Exciting news! Join us for the mini-colloquium "Mechanics & structure of living matter across length scales", organized by
Felix Rico and myself, at the 2024 Condensed Matter Days, Marseille, Oct 28-31. Details: jmc2024.sciencesconf.org/data/BAM2_VE...
**Application deadline: June 14**

Vikas Trivedi (EMBL, Barcelona) and I have open PhD and postdoc positions on the emergence of the head-to-tail animal body axis. We are looking in particular for candidates who are interested in combining bio-informatics and bio-physics approaches. More info: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wgwfu...

Finally, we independently confirmed the existence of differential interface and surface tensions though aggregate fusion experiments. Additionally, these experiments confirmed that the surface tension difference is sufficient to drive the recirculation flow. (6/7)

To understand the emergence of this flow, we studied a minimal model where viscous flow is driven by interface and surface tension differences. Indeed, the resulting Marangoni flows could account for the dominating parts of the experimentally observed flows. (5/7)

We then more closely analyzed the flow field in the gastruloids and found that the dominant component was a recirculating flow. (4/7)

We first decomposed gastruloid polarization into contributions by different cellular processes, and found that differential advection of cells with different expression levels contribute typically 1/3 to the overall polarization. (3/7)

To study mammalian body axis formation, we used aggregates of mouse stem cells, called gastruloids. Gastruloids are initially spherically symmetric, but later form an axis defined by the polarized expression patterns of proteins such as T/Brachyury or E-cadherin. (2/7)