Xavier Trepat

Less than a week to submit your abstract for #EESMechanobiology. Mechanobiology across the tree of life, from HeLa cells to weird animals and plants.

The submission deadline is 3 March: s.embl.org/ees26-06-bl

🗓️ 9 – 12 June 2026

Best possible lab for a PhD / postdoc! Stay tuned for future openings and wonderful science.

🚨Our first talk this new year would be a joint theory/experiment talk by Prof. Marino Arroyo and Prof. Xavier Trepat @xaviertrepat.bsky.social describing some of their recent work together on active morphogenesis🧫. Sign up to our mailing list for a zoom link to this talk and other upcoming talks🚨

📢 New extended abstract submission deadline: 6 January 2026! Outstanding speaker list, plus many slots for short talks by students, postdocs, and junior PIs. Join us in March in Barcelona! events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

Happy to share! Just email us!

📣Announcing the 4th edition of the EMBL‑IBEC Conference on “Engineering Multicellular Systems”, taking place 11–13 March 2026 in Barcelona. Exploring organoids, mechanobiology, embryo models, organ-on-chip systems, multiomics and more. Abstracts open now!
events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

Bioelectricity in Morphogenesis Bioelectricity is likely as old as life itself. From the moment the first proto-cell was enclosed in a lipid bilayer, a membrane potential arose. Thus, one can expect that bioelectrical activities inf...

New Review! #devbiol #bioelectricity #CellBiology #tissueregeneration

In our new @annualreviews.bsky.social piece, we explore how bioelectricity is generated, sensed & translated into responses that sculpt tissues, guide growth & enable tissue regeneration.

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

LMB PhD studentship available in the Baum lab to use informatics to infer cell structure from genomic data in collaboration with the brilliant Tom Williams. If you write to me and I don’t reply - try again - the spam filter is hungry…

Active wetting at work 🤩

How do cells navigate up gradients of adhesive proteins?
🤔

Termed "Haptotaxis", this effect is ubiquitous in cell migration, but it's mechanism was poorly understood

We show that passive friction directs cells & explains complex trajectories on gradients

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N

Regulation of epithelial tissue homeostasis by active trans-epithelial transport Epithelia are intricate tissues whose function is intimately linked to mechanics. While mechanobiology has primarily focused on factors such as cell-generated contractility and mechanical properties o...

Happy to share our new study @ijmonod.bsky.social and @mpi-scienceoflight.bsky.social with C. Duclut and J. Prost. on forces generated by active fluid transport in epithelia and their role in tissue dynamics.
Congrats to Huiqiong Wu, G. Arkowitz and R. Chilupuri!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A ring of cells deforms into a triangular keyhole in just 15 minutes. Meet the hindgut, a model for boundary-driven morphogenesis!

Out now in @pnas.org at doi.org/10.1073/pnas... with @zhaoshh.bsky.social, Alex Jacinto, Eric Wieschaus, Stas Shvartsman, @lepuslapis.bsky.social (1/8)

Compression causes cancer cells to start spreading The switch between proliferation and invasion is triggered by mechanical force.

new out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fantastic news! Congrats!

Thanks Adrien!

These topological transitions provide epithelia with a multiscale mechanism to adapt to sustained stretch. Beautifully modelled by Marco Pensalfini and Marino Arroyo.

New preprint! 🚨 We uncover a slow adaptation to stretch that links star-bundling of keratin filaments with nuclear escape from its keratin cage. Led by @tomgolde.bsky.social‬ 🙌
@IBECBarcelona
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The actin cortex acts as a mechanical memory of morphology in confined migrating cells - Nature Physics Cells often navigate through confined spaces. Now it is shown that cells retain a mechanical memory of previous confinement events, which makes them more efficient at migrating through narrow microenv...

Excited to share our new publication in Nature Physics about the mechanical memory of morphology in confined migrating cells by @kyohalie.bsky.social 🥳

Super fun collab with @davidbrueckner.bsky.social and @gcharras.bsky.social 👏🏻

Enjoy the reading www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pathologists have used nuclear & tissue shapes to diagnose #cancer for decades, but what is the molecular basis for this? In our latest work, we develop a computational pipeline to figure this out in #colorectalcancer! Check out 🧵& preprint #mechanobiology #stemcells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An active torque dipole across tissue layers drives avian left-right symmetry breaking Unlike in mice, frogs, and fish, left-right (L/R) body axis formation in avian embryos does not arise from the chiral beat of cilia. Instead, a counter-clockwise tissue rotation around Hensen′ node, t...

(1/10)
I am excited to finally share our work on avian left/right symmetry breaking with you. We reveal a tissue-scale active torque dipole generated at the Hensen’s node, thanks to crazy experiments by Julia @juliapfanzelter.bsky.social and some analysis by me.
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New paper from the lab led by @marija-matejcic.bsky.social ! Supracellular force patterns driving intestinal cell extrusion. 👇

Have you ever thought about inflating tissues?
Or maybe quickly deflating those inflated tissues?

New #EpithelialMechanics pre-print: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🧵 with pressure control, multiscale buckling, controlled wrinkling

Thanks Julia!

Thanks Carmelo!

Thanks Fabrice. Indeed, two very different physical mechanisms to engineer 3D shapes.

Thanks Mark, stay tuned for @marija-matejcic.bsky.social preprint in a few days!

🚨 Second preprint of the week!

We uncover the multiscale dynamics of active viscoelastic buckling in epithelia.

We harness these mechanical instabilities for synthetic morphogenesis.

Led by @onenimesa.bsky.social 🙌. Theory by Marino Arroyo etal. @ibecbarcelona.eu

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks Benoit!

Indeed 😀