(6/8) Mechanism? Phosphoproteomics pointed strongly to serine phosphorylation of chromatin remodelers/histone modifiers as immediate downstream targets

(5/8) Is this relevant for cell fate? Indeed, nuclear flattening accelerates pluripotency exit - but only if GFs are absent. Thus, GFs determine long-term lineage dynamics while mechano-osmotic chromatin priming impacts short-term kinetics by adjusting the threshold for fate transitions!

(4/8) This implied that growthfactors (GFs) govern the nuclear mechanophenotype on short time scales (minutes!) Indeed the response of iPSCs to compression depends on pluripotency-GFs: they influence chromatin viscosity and even threshold mechanical YAP activation 🤩

(3/8) Probing the specific contributions of nuclear volume/shape influencing factors we compared mechanical and osmotic flattening of the nucleus and were surprised! In the absence of pluripotency-maintaining growth factors the chromatin-remodeling effects of these perturbations was very similar 🤔

(2/8) We started asking how nuclear shapes change upon fate transitions. Upon pluripotency exit the nucleus flattens, loses volume and appears deformed. This is triggered by a combination of cytoskeletal confinement, increased chromatin viscosity and macromolecular crowding

Very happy to see our preprint on how the mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1 controls intercellular junction maturation by balancing cortex and membrane tension now published in @jcellsci.bsky.social Congratulations to Ahsan & team! journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Last night fun with the young and young-minded ❤️ @akistubb.bsky.social @samstehbens.bsky.social @seemagrewal.bsky.social @kevinchalut.bsky.social @johannaengland.bsky.social Siiri Salomaa

Absolute privilege to chair the Fibronectin, Integrins and related molecules GRC with @tanentzapflab.bsky.social Great community, fantastic science and lots of fun 🤩

#notthecover but still love this illustration by Ella Maru representing our multiparameter image analysis pipeline to reveal clinically relevant cancer phenotypes. Now out it print www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...