I personally ended up landing on. If you want to tell me why it is wrong, you'll need to read the story ;)🧪

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Congratulations @philipschoene.bsky.social on defending his Master’s thesis on the supremacy of mechanics in Hydra regeneration from aggregates of dissociated cells. Expertly guided by @anaisbailles.bsky.social. #experiment and #theory #LoPaTs @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social #stuffthatmatters

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Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Thanks a lot to @elisecutts.bsky.social for nicely highlighting and putting in context our article! It was very interesting to discuss together, notably about the analogies between the emergence of order in Hydra and other physical phenomena.

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

Dear Fly Community,

In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled.

The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC).

Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options.

To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum).

To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…

https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase

Our immediate goals are:

1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online

2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance).

Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data.

At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise.

Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028.

We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide.

Sincerely,
The FlyBase Team

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Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Our beautiful Hydra made the cover!!! 😍😍😍 An experiment performed by Pavel Mejstrik with a HCR protocol by @giuliaserafini.bsky.social, @paveltomancak.bsky.social lab @mpi-cbg.de Actin fibers in blue, nuclei in orange.

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Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Very happy that the first article from my postdoc work in the Tomancak lab is now published @PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... We studied the self-organization of actin in aggregates made from Hydra cells. Thread below (1/9)

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics @mpi-cbg.de · 05/08/2025

Stretching the immortal Hydra. Publication by @paveltomancak.bsky.social group with Carl Modes @mpi-cbg.de & @zechnerlab.bsky.social shows how cells can create a new organism from scratch by coordinating their mechanical properties. @anaisbailles.bsky.social @pnas.org www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...

mpi-cbg.de

Stretching the immortal Hydra

Dresden researchers show how cells can create a new organism from scratch by coordinating their mechanical properties.

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

To recognise and celebrate @svobodalab.bsky.social's pivotal contribution to Woodstock Bio2 + Night Science, #TCTeAC, I am starting this "What Petr Svoboda did at Woodstock?" thread. If you were there - #contribute and #retweet. "Petr Didn’t Submit an Abstract. #TCTeAC Submitted to Him."

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Updated a broken link in my substack post about the #ColossalBio #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign – dire wolves are still extinct. open.substack.com/pub/devoevom...

open.substack.com

The Extinction of Truth

Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit

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Reposted by Anaïs Bailles

paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

#LoPaT @anaisbailles.bsky.social bringing up the wonders of #Hydra, #physics, disorder to order transition and tissue mechanics to #TCTeAC

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