Amir Porat
amirporat.bsky.social
Amir Porat
@amirporat.bsky.social
Red sea pedestrian.
Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Fellow @slcuplants.bsky.social 🌱
Reposted by Amir Porat
How fast do plants actually grow? And which growth processes matter most for organ size?
We dived into 176 papers, extracted and re-analyzed the data so you don’t have to!
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@newphyt.bsky.social @virajalim.bsky.social @elvisbranchini.bsky.social
A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development
Plant development depends on coordinated growth at cellular and organ scales, yet comparative analyses are hindered by inconsistent reporting of growth across studies. We conducted a meta-analysis o.....
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development

Alimchandani et al. @virajalim.bsky.social @elvisbranchini.bsky.social

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 10, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
New paper!💡 Amir Ohad developed this nifty setup to measure weak forces generated by freely moving plants, based on the deflection of a pendulum (straw from the cafeteria 😎), which does not require any tethering of the plant: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...
Plant-obstacle interactions here we come!
November 2, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Boutillon, A., Banavar, S. P., & Campàs, O. (2024). Conserved physical mechanisms of cell and tissue elongation. Development (Cambridge, England), 151(10), dev202687. #EpithelialMechanicsReview
https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.202687
December 26, 2024 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Tissue-wide cues are sensed at the cellular level to coordinate microtubule orientations in plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.18.683221v1
October 19, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Harmonic fields and the mechanical response of a cellular monolayer to ablation arxiv.org/abs/2510.05193
October 8, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
One day in the lab, we accidentally discovered that the spines of a cactus 🌵 straighten when exposed to fog. I was intrigued and so were my collaborators. How does this work and what can be gained from it? Here are some of the answers in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 8, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
🌿💻 Plant Models and Morphology 💻🌿

The 9th International Plant Computational Biology Workshop @slcuplants.bsky.social brought together mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists and biologists exploring plant development through models and simulations.

Huge thanks to organisers and speakers!👏
September 17, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
The BM^2 Lab is hiring a Ph.D. student to work on a variety of problems connected to modeling of morphogenesis in plants (i.e. ovule curvature formation, fixed handedness establishment in certain plant organs and its link to cell wall mechanics).

Please share!
September 7, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
The self-replicating cellular organization of shoot apical #meristems

New #AJB research by Étienne Couturier, @paulallanos.bsky.social, Antoine Lizée, Sébastien Besson & Jacques Dumais

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #botany #plantscience #bryophytes #lycophytes #ferns
April 4, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
🔎 DARWIN REVIEW 🔎

Mody et al. review the study of the cellular basis of plant morphogenesis with 3D digital organs 🔬🌱

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @kschneitz.bsky.social
August 29, 2025 at 9:43 AM
New preprint!
"Understanding Shape and Residual Stress Dynamics in Rod-Like Plant Organs" 🌱
with @merozlab.bsky.social and @routierlab.bsky.social
👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Understanding Shape and Residual Stress Dynamics in Rod-Like Plant Organs https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.25.672092v1
August 29, 2025 at 7:51 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Here it is! Epidermal cells in the root can figure out if they are covered by the root cap or not using mechanical signals! Thanks to @ckirchhelle.bsky.social, @moritznowack.bsky.social, @nathan-german.bsky.social Annamaria Kiss and all the others!
Plant cells at the organ surface use mechanical cues to activate a specific growth control programme https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.25.672229v1
August 27, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Kelly Aspinwall, Tyler Hain, M. Lisa Manning: Rigidity and mechanical response in biological structures https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18432 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18432 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.18432
August 27, 2025 at 6:43 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Take a look at part of my work with @mc-caillaud.bsky.social at @rdplab.bsky.social about the role of actin cytoskeleton to maintain cytokinesis against cellular geometry 🌱🔬
August 24, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Thrilled to share the first story from my postdoc! 🎉 A wonderful experiment + simulations collaboration. In the Drosophila wing, we find that 3D cell shapes affect signalling range and fine-tune developmental patterning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread below ⬇️
August 11, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
🍀🔬

CSLD5-mediated cell wall remodelling regulates tissue mechanics and shoot meristem growth @natcomms.nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Movies: Cell division orientation in wild-type (attached) and csld5 (comment) shoot apical meristem.
August 9, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Submitted and out as preprint: A Plausible Model of Phyllotaxis Patterning from a Single Apical Cell. 🪴🌱 Including 3D cell analysis & modeling #MorphoGraphX #MorphoDynamX #Physcomitrella #Phyllotaxis @roederlab.bsky.social @richardsmithlab.bsky.social dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...
August 5, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Dreaming of a swimming pool? Bacteria are surrounded by water! Water capillary forces organize bacterial colonies into gas, nematic streams, or droplet states. New paper @natphys.nature.com led by Matt Black and Chenyi Fei, with Ned Wingreen and Josh Shaevitz!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Capillary interactions drive the self-organization of bacterial colonies - Nature Physics
Bacteria tend to live in thin layers of water on surfaces. Now the capillary forces in these layers are shown to help organize the bacteria into dense packs.
www.nature.com
August 2, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
One of the key aspects influencing morphogenesis is mechanics. We mapped the mechanical properties of living roots at the tissue and cellular levels using Brillouin microscopy and molecular rotors.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 1, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
📢 Final hours to register for the Plant Computational Biology Workshop 2025! 📢
Don’t miss your chance to take part in talks and hands-on sessions with other plant modelling enthusiasts🪴
Deadline tomorrow (31 July) - www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/computationa...
#ComputationalBiology #PlantSci
July 30, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Our new paper is out!
1/14 How does an organ rebuild its shape after injury? It's not just about making new cells, but aligning them in the right direction — like bricks shaping a structure. We show that it's all driven by Cell Geometry!

www.cell.com/current-biol...
Wound repair in plants guided by cell geometry
Mathew et al. show that growth conflicts reshape cells after injury, forming rhomboidal geometries that trigger diagonal divisions. This reorients cell files to restore tapered morphology. A two-step ...
www.cell.com
July 25, 2025 at 5:10 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
🚨Don’t miss out! Last weeks left to register for the Plant Computational Biology Workshop 2025, sponsored by @cambup-lifesci.cambridge.org 🌱
📆Deadline 31 July - www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/computationa...
#ComputationalBiology #PlantSci
July 23, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Amir Porat
Come and work with us!
We are hiring a research assistant/associate @slcuplants.bsky.social to work on the RESYDE project (www2.hu-berlin.de/resyde/)
using ML for multi-scale data and modelling to understand and engineer flower development!

Details: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/52116/
Home -
RESYDE: Re-engineering symmetry breaking in development and evolution. A consortia of plant scientists from Europe and Australia has been awarded a prestigious research grant from the ERC, which will ...
www2.hu-berlin.de
July 23, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Amir Porat
New work with Saunders & Charras labs

Physical boundaries guide cell fate decisions during human trunk development

Reaction Diffusion model shows how geometry shapes biology with TBXT expression forming consistent domains regardless of colony size & shape

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Boundary constraints can determine pattern emergence
The robust patterning of cell fates during embryonic development requires precise coordination of signalling gradients within defined spatial constraints. Using a geometrically confined in vitro syste...
www.biorxiv.org
July 23, 2025 at 5:37 AM