Anaïs Bailles
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anaisbailles.bsky.social
Anaïs Bailles
@anaisbailles.bsky.social
220 followers 260 following 15 posts
Biophysicist/Developmental biologist. Postdoc @MPI-CBG, Tomancak lab, working on Hydra. She/her.
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anaisbailles.bsky.social
Anaïs Bailles @anaisbailles.bsky.social · Aug 6
Very happy that the first article from my postdoc work in the Tomancak lab is now published @PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... We studied the self-organization of actin in aggregates made from Hydra cells. Thread below (1/9)
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
paveltomancak.bsky.social
Congratulations @philipschoene.bsky.social on defending his Master’s thesis on the supremacy of mechanics in Hydra regeneration from aggregates of dissociated cells. Expertly guided by @anaisbailles.bsky.social. #experiment and #theory #LoPaTs @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social #stuffthatmatters
September 23, 2025 at 10:03 AM
anaisbailles.bsky.social
Thanks a lot to @elisecutts.bsky.social for nicely highlighting and putting in context our article! It was very interesting to discuss together, notably about the analogies between the emergence of order in Hydra and other physical phenomena.
elisecutts.bsky.social Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · Sep 11
Hydra are ~basically~ immortal.

Shred 50 of the lil guys to bits and pack their cells in a blob, and that blob will grow into a new Hydra... albeit with a few extra heads!

This week's post is a Q&A @anaisbailles.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de about the physics of how Hydra coax order from chaos.🧪⚛️
Hydra are a cosmos in a cuvette
Anaïs Bailles on astrophysics and immortal animals
www.reviewertoo.com
September 12, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share
Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu… https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
August 23, 2025 at 12:18 PM
anaisbailles.bsky.social
Our beautiful Hydra made the cover!!! 😍😍😍
An experiment performed by Pavel Mejstrik with a HCR protocol by @giuliaserafini.bsky.social, @paveltomancak.bsky.social lab @mpi-cbg.de
Actin fibers in blue, nuclei in orange.
August 13, 2025 at 8:51 AM
anaisbailles.bsky.social
Very happy that the first article from my postdoc work in the Tomancak lab is now published @PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... We studied the self-organization of actin in aggregates made from Hydra cells. Thread below (1/9)
August 6, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
mpi-cbg.de
Publication @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Anisotropic stretch biases the self-organization of actin fibers in multicellular Hydra aggregates | PNAS
During development, groups of cells generate shape by coordinating their mechanical properties through an interplay of self-organization and prepat...
www.pnas.org
August 5, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
mpi-cbg.de
Stretching the immortal Hydra. Publication by @paveltomancak.bsky.social group with Carl Modes @mpi-cbg.de & @zechnerlab.bsky.social shows how cells can create a new organism from scratch by coordinating their mechanical properties. @anaisbailles.bsky.social @pnas.org www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
Stretching the immortal Hydra
Dresden researchers show how cells can create a new organism from scratch by coordinating their mechanical properties.
www.mpi-cbg.de
August 5, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
paveltomancak.bsky.social
To recognise and celebrate @svobodalab.bsky.social's pivotal contribution to Woodstock Bio2 + Night Science, #TCTeAC, I am starting this "What Petr Svoboda did at Woodstock?" thread. If you were there - #contribute and #retweet.

"Petr Didn’t Submit an Abstract. #TCTeAC Submitted to Him."
August 4, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
devoevomed.bsky.social
Updated a broken link in my substack post about the
#ColossalBio #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign – dire wolves are still extinct.

open.substack.com/pub/devoevom...
The Extinction of Truth
Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit
open.substack.com
June 12, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Anaïs Bailles
paveltomancak.bsky.social
#LoPaT @anaisbailles.bsky.social bringing up the wonders of #Hydra, #physics, disorder to order transition and tissue mechanics to #TCTeAC
June 11, 2025 at 3:00 PM