🫁 From #lung development to understanding pulmonary disease Researchers from Dagmar Iber’s Computational Biology group at ETH Zürich’s D-BSSE are uncovering how the lung’s intricate branching struct...

Researchers from D-BSSE, institutions in Basel and their international collaborators show how #mechanobiology is evolving – from studying individual molecules to understanding complex cellular systems...

Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 11 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41565-026-02179-0The Perspective highlights key challenges in mechanobiology, including the need to engineer multicellular reference models, develop and refine biophysical methods to manipulate and quantify biomechanical properties across scales and establish theoretical frameworks to interpret complex mechanobiological phenomena.

Studying morphogen gradient-based tissue patterning in silico while accounting for biological variability remains challenging. Here, we present a MATLAB-based protocol for simulating steady-state morp...

Morphogen gradients are known to guide spatial patterning, but can they also encode time? Vetter and Iber propose that a co-expanding morphogen source generates transient signals, allowing cells to measure time without additional molecular clocks. The Sonic Hedgehog gradient in the mouse neural tube is used to show how this mechanism can act as a timer. Opposing gradients synchronize differentiation across the tissue, providing a simple, widely applicable strategy for coordinating space and time during development.

How do #embryos fold their neural plate into a closed #neuraltube? Check out our latest #mechanobiology #preprint on the mechanical basis of mammalian spinal neurulation: https://t.co/McOxom009T #development #DevBio #morphogenesis @veerle_goederen, Roman Vetter, Katie McDole https://t.co/hfczsM7Rqu

In a cancer mouse model, wrinkling patterns in bladder-lining tissue differ from their healthy counterparts. Changes in tissue-mechanical properties that alter elastic buckling instabilities explain t...

Nature Physics - Carcinoma subtypes are normally linked to specific genetic alterations, but tissue mechanical changes also play a role. Now, aberrant morphologies resembling bladder carcinoma are...