Congratulations are in order for the latest Dr. on the block!! 🙌🥳 Last week our PhD student @suyashnaik.bsky.social successfully defended his thesis on the roles of keratins during zebrafish embryogenesis 🐟 Way to go, Dr. Naik!! 👏👨‍🎓🎉

Just back from our group retreat in the beautiful Wachau 🍇! Two days of inspiring scientific presentations on tools and techniques, a fun game night 🐺, and a trip to Rosenburg Castle 🏰 with a breathtaking falconry show 🦅 Here’s to more science and adventures together! 💪✨

Ever wondered what happens to developing embryos during hypoxia? 🤔

Find out from our PhD student @k-roksolana.bsky.social at poster #45 at the @embo.org Workshop 'Developmental metabolism: flows of energy, matter & information!' 🐟🧬 #EMBODevMet

Heading to Biomatter: From Cytoskeleton to Embryo in Arolla?
Don’t miss our PhD student @prajwal08.bsky.social at poster #44! Come hear about his cool work on #osmoregulation during #embryogenesis.

#Arolla2025

Heading to the International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology in Chile? 😄
Don’t miss the talk by our PhD student Alena Kizenko on Aug 12, on how an ancient cytoskeletal gene found a new role in tunicate development 🧬 #EvoDevo #Invertebrates
🎥👇 Developing Phallusia embryo

Last week we hosted our annual @hfspo.bsky.social catch up meeting with @paveltomancak.bsky.social, Cassandra Extavour & ‪@hejnol.bsky.social!

Fascinating discussions on the evolutionary functionalization of intermediate filaments shaping animal development 🧬 #EvoDevo

Seeing is indeed believing!🧐🤩

Congratulations to our postdoc @tushnakapoor.bsky.social on winning the 'Best Microscopy-based Discovery' prize 🔬,sponsored by @focalplane.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social,for her talk at the
@embo.org Workshop #EMBOcellpolarity25! 🐟👏🥳

Those of you attending #EMBOcellularmatters, make sure to head to our postdoc @gayasinga.bsky.social' s poster (#47) TOMORROW! Building on insights from Drosophila and Xenopus, she uncovers new mechanisms on how exclusion zones form and persist in 3D #syncytial #embryos in #zebrafish 🐟

Are you attending #EMBOcellPolarity25? Our postdoc @tushnakapoor.bsky.social will talk about her work on how #polarity controls #epiboly movements in #zebrafish, TOMORROW at Session 1, 11:15am! 🐟

There’s no age limit to curiosity for #science, science is for everyone! 🤩 Our PhD student Laura Hofmann spoke to senior citizens about her research on Balbiani body in #zebrafish oocytes, & needless to say they were super excited and curious! #Lifelonglearners 👵👴

Heisenberg Lab 2025

Who said Santa arrives only on Christmas Eve? 😏 Sometimes 🎅 comes even in February, like at the Heisenberg lab yesterday 😉 We played Secret Santa, exchanged gifts 🎁 , and ate great food 🍕🍪, to beat the February blues ❄️

Finally, the N:C gradient and the resulting gradient of cell cycle length lead to an earlier onset of zygotic transcription at the margin, thereby establishing a novel, ‘symmetry-breaking’ function of early embryo geometry in zygotic transcription onset.

… and those with a steeper cell volume gradient due to artificially increased blastodisc curvature show slower propagating waves and decreased synchrony. SM6, SM7

Indeed, altering embryo geometry, and therefore the N:C ratio, perturbs the mitotic waves. Embryos with two 'APs' produce two waves, one from each ectopic AP.

The N:C ratio becomes graded due to the specific geometry of the early embryo, which causes patterned asymmetric cell divisions, producing smaller daughter cells at the blastoderm margin. This causes greater S-phase lengthening in these marginal cells.

Mitotic waves propagate largely independently of cell-cell coupling. In fact, increasing coupling through embryo syncytialization reshapes the wave and causes it to originate at the margin rather than near the AP.

📢‼️ Exciting new preprint from the lab by @nikhil-mishra.bsky.social et al, now out on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social, reveals that the early embryo geometry spatiotemporally patterns zygotic genome activation (ZGA) in zebrafish. 🐟 tinyurl.com/Biorxiv-nmis...

Read on to learn more... 👇