We got an ERC SYNERGY grant #ERCSyG!! With @nenad_pavin @AngelikaAmon and Geert Kops. Huge thanks to our Synergy team, my lab, and ERC! Cannot wait to start this super exciting project! #EUfunded

RT @marques_et_al: 1/7.I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN NATURE!🌹.Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on….

Ultra cool paper!!.

RT @Meitinger: Excited to share our new preprint on @biorxivpreprint!.We show that USP28 mutations found in cancer block its interaction wi….

RT @multicellgenome: 😻 HUGE NEWS! We've done it! One of the "Magnificent 8" – key missing lineages for understanding animal origins – is AL….

RT @IBE_Barcelona: 📣 The @multicellgenome of @IBE_Barcelona organizes the @EMBO Workshop "Evolution and origins of multicellularity across….

RT @ZStorchova: Gene dosage compensation of somatic aneuploidy is frequent in cancer. Using machine learning, we find factors that predict….

RT @ZStorchova: One year later, and we have another edition of the #DGZ_info focus workshop on functional organization of the nucleus. A gr….

Amazing energy at our second Swiss-Croatian Bilateral Project meeting with @LabMeraldi and @nenad_pavin in Srebreno near Dubrovnik! The labs teamed up instantly, with lots of brainstorming and cool ideas for new joint projects! @hrzz_science @snsf_ch 🇭🇷🇨🇭

Great memories from the joint meeting with @LabMeraldi @nenad_pavin last year in Split! Can't wait for this year's meeting, which starts tomorrow! Excited for more cool science through our Swiss-Croatian Bilateral Project @hrzz_science @snsf_ch 🇭🇷🇨🇭

RT @Co_Biologists: One month left for early-career researchers to apply for a funded place at our Workshop 'Decoding whole genome doubling:….

RT @DumontLab: Excited to share our work out in @CurrentBiology ! We find that SKAP's binding to microtubules *reduces* friction at the kin….

Perfect for PhD students and postdocs!

Happy first day of spring from our Institute @institutrb!

Join us for this small, intensive workshop in the remote Alpine town of Arolla, where we will explore the dynamics of living systems across scales, from the cytoskeleton to embryos. Let’s dive into how cellular and tissue-scale dynamics shape life itself!

🎉 Congrats to @LovroGudlin, @KrunoVuk, and Maja for the awesome work! This was a super fun collaboration with @nenad_pavin, including our ERC Synergy team @ERC_Research - Geert Kops and MIT. Special thanks to @ZStorchova and our mathematicians, Josip Tambača and Matko Ljulj!

🌱🦎 And the coolest outlook? This spindle adaptability may enable polyploid cell proliferation, explaining how plants, fish, and amphibians manage polyploidy! Since many cancers are polyploid/aneuploid, this adaptability could be key to their spread, and a hidden vulnerability.

The chromosome crowding model also explains why cells round up during mitosis and why species with bigger genomes undergo open mitosis — it gives more room for the spindle, helping to avoid excessive pushing forces between chromosomes.

Here’s the gist: When the DNA length increases by a factor of n, the width of the metaphase plate increases by only the cube root of n. So, large genomes require small spindle adjustments. This gives us a predictive framework for how spindles adapt to different genome sizes.

🌍 And now the crazy part: The scaling law predicted by our model matches experimental data across eukaryotic species, from yeast to plants and animals! This means that chromosome crowding is a universal principle of spindle scaling.

To explain this, we built a new theoretical model, where each chromosome is squeezed by the pushing forces from the neighbors. This pushes the microtubule outward, balanced by forces anchoring its ends at the poles. We validated the model by mechanical manipulations of cells.