NEW PROGRAM POSTER for LENT TERM 2026!
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find our latest updates on BLUESKY: @CamMorphoSeries
26th January 2026: Margot Smit (ZMBP, Tuebingen University, Germany) & Susan Wopat (UC Santa Barbara, CA, USA)
Location: online on Zoom
Margot Smit: Arrested Development: temporal regulation of cell identity during plant embryogenesis
Multicellularity allows organisms such as plants to form complex structures but these need to be carefully controlled in both space and time. What determines the relative timing of cell fate acquisition, progression, and differentiation along a cellular trajectory, and when/how is development slowed down or sped up? In our group, we investigate the mechanisms the plant uses to control the timing of two main cell fate transitions in the embryo: stomatal fate acquisition and differentiation. Stomatal fate acquisition during embryogenesis is delayed: The stomatal initiator SPCH is present as soon as the embryonic cotyledon epidermis exists but does not induce stomatal fate acquisition for several days. This delay does not exist after germination: both in true leaves and in expanding cotyledons SPCH induces stomatal fate acquisition on the scale of hours rather than days. These findings indicate that currently unknown factors prevent initial stomatal lineage progression in the embryo. We are studying how stomatal regulation is differently wired during embryogenesis. In addition to fate acquisition, stomatal differentiation is also delayed during embryogenesis. No cell types differentiate in the Arabidopsis embryo, but I found that factors that normally drive stomatal differentiation cannot do so during embryogenesis. We have now identified several mutants where stomatal cells undergo either full or partial differentiation and are trying to understand the underlying mechanisms responsible.
Susan Wopat: The zebrafish gastrula is shaped by stationary and germ layer–specific tissue flows
During gastrulation, cells collectively move to transform the blastula into a multilayered embryo. While genetic signaling pathways that establish body axes and cell fates are well characterized, how these programs coordinate the motion of tens of thousands of cells in vertebrate embryos remains unclear. To address this, we combine in toto live imaging, tissue-specific markers, and quantitative analyses to study germ layer dynamics in zebrafish embryos. By applying a user-friendly tissue cartography pipeline, we computationally separate the enveloping layer (EVL), epiblast, and mesoderm to analyze global shapes and cell flows in a tissue-specific manner. Examining tissues individually shows that each layer exhibits distinct, hours-long flow configurations that remain remarkably stable over time. This suggests that a sequence of stationary tissue flow modules transports cells to their destinations to build the unique tissue morphologies of the zebrafish gastrula. Mathematical decomposition further suggests that epiblast flow is strongly influenced by a superposition of convergent flow in the mesoderm and expansion flow in the EVL. Together, these results indicate that, despite the molecular complexity of development, vertebrate gastrulation is governed by emergent simplicity arising from robust physical principles, setting the stage for linking genetic signaling to tissue-scale dynamics.
@suewop.bsky.social
2nd February 2026: David Strutt (School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, UK)
Location: Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, Cambridge and online on Zoom
Molecular and cellular scale symmetry breaking in planar polarity (or why the hairs all point the same way on the wing of a fly)
Planar polarity refers to the ability of structures in a developing tissue to adopt a common polarity and is a universal phenomenon in plant and animal morphogenesis. The best-studied molecular system that defines planar polarity in animal tissues is the Frizzled-dependent ‘core’ planar polarity pathway. This pathway functions by forming asymmetric intercellular protein complexes between neighbouring cells, with the polarity of these complexes having a constant orientation relative to the plane of the tissue.
The establishment of core pathway planar polarity requires symmetry breaking at multiple levels. The first is establishing asymmetry within the intercellular complexes, the second is polarisation of complexes within individual cell junctions and cells, and the third is orienting polarity relative to the axes of the tissue. Ongoing work in the lab seeks to understand each of these steps and how they are integrated to produce a uniform pattern of planar polarity, using the Drosophila pupal wing as a model experimental system.
9th Feb 2026: Alex Bisson (Department of Biology, Indiana University,USA)
Location: online on Zoom
How Mechanics Made Archaea Multicellular
Cells sense and respond to biophysical surroundings by coordinating cellular and molecular structures under evolutionary pressure across scales of space and time. How animals and plants leverage the conversion of mechanical forces into biochemical output has been the focus of many developmental fields. However, the same processes seem to be absent in apparent simpler prokaryotic cells. To leverage this gap, our group leverages concepts and approaches from evo-devo-cell biology fields to “mechanically soft” archaeal cells. Here, I will discuss our recent finding around one of the leading hypotheses: together with reading out their chemical environment, archaeal cells evolved to sense physical cues to build different cell shapes and mediate social behavior within the same and across different species. Their accurate mechanosensing brings significant implications for cell cycle regulation, cytoskeleton dynamics, and the emergence of a set of complex molecular factors present in eukaryotes, including animal tissue.
16th Feb 2026: Alexander Mietke (University of Oxford, UK)
Location: online on Zoom
Spontaneous shape transformations of active surfaces
Biological matter has the fascinating ability to autonomously generate material deformations via intrinsic active forces, where the latter are often present within effectively two-dimensional structures. The dynamics of such “active surfaces” inevitably entails a complex, self-organized interplay between the geometry of a surface and its mechanical interactions with the surrounding. In this talk, I will first discuss general numerical challenges in analyzing self-organizing active surfaces and the bifurcation structure of emergent shape spaces. I will then focus on active surfaces with broken up-down symmetry, of which the eukaryotic cell cortex and epithelial tissues are key biological examples. A natural interplay between active stress and curvature leads for such surfaces to a comprehensive library of spontaneous shape transformations that resemble stereotypical morphogenetic processes. These include cell-division-like invaginations and the autonomous formation of tubular surfaces of arbitrary length, both of which robustly overcome well-known shape instabilities that would arise in analogue passive systems.
https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/mietke
23rd February 2026: Marc Trani Bustos (Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany) & Denis Krndija ()
Location: online on Zoom
Building the mammalian embryo body: tissue surface mechanics constrains proliferation-driven forces to guide axial elongation.
Mammalian embryos undergo complex morphogenetic changes after implantation in the uterus. The elongation of the body along a head-to-tail axis is a pivotal event, as it lays the foundation of the body plan. While genetic and biochemical aspects of mammalian body elongation have been uncovered, the physical mechanism of axial morphogenesis remains unknown, largely due to the inaccessibility of the implanted embryo to physical measurements and manipulations in utero. Gastruloids, a stem-cell-based embryo model of mammalian axial morphogenesis, lift such limitations. Combining live imaging, direct mechanical measurements, and chemical and mechanical perturbations, here we show that axis elongation in mouse and human gastruloids is guided by a posterior ‘actin cap’ at the tissue surface that constrains the expansive forces of cell proliferation. Measurements of mechanical stresses using oil microdroplets, as well as inhibition of cell proliferation and myosin activity, show that the forces driving elongation arise from cell proliferation, and not from convergent extension movements. We find that isotropic tissue expansion is re-directed into posterior elongation by the formation of a supracellular actin cap at the posterior tissue surface that restricts lateral tissue expansion. Finally, we show that posterior elongation in mouse embryos displays the key features of the physical elongation mechanism reported for mouse and human gastruloids. These findings reveal that mammalian body axis elongation, including human, occurs via a different physical mechanism from other vertebrate species.
Preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.27.684710
@mtrani.bsky.social
@Marc_Trani_
Denis Krndija Abstract title
TBC
@.bsky.social
2nd March 2026: Feline Lindhount (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge, UK) & James Fitzsimmons(Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK)
Location: hybrid- Gurdon Institute, seminar room level 2, University of Cambridge and online on Zoom
Feline Lindhount: Linking human neurodevelopmental timing and evolution
Many hallmark features of the human brain, including its large size, complex neuronal architecture, and extensive connectivity, have emerged alongside a strikingly prolonged developmental timeline. In this talk, I will examine how extended neurodevelopmental time contributes to distinct human brain morphologies, using comparative human and mouse brain organoid models. I will present evidence for a newly identified evolutionary timing mechanism based on calcium dynamics, and discuss how this mechanism is linked to the expansion of axon tract morphologies in humans, a key feature underlying human brain connectivity.
James Fitzsimmons title:
TBC
@.bsky.social
9th March 2026: Delphine Delacour
Location: online on Zoom
Delphine Delacour title: TBC
TBC
@.bsky.social
UCAM Morphogenesis Series 