lettermann.bsky.social
@lettermann.bsky.social
Two videos on how malaria parasites move: helical motion can be "straighter than a straight line" in active particle models @physrevlett.bsky.social, and sporozoite generate chirality differently from Toxoplasma/ookinetes @natphys.nature.com.
DOIs:
doi.org/10.1103/4kxb...
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
November 27, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted
Axolotl can regrow lost limbs, matching their body size. How? Our new theory-experiment paper in @pnas.org proposes how oppositely oriented morphogen gradients scaling with animal size promote proportional growth. Great collaboration with @tatianasg.bsky.social @cmcb-tud.bsky.social
November 26, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Super happy to see this major part of my PhD work out in @natphys.nature.com! Three years of fantastic teamwork with Mirko Singer and @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social and many others.

Paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

More on helical trajectories in @physrevlett.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1103/4kxb...
📢 Paper alert 📢

Chirality is known to be important for the movement of microorganisms and active matter. In our new paper out today in @natphys.nature.com, we show that chirality is used by malaria parasites to control their motion patterns:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Here comes a 🧵 ... (1/9)
November 25, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Reposted
Great session with flash talks at #25EngLife. Here @lettermann.bsky.social presenting his work on malaria parasite motility.
September 1, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted
📣 Now out in @physreve.bsky.social‬ as editors' suggestion: our theory on the role of different myosin II isoforms during cell migration. For standard parameters, A and B segregate to the front and the back, respectively. Yet for other parameter values, also oscillations are possible.
August 26, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted
Now out in ACS Infectious Diseases @pubs.acs.org: joint work from the Lanzer, Tanaka, Schwarz and Cavalcanti-Adam labs within #SFB1129 on the adhesion footprint of malaria-infected infected red blood cells. Read the open access paper here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Contact Dynamics of Cytoadhering Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Erythrocytes in Flow
The virulence of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is linked to the altered mechanical and adhesive properties of infected erythrocytes, which adhere to the microvascular endothelium to...
pubs.acs.org
August 10, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted
Finally published: discovery of an unusual Arp2/3 complex with surprising new function in transmission of #malaria #parasites. Great work by Franzi Hentzschel, Yvonne Sokolowski + David Jewanski + fantastic collaboration with Matthias Marti: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
June 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted
👉 New paper @physrevlett.bsky.social! Active nematics flow spontaneously, driven by their own constituents, e.g. molecular motors or cells. The transition to spontaneous flows was thought to be always continuous. We now discovered that it can also be discontinuous!

journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
Nonlinear Spontaneous Flow Instability in Active Nematics
Active nematics exhibit spontaneous flows through a well-known linear instability of the uniformly aligned quiescent state. Here, we show that even a linearly stable uniform state can experience a non...
journals.aps.org
June 10, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted
It was a real pleasure to explore the past and present of fever(s) together with my colleague Ulrich Schwarz from Biophysics yesterday! Thanks to the organisers from InterdisciPlenary Heidelberg for making this event happen!
April 29, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Reposted
📢 Preprint alert 📢

(1/6) Our work on 3D force inference for intestinal organoids is now on bioRxiv:

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

Stunning collaboration between @omdrozdowski.bsky.social and @kimboonekamp.bsky.social from the lab of @michaelboutros.bsky.social and with Ulrike Engel. A short🧵...
April 10, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted
Check our new paper: "Pair cross-correlation analysis for assessing protein co-localization." Here we provide a quantitative understanding of the image pair cross-correlation method used to analyze spatial co-localization from super-resolution images.
t.co/oXBkoo4YI3
https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495%2825%2900138-9
t.co
April 4, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted
New paper in @biophysj.bsky.social led by @pintupatra.bsky.social on the analysis of two-color superresolution microscopy data, with an application to malaria-infected red blood cells. Collaboration with Lanzer lab in #SFB1129
Check our new paper: "Pair cross-correlation analysis for assessing protein co-localization." Here we provide a quantitative understanding of the image pair cross-correlation method used to analyze spatial co-localization from super-resolution images.
t.co/oXBkoo4YI3
https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495%2825%2900138-9
t.co
April 4, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted
Finally: Plasmodium actin filaments visualized in all their glory. Congrats Josie and Vojtech: www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....
Molecular architecture of glideosome and nuclear F-actin in Plasmodium falciparum | EMBO reports
imageimageThis study directly visualises actin cytoskeleton in Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites under native conditions and investigates its structural transitions during locomotion. P. falciparum a...
www.embopress.org
March 25, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted
Happy to share the latest work from Preeti Sahu, with Adriana Sanchez-Danes on the biomechanics of cell fate choices during tumor initiation! We implement/test a 3D vertex model with proliferation and fate choices for multilayered tissues! See 🧵 below (1/n) bit.ly/3ZXxJzk
December 17, 2024 at 2:11 PM
Made with #blender, very handy for shiny visualization of more complex (e.g. 3D) data, here the trajectories of malaria sporozoites moving through a hydrogel! Great experiments by Mirko Singer at @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social lab, we tracked the sporozoites and rendered the resulting trajectories!
The 2025 calendar of the German Research Foundation (DFG) is out

dfg.de/de/aktuelles...

Congrats to @lettermann.bsky.social, whose picture of malaria parasites was selected for November. Imaging data from
@freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social, funding from DFG priority programme 2332.
December 17, 2024 at 3:21 PM
Reposted
Excited to present what we've been up to the last couple years. Introducing BioEmu, a Biomolecular Emulator of protein dynamics: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Scalable emulation of protein equilibrium ensembles with generative deep learning
Following the sequence and structure revolutions, predicting the dynamical mechanisms of proteins that implement biological function remains an outstanding scientific challenge. Several experimental t...
www.biorxiv.org
December 6, 2024 at 8:22 AM