iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

(2/2) I would like to propose an add-on: get the referees into the same video and publish a "podcast" style presentation followed by a rigorous question+answer session.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

(1/2) Mathematical Discourse (mathematicaldiscourse.org): in the words of Terence Tao is "a new online, peer-reviewed mathematics journal, publishing videos of mathematics research talks of the highest quality". Like this idea very much, hope the Sciences pick it up soon.

mathematicaldiscourse.org

Mathematical Discourse - Mathematical Discourse

A peer-reviewed video journal for mathematical research talks.

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Reposted by Shashi Thutupalli

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

With all the discussion about the 45mer, here is our story of what might precede that. And this story has a 42 — the atomic number of Molybdenum. If the origins of complex molecules, protocells and perhaps life, interest you, read our latest preprint — arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

arxiv.org

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

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Reposted by Shashi Thutupalli

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water? They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs? And, there are similar structures in today's oceans? Yes! Read on. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

arxiv.org

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

arxiv.org

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Maybe you’ll like our recent work too bsky.app/profile/stpa...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Very cool work, congratulations! Perhaps you will also find our recent work on the formation of protocells from a very simple chemical soup of some interest. bsky.app/profile/stpa...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Very cool work, congratulations! Perhaps you will also find our recent work on the formation of protocells from a very simple chemical soup of some interest. bsky.app/profile/stpa...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Theirs is a story to which tweet threads cannot do justice. Stay tuned for more of that. We just launched their papers at the Archives at NCBS a few weeks ago catalogue.archives.ncbs.res.in/repositories...

catalogue.archives.ncbs.res.in

Making sure you're not a bot!

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

This work is inspired by the (nearly) lost and mostly forgotten pioneering efforts of Krishna Bahadur and Ranganayaki who worked in from the 1950s through to the early 1990s in Allahabad India.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

We think this is just the start of a much larger story, with implications for how we think about connecting simple protocells to lipid-membrane bound protocells, for life-adjacent organization and for broadening how we look for signatures of life, on Earth and beyond.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Finally, the surprise we didn't anticipate. Hollow, blue, molybdenum-rich microspheres were recently discovered inside an Indo-Pacific ocean sponge: morphology, elemental composition, even colour polymorphism strikingly similar to what we make in the lab.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

This is not chemistry happening in bulk solution. The compartments are the chemical crucibles for the synthesis! They actively consume feedstock, dissipate energy for weeks, and selectively sequester the complex products they generate. This is the hallmark of protometabolism.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

What is this dissipation all about? Organic synthesis from the C1 formaldehyde source! And what is being synthesised? A remarkable molecular diversity including many core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like amphiphiles, small metabolites!

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

These compartments are dynamic chemical crucibles. They exhibit sustained dissipation for weeks (even months!)

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

And, mature compartments produce internal spherules that grow into new compartments with similar a chemical compositions. Could this be a route to self-perpetuation?

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

But these aren't just pretty structures. They grow. They selectively sequester elements from the surrounding solution. Their composition evolves dynamically over hours before settling into a steady state.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Our recipe: formaldehyde, iron sulfate, ammonium molybdate, ammonium phosphate, and water. That's it. Within a couple of hours, beautiful blue microspheres appear: hollow, soft, sticky compartments with liquid interiors. Take away any one ingredient and you get nothing.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

My student Nayan and I have been obsessing over a deceptively simple question for some years now: can you get a functional protocell to emerge spontaneously, from a simple chemical mixture? Not assembled from complex parts, but self-organised from simple feedstocks.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

arxiv.org

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

What is more, this metabolic firework can result in fractal morphogenesis of the resulting colony. We think this is due to a hydrodynamic analogue of Diffusion Limited Aggregation, which we term Circulation Driven Aggregation.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework". Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

We're looking for creative engineers/tinkerers/tool builders that want to engage with cutting-edge research questions in our lab at the @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social Please help me share the word!

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

The Skysynth feature of from the Vera Rubin Observatory (@vrubinobs.bsky.social) is absolutely magical. Explore cosmic sounds. To get an idea, turn on your speakers for the movie below -- it's amazing! rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

They are fanning themselves, clearly :)

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

As always, Will is a master storyteller! Here’s a great thread about our recent paper.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

We find that simple metabolically-driven physical mechanisms can be co-opted to generate large flows, upending the long held view that flagella or complex fluid transport structures are required for the evolution of large size in multicellular organisms. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Metabolically driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast

Metabolically generated flow is an emergent mechanism that alleviates diffusion limits in macroscopic multicellular yeast.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

We have a new paper out on an issue that has been discussed for more than a century -- how can fundamental biophysical constraints on nutrient transport be overcome to solve one of the most significant challenges associated with the evolution of multicellularity? www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

We’re celebrating the newest graduate from my lab — Dr. Charuhansini Tvishamayi! Those of you in Bangalore, free next Sunday and interested, please come, it will be a pleasure! Poster courtesy: members of the lab.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Such a cool finding, this! So great to see this since my group and I have discussed for years about how measuring the "energetic content" of cells using so called "bomb calorimetry" can be very misleading -- all gradient information is lost that way and clearly it is significant!

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Very interesting work! Looking forward to digging into the details.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

We exposed yeast to -196 C freeze-thaw (without cryoprotectants) and interesting things happened -- the survival went up from about 1% to close to 80% in just 25 cycles! The preprint is out and feedback is highly welcome -- www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Convergent cellular adaptation to a quiescence-like state in response to freeze-thaw stress

Rapid freeze-thaw is an extreme mechano-chemical perturbation that results in very low survival of many organisms (as low as a fraction of a percent). Here, using experimental evolution, we show that ...

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Reposted by Shashi Thutupalli

Mukund Thattai @thattai.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

I first visited KITP-UCSB as a grad student in 2003, and immediately fell in love with it. Here is the story of how my notebook from a 2010 KITP program I co-ran, on evolutionary cell biology, became the source of research questions that keep me busy to this day! www.kitp.ucsb.edu/sites/defaul...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Longer lengths and larger volume fractions are both coming up. Hopefully should have some news soon.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Yes! We were intrigued by that too. Have not commented on it in this current paper but have some ideas on why that happens. In the meantime, here is a video of the chemical field which causes the S to be a metastable configuration.

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Before I start posting about newer results on this platform, here is a video from our most recent paper -- www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 12/09/2023

Perhaps it's simply the oily and watery parts of the beeswax separating out.

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