Hayden Nunley

The biophysicist Mazi Jalaal finds math and physics problems inside plant cells. “There are so many physics problems that these organisms have to solve during the course of evolution,” Jalaal said. quantamagazine.org/the-hidden-mat…

Congratulations to @DeepaHRajan for this masterpiece of creative science - identifying key molecular players in single-cell learning in Stentor! This comes on top of her other three papers on Stentor habituation, which I also recommend reading!

Thank you for highlighting our paper and explaining the significance so clearly!

We just preprinted one of my favorite studies @FlatironInst. I was lucky to be part of an amazing team studying the effects of rapid cooling to preserve samples in cryoEM. Read on to learn about the limits of cryoEM for biophysics and how to overcome them biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Biology is still mostly undiscovered. The hard part is asking better questions.

Each tubule of fungal root systems is about one-tenth the width of a human hair. New technology has allowed scientists to glimpse nutrients flowing through them for the first time. It’s revolutionizing the field. quantamagazine.org/an-arctic-road…

New Asgard paper dropped yesterday. This is only the third Asgard archaeon to be cultured in the laboratory (the first took 10+ years of work.) Many microbiologists think that the Asgard archaea are the closest living relatives of the ancestor that gave rise to eukaryotic cells. They have cellular features that "bridge" bacterial and eukaryotic cells. And this new Asgard species, found off the coast of Western Australia, is interesting for a couple reasons: 1. The Asgard buds off extracellular vesicles, like many other organisms. But these vesicles remain "tethered" to the main cell via a thin fiber. You can see this clearly in the cryotomography images below. I've never seen other examples of this (but maybe microbiologists on Twitter have.) 2. Asgards cannot be cultured on their own. All of the species cultured thus far can only be grown in the presence of a syntroph. This Asgard can only be cultured with a microbe, called S. nilemahensis. The Asgard makes acetate, formate, and lactate for the bacterium; the bacterium, in exchange, makes amino acids and vitamins for the Asgard. (The archaeon seems to entirely lack metabolic pathways for arginine, proline, phenylalanine, and tryptophan.) These nutrients are exchanged via hollow tubes that physically context the Asgard --> bacterium. (See the images below.)

Physics of sphere packings dlvr.it/TRbDFl

Why is a Braums so good

I've plotted the most expensive McDonald's burger and the least expensive MacBook over time. This analysis projects that the most expensive burger will be more expensive than the cheapest laptop as soon as 2081

Mechanisms to overcome instability in early embryo cell division differ in zebrafish & fruit flies: species-specific mechanisms orchestrated by cytoskeletal microtubules in both 📹 Melissa Rinaldin et al, TU Dresden in @Nature ➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2026/2…

Our work on studying the organization of the human metaphase spindle is now published in PNAS 🎉🎉 pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… Joint work with @colmpkelleher under the #CCBx initiative @FlatironInst 🧵1/6

By examining collective patterning in a tractable model, a study reveals a trade-off between speed and accuracy and finds counterintuitive properties of collective behavior — such as that optimized strategies do not always maximize information transfer. go.aps.org/3ZBt3hP

Relative to their bodies, the sperm of male fruit flies are gigantic, posing an unusual storage challenge: What happens physically when so many of them are squished into a tight space? Researchers report this mass of sperms collectively flows around the sacs they are stuffed in—their movement stretching them out in a way that could prevent them from tangling up: scim.ag/3KOxKkv @NewsfromScience

Many different biochemical and mechanical signals control morphogenesis. Now it is shown that the geometry of the fertilized egg helps orchestrate spatial and temporal patterning during embryogenesis. nature.com/articles/s4156…

Happy new year 🎉🎉!! & checkout our new preprint exploring optimal transport for parameter optimization in cryo-EM:

The Center for Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute is accepting applications for summer intern positions. CCB is a great place to work, and the intern program is excellent. Check out the Computer Vision and Developmental Dynamics groups. apply.interfolio.com/177779

#FlatironCCB's recent ScoRe meeting highlighted quantitative experimental work and mathematical models for germ cell development and for early developmental stages post-fertilization. Thanks to all who joined us! #science #biology

Was a pleasure to participate in ScoRe - Scientific Conference On REproduction - celebrating 150/y since the observation of sperm and egg pronuclear fusion in @FlatironInst. A stellar gathering discussing all things germ cells! Thanks @yelnunnedyah Stas Shvartsman for the invite!

A species of lungfish found in South America has claimed the title of the animal with the biggest genome sequenced so far. Learn more on #WorldAnimalDay: scim.ag/4o4YCe5 @NewsfromScience