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Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬ Profile
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬

@micromotility

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Scientist, studies tiny swimming things at @LSI_Exeter. (Past: DAMTP & Magdalene College Cambridge). 🧐 #ERCstg #cilia #protists #algae (same handle elsewhere)

United Kingdom
Joined June 2017
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
3 months
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!) https://t.co/DTLcDDSDmG
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@mazza_lab
Nonequilibrium Soft Matter
2 months
Delighted to share the publication of this review article on active biofilaments https://t.co/heytPh12vh It was a wonderful collaboration with @micromotility , @hannahscope , and @CammannJ #ActiveMatter @LboroScience @ICMM_Lboro
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
2 months
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 JΓΆrn! Feedback welcome!!
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
2 months
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 https://t.co/ygGma00oC2
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
4 months
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)
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
4 months
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)!
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
4 months
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! πŸŽ‰πŸ₯‚ https://t.co/t8z6kkwv6Q
Tweet card summary image
news.exeter.ac.uk
An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter, have been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award grant of almost Β£5 million to investigate one of the body’s most fascinating...
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@EMBLEvents
EMBL Events
6 months
We're thrilled to welcome you to Day 1 of #EESTCBio!🧬🦬 Scientific organisers Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo and Christina Hueschen have just opened the conference. We're looking forward to a few days of thoughtful discussion and exciting science πŸ™Œ
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
9 months
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! https://t.co/QQcGkxg3JR
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@WolframJoy
Joy Wolfram, PhD
10 months
What’s preventing scientists from making breakthroughs that could save and improve your life? Check out our latest publication https://t.co/FrFYTjShno @The_InnovationJ @CellPressNews @GaelleOP @chemFunMan @JosieNeuro @gfico @Dr_Ponkratov_LR @LatorreDanielaa @micromotility
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
10 months
Last chance to apply for this unique competition-funded NERC GW4+ PhD - joint with @NHM_London Natural History Museum https://t.co/MgAJfPWHY4... (entry sept 2025)!! Interdisciplinary project hosted @LSI_Exeter #cilia #parasite #snails #biophysics #schistosome
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
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! πŸŽ„πŸŽΆ #protists #cellmotility #microbiology
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
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 https://t.co/0OWe66Knpx
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
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... https://t.co/k4bIInZwI5
visualpde.com
Exploring overdamped state-dependent stiffness
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
Back to real #cilia, which harbour many structural heterogeneities with unknown functions... https://t.co/0qfqu1yoZj .Could these contribute to a curvature or state-dependent stiffness that can be regulated to enhance wave propagation? #CryoEM & #dynein experts help us search!πŸ™
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
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
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
As we now know, #cilia beating requires the distributed action of #dynein motors along the filament... Amazingly, a mathematician predicted this https://t.co/H9xnYbg9wA (1958) in @J_Exp_Biol before the discovery of dynein! A few years later Gibbons found it i in #tetrahymena
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@micromotility
Kirsty Wan πŸ”¬
11 months
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. https://t.co/c2BJx3r9zd
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@wonderofscience
Wonder of Science
11 months
A school of juvenile striped eel catfish banding together at night for protection from predators, utilizing their sensitive barbels to navigate and find food in the dark waters. πŸ“½: diveivanov/ig https://t.co/XwzMIcQwEI
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@goldlabUC
Raymond E. Goldstein
11 months
New preprint out on the properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM): joint work between Benjamin von der Heyde, Eva Laura von der Heyde and Armin Hallmann at the University of Bielefeld and Anand Srinivasan, Sumit Birwa, Steph HΓΆhn and myself in DAMTP. https://t.co/0JeJ2KEuGh
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