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Merkel lab

@merkellab.bsky.social

459 followers 444 following 30 posts

Group Leader, theoretical soft matter & biophysics CNRS, Center for Theoretical Physics, Marseille www.merkellab.net Opinions are my own.

Posts Replies Media

Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

📣 We are organising the workshop "Phases of Collective Cellular Behavior: Rheology, Order & Feedback" from 5.-9. October 2026 at the MPI-PKS in Dresden, Germany. This workshop at the interface between physics and biology is about the collective behaviour of cells. More info: www.pks.mpg.de/colcel26

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

Exciting news! Join us for the mini-colloquium "Mechanics & structure of living matter across length scales", organized by Felix Rico and myself, at the 2024 Condensed Matter Days, Marseille, Oct 28-31. Details: jmc2024.sciencesconf.org/data/BAM2_VE... **Application deadline: June 14**

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

Vikas Trivedi (EMBL, Barcelona) and I have open PhD and postdoc positions on the emergence of the head-to-tail animal body axis. We are looking in particular for candidates who are interested in combining bio-informatics and bio-physics approaches. More info: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wgwfu...

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

Finally, we independently confirmed the existence of differential interface and surface tensions though aggregate fusion experiments. Additionally, these experiments confirmed that the surface tension difference is sufficient to drive the recirculation flow. (6/7)

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

To understand the emergence of this flow, we studied a minimal model where viscous flow is driven by interface and surface tension differences. Indeed, the resulting Marangoni flows could account for the dominating parts of the experimentally observed flows. (5/7)

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

We then more closely analyzed the flow field in the gastruloids and found that the dominant component was a recirculating flow. (4/7)

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

We first decomposed gastruloid polarization into contributions by different cellular processes, and found that differential advection of cells with different expression levels contribute typically 1/3 to the overall polarization. (3/7)

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Merkel lab @merkellab.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

To study mammalian body axis formation, we used aggregates of mouse stem cells, called gastruloids. Gastruloids are initially spherically symmetric, but later form an axis defined by the polarized expression patterns of proteins such as T/Brachyury or E-cadherin. (2/7)

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