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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

📢 🎉Oral presentation at the International Mechanobiology Symposium in Glasgow: Wednesday, Alsh 2 room, 15:30. Come and learn how do epithelial cells mechanically adjust to dramatically stretch using Brillouin microscopy. #ISMB2026 #Mechanobiology #BrillouinMicroscopy #Cytoskeleton @embl.org

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

John Gurdon will be deeply missed: a sharp mind, a warm and witty sense of humour, and a visionary who shaped our understanding of developmental biology. I admired his intelligence, envied his prominent hair🙂. Left photo, in archives of Nobel, taken by John Overton, photographer and our lab manager.

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

This is the second simulation, with contractility and stiffness increasing over time (the latter derived from what we learnt using Brillouin microscopy):

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Finally, we developed a physical toy model of mesoderm folding to test if the dynamic, localised increase in stiffness facilitates folding the mesoderm? The answer is YES!. See the simulations ⤵️: first movie: ✅contractility ❌stiffness; second movie: ✅contractility ✅ stiffness.

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

How do microtubules make mesoderm cells -transiently- stiffer? Using live imaging & 3D-SIM, we found microtubules reorganise within the cell's sub-apical compartment, -where we measure the stiffening- by becoming increasingly aligned with each other during mesoderm folding:

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

We wanted to understand what makes the mesoderm transiently stiff during its folding & invagination. We did not see a correlation between actomyosin and the increase in stiffness. But surprise!: We depolymerised microtubules using Colcemid (right panel) and mesoderm cells remained in a softer state😱

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

On the contrary, the ectodermal cells located on the dorsal side of the embryo become softer! In sum, the embryo undergoes two diverging mechanical transitions: mesoderm: stiffening followed by softening; ectoderm: softening. See ⤵️ the softening of dorsal cells when they flatten and stretch:

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Gastrulation starts when the mesoderm (bottom in ⬆️), folds and invaginates, and next, undergoes EMT. Here, we measured fast and biphasic mechanical dynamics: during mesoderm invagination, cells stiffen (Brillouin shift map -bottom panel-, transient yellow); during EMT, mesoderm cells soften.

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Using Brillouin microscopy, we measured changes in stiffness within the whole-cell of an intact organism. We focused on the most important event in our life: gastrulation, which in Drosophila is really fast (~30'):

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Juan Manuel Gomez Elliff @gomezjm-devmech.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

📣 Wanna hear our story about the complex mechanical dynamics that cell populations undergo during the most important morphogenetic event? -Of course I am talking about gastrulation 🙂🤘. Join us this Wed at 10:00 CET, details -> @vgzt2021.bsky.social @embl.org @prevedel-lab.bsky.social

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