We have a postdoc opening for a protistologist with biophysics inclinations to join our @HFSP project! (focus will be on characterising the morphology, ultrastructure and behaviour of excavates) #protists. Apply by Sept 17th (RTs appreciated!).

Many interesting implications for control of motile cilia dynamics and evolution of sensorimotor architectures in protists. Fantastic work led by my PhD student Alexander, in collaboration with Alasdair and Jörn! Feedback welcome!!.

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Complex behaviour is not limited to animals! Here we map the spectrum of waveforms on a quadriflagellate single cell with 4x 70um (!) #cilia, to a low dimensional behavioural manifold with surprising structure! #protists .All revealed in our new preprint.

We will be recruiting many positions across 6 sites in UK/Europe (both experimentalists and computational experts needed), and deliver hands-on training and practical workshops - watch this space for more developments!! @ukcilianetwork .(if interested - please DM and email me).

Together with fellow cilia enthusiasts.Gaspar Jekely, Pleasantine Mill, Juliette Azimzadeh, Laurent Kodjabachian and Eric Keaveny, UNICIL will uncover core physical principles that underlie ciliary flows in whole organisms (protist, annelid, flatworm, frog & mouse)!

Excited to share that we have received significant funding from the @wellcometrust .for a new interdisciplinary consortium project on #cilia coordination and function across scales and organisms! 🎉🥂.

RT @EMBLEvents: We're thrilled to welcome you to Day 1 of #EESTCBio!🧬🦬 Scientific organisers Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo and Christina Hueschen hav….

New preprint from @RebeccaNPoon's PhD! Did you know that the ciliary band metachronal wave in #Platynereis is a in fact a series of tiny waves within each multiciliated cell! What happens if you ablate some cilia?? 🌊😱 Cool #cilia collab w Gaspar!.

RT @WolframJoy: What’s preventing scientists from making breakthroughs that could save and improve your life? Check out our latest publicat….

Last chance to apply for this unique competition-funded NERC GW4+ PhD - joint with @NHM_London Natural History Museum (entry sept 2025)!! Interdisciplinary project hosted.@LSI_Exeter #cilia #parasite #snails #biophysics #schistosome

A longer thread to follow another time. This was a great interdisciplinary collaboration led by two postdocs Karen @seeseamic and Manu Crosato! We hope you'll enjoy our preprint, and as ever, comments/feedback welcome! Happy holidays! 🎄🎶.#protists.#cellmotility.#microbiology.

Did you know #diatoms are motile? These tiny glass cells have no cilia and a rigid body yet can glide on surfaces using a specialised slit in the cell wall called the raphe! What is the functional morphology of the raphe? All revealed in our new preprint

Many thanks to all our collaborators!! especially @ClementYMoreau @bj_w95 @RebeccaNPoon and others not on twitter. Check out this fantastic @visualPDE implementation made by @bj_w95 for our paper.

Back to real #cilia, which harbour many structural heterogeneities with unknown functions. Could these contribute to a curvature or state-dependent stiffness that can be regulated to enhance wave propagation?. #CryoEM & #dynein experts help us search!🙏

From a design perspective, coordinating many tiny motors is complicated (we still don't understand how cilia beat). Instead, rotating a segmented filament is much simpler. Symmetry-breaking can be achieved with a hinge-mechanism, creating a curvature-dependent stiffness

As we now know, #cilia beating requires the distributed action of #dynein motors along the filament. Amazingly, a mathematician predicted this (1958) in @J_Exp_Biol before the discovery of dynein! A few years later Gibbons found it i in #tetrahymena

New paper in @PhysRevResearch in which we demonstrate how to generate #cilia like oscillations with only reciprocal actuation at the base, using theory, simulations and a robotic model.

RT @wonderofscience: A school of juvenile striped eel catfish banding together at night for protection from predators, utilizing their sens….

RT @goldlabUC: New preprint out on the properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM): joint work between Benjamin von der Heyde, Eva Laura v….

RT @SchistoSSR: Interested in studying #motility, swimming patterns of #miracidia?. NERC GW4+ DTP #PhD at @UniofExeter with Dr Kirsty Wan @….