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Kirsty Wan

@micromotility.bsky.social

2.6K followers 570 following 240 posts

Cilia and cell motility enthusiast, basal cognition, weird organisms esp protists and larvae, how do living systems compute? Professor of Cellular & Biophysical Dynamics, Living Systems Institute, Exeter (past: DAMTP, Cambridge) www.micromotility.com

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · Jul 14

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

news.exeter.ac.uk/living-syste...

Multi-million project to ‘crack the code’ of cilia – tiny structures with big impact on human health

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter, have been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award grant of almost £5 million to investigate one of the body’s most fascinating microsc...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

Our findings highlight a remarkably modular and robust propulsion mechanism found in a marine larva, which relies on short-range physical interactions to achieve ciliary coordination.

Thanks to Rebecca for all the hard work and @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy for the collaboration!

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

#platynereis is an excellent model for cilia dynamics and coordination, incl. how metachronal waves emerge - during a process known as ciliary closure. These events are neuronal controlled, allowing the larvae to finely control their position in the water column elifesciences.org/articles/26000

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

in fact, you can just keep removing cilia, until all but a single wavelength of the ciliary band remains. The tiny patch keeps propagating a metachronal wave! [watch video till the end]
(see paper for other interesting details about these waves)

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

to test if spatial gaps could break wave transmission, we (Rebecca) started removing more and more cilia from this equatorial ring, finding that spatial continuity of the cilia within a single multiciliated cell is both necessary and sufficient for wave continuity

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

look at the discontinuities in the following kymograph (space-time plot of beat phase), turns out these come from the natural gaps between neighbouring multiciliated cells (each with several hundred cilia!).

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

with a single equatorial band made up of many many cilia. These propagate so-called 'metachronal waves', always in the same direction! The wave may look continuous, but in fact it's not!

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

What is a #Platynereis you might ask? I would never have encountered them were it not for @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy

The adult worm is extremely ugly, in contrast, the larvae, is adorned with many cilia, which naturally makes them beautiful. The 2-day old larva is approximately spherical

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 4m

Final version of our paper on ciliary metachronal waves out now in Science Advances! doi.org/10.1126/scia...

This is the main thesis work of my PhD student Rebecca Poon, who caught many #platnereis larvae and tirelessly ablated them with a laser. THREAD

Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Guillermina Ramirez-SanJuan @guille-rochelle.bsky.social · 9h

We have PhD and Postdoc positions open in our group. Join us in Lausanne to explore how cells pull off extreme shape changes and how cilia drive biological flows.

You can find more details on the projects available and how to apply in our website:

www.epfl.ch/labs/lpl/joi...

Join us !

We are looking for creative and motivated scientists at to join the group. We are recruiting candidates from various scientific backgrounds including, but not limited to: biophysics, physics, biochemi...

www.epfl.ch

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 50m

Thank you @bastinlab.bsky.social and Sylvie Friant for organising this amazing #cilia meeting! 🙏 So many interesting discussions, and not enough time! Just look at this beautiful venue... 🤩

Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda @alejandrofabregastejeda.com · 8d

Still puzzled by the debate on organismal agency? Our edited collection brings historians, philosophers, and scientists into dialogue—offering a wide array of perspectives. An affordable paperback edition will be out at the end of the month! www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o... #HPS #evobio #philsky

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 8d

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 8d

Very sad to hear that Sir John Gurdon, former Master of Magdalene College, has passed away at the age of 92. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Here is a powerful reminder that you should never give up on your dreams.

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

The Daum Lab @daumlab.bsky.social · 9d

Out in Science Advances: Our #cryoEM structure of HFTV1, a virus infecting the halophile #archaea. *First full atomic structure (containing all structural proteins) of any tailed virus!* Congrats and thanks to all co-authors and our fantastic collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cryo-EM resolves the structure of the archaeal dsDNA virus HFTV1 from head to tail

This structure of an archaeal tailed virus (arTV) provides detailed insights into arTV assembly and infection mechanisms.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Thibaut Brunet @thibautbrunet.bsky.social · 10d

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 14d

Lacrymaria olor means "swan tear" in Latin, referring to their tear-shape & swan-like neck that can extend 30 times the length of the cell.

They're eukaryotes, like us, but single-celled & ciliated.

They live in pond water, where they're predators of... just about *everything*.

(🔬: Charles Krebs)

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 12d

Not sure how i got here but here is an epic thread of some 200 facts about clams... 😱

Dan Killam @dantheclamman.blog · Aug 4

It's easy to see that a gastropod shell is a spiral. Paleontologist David Raup figured out that bivalves are spirals too! Just a spiral that is almost all opening with fewer whorls. Woah dude! 😵‍💫 (143)

A figure from David Raup's famous paper showing the continuum between a tightly coiled gastropod shell and the flat, wide bivalve shell.

Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Pawel Burkhardt @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social · 14d

Another season has started as well. We now find many different ctenophores in Byfjorden, a fjord that runs into the city center of Bergen.

Here the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi: it uses a row of cilia called comb plates to swim. When hit by light, they create shimmering rainbows along their bodies.

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

(GIRISH)MALI LAB @dyneinassembly.bsky.social · 16d

Happy to share the inaugural paper from the lab. We describe a molecular mechanism for the activation of outer dynein arm motors that power the vital motion of cilia.

Open access link below:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's a cool animated summary

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Christophe 🔬 L @christlet.bsky.social · 15d

Beautiful drawing of ciliogenesis in airway cells from Sorokin, 1968: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/.... Just shown on stage by @mahjoublab.bsky.social at #GEF25

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

The Ramsey Lab @theramseylab.bsky.social · 18d

Kirsty Wan (@micromotility.bsky.social) starts the second day of the workshop with a tour de force overview of the behavioral complexity of single-celled organisms and ways to study and model it. #evosky #cellbio #HPbio

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 19d

thanks @aria-research.bsky.social for highlighting our research on the computational capabilities of single-celled organisms! #protists Watch this space for more exciting developments @lsiexeter.bsky.social

Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) @aria-research.bsky.social · 19d

👀 Our latest Substack is live – discover:
– The launch of Innovator Circles
– Insights into the FRO-Founder Residency with @convergentresearch.bsky.social
– A Q&A with @micromotility.bsky.social on natural computation in single-celled microorganisms
+ more ↓

link.aria.org.uk/sepsubstack-bluesky

Innovator Circles, FROs, and a look into biological computation

The latest from ARIA, including our new Innovator Circles initiative, inside Convergent Research's FRO-Founder Residency, and a Q&A with Nature Computes Better Creator Kirsty Wan.

link.aria.org.uk

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Reposted by Kirsty Wan

Denis Wirtz @deniswirtz.bsky.social · 22d

Using a new workflow, we map ciliated (green) and secretory cells (pink) that line the epithelium of whole human fallopian tube.

With age (menopause), the number of ciliated cells decreases and the number of secretory cells increases.

More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 19d

haha trust you to find this... :P

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 21d

Love #protists? Then you'd love this! Beautiful collection of hand-drawn critters represented here at the Oxford-Japan symposium on ethological dynamics in diorama environments sites.google.com/view/oxford-... #ciliates #testateamoeba #diatoms

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