Giacomo Bartolucci (he)

Congrats to Dr.
@ivarhaugerud.bsky.social
who just defended his PhD AND published in PNAS his work studying how droplets influence polymerization of sequences, while, in turn, sequence polymerization affects droplet dynamics! With
@m-pol.bsky.social
+ Dieter Braun

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Thanks Ricard!!

Active droplets are fundamental in cell biology and origin of life. With Jonathan Bauermann, @boekhovenlab.bsky.social, Frank Jülicher, and @m-pol.bsky.social, we show that a critical transition influences their size, morphology, ripening and division propensity

journals.aps.org/prx/abstract...

Congrats David!

A biologist at the American Museum of Natural History, Jonathan Coddington, cataloged a new genus of South American spiders in 1986.

Two things about the spider were unique:
they lived in caves & laid cubic eggs.

So he called them genus 'Plato', and that's the nerdiest thing I have read all year.

Exciting News! 🥳 Our Epithelial Mechanics Fan Club website is now live! 🎉
👉 epithelialmechanics.github.io

Discover our #EpithelialMechanics threads and get to know our amazing delegates behind them.
Would you like to share your story? Please DM us!

On cell extrusion in the #intestine!
After 80 years of observations, we finally took a deeper look thanks to 2D #organoids. We report:

3D #forces, #extrusion still only in the villus even without curvature, #lamellipodia generate 3D force.. and more. Have a look!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Good news in rough times:
Our work on generalising Lifshitz-Slyosov-Wagner (LSW) theory to active systems, led by the all-mighty Jonathan Bauermann, is out on PRL!! Special thanks to Christoph Weber @m-pol.bsky.social and Frank Jülicher.

doi-org.sire.ub.edu/10.1103/f5x9...

Ever wondered how to control stretch/compression in your epithelial system? Do you know why it’s important, which mechanotransduction mechanisms could be involved? I am @valeriaventurini.bsky.social and today I will guide you through this journey.

Great to see the role of phase separation in the culinary world being recognised. 🧀🍝 A huge congratulations to @gbart.bsky.social and collaborators!

Thanks a lot Chris and all the Augsburg crew 🥹🥹

Can't wait to see you at UB!

The Secret to a Smooth Pasta Sauce Wins Ig Nobel Prize Italian researchers studied how the ingredients of the traditional Roman dish cacio e pepe emulsify into a creamy sauce, winning the 2025 Physics Ig Nobel Prize.

Truly chuffed for our fearless food physicists @mpipks.bsky.social + collabs from AT @istaresearch.bsky.social, IT & ES who won this year’s Ig Nobel - the #NobelPrize of hearts❤️for cracking the science of perfect pasta !🍝Kudos to all for intrepidly consuming lots of cheese in the name of science!😋

With painted cows and a perfect pasta sauce, ‘Ig Nobel’ winners claim glory Some of the world’s most imaginative scientific minds have been celebrated at the Ig Nobel awards, which recognize discoveries that make people “laugh, then think.”

Still can't believe this: WE WON THE IG NOBEL PHYSICS PRIZE www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

Amazing!!! 🧪 The 2025 Ig Nobel prize goes to scientists from the @mpipks.bsky.social for discovering a bullet proof version to make the classic pasta alla cacio e pepe! Including a deep understanding of the pasta sauce in terms of phase separation physics 😃
Congrats @gbart.bsky.social et al!
Links👇

Tipsy bats and perfect pasta: Ig Nobels celebrate ‘improbable’ research The annual awards are a celebration of weird but thought-provoking science.

IG Nobel Prize in #Physics 2025 to @mpipks.bsky.social researchers for elucidating the phase behaviour of cacio e pepe sauce. The work highlights how physics can also be applied to solve daily-life problems!

nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03045-0

Capillary interactions drive the self-organization of bacterial colonies - Nature Physics Bacteria tend to live in thin layers of water on surfaces. Now the capillary forces in these layers are shown to help organize the bacteria into dense packs.

Dreaming of a swimming pool? Bacteria are surrounded by water! Water capillary forces organize bacterial colonies into gas, nematic streams, or droplet states. New paper @natphys.nature.com led by Matt Black and Chenyi Fei, with Ned Wingreen and Josh Shaevitz!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally, we move to the opposite limit: fast reactions!
We observe spirals of droplets, but, perhaps surprisingly, phase equilibrium still holds on the mesoscale. Indeed, local averages show that the concentrations in and outside of drops still lie on the binodal manifold!

This framework even allows for a new kind of stability analysis of an inhomogeneous state 🥹

By imposing timescale separation between slow reactions and fast diffusion, we define a dynamics at phase equilibrium.

We exploit it to study the effects of localisation of B and C in the A-rich and A-poor phases, showing dampening and amplification of the oscillations.

As expected, we see a periodic emergence of droplets:

The model:
Cahn–Hilliard dynamics for three solutes and a solvent, where the three solutes (ABC) convert into each other according to the Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) reaction network.

We break the symmetry and let A drive phase separation while B, C can localize in the A-rich or A-poor phase.

Proud of this preprint with my friends Jonathan Bauermann and @artemyte.bsky.social, about chemical oscillators & phase separation! Main findings:
1. Phase separation controls frequency and amplitude of oscillations
2. If reactions are fast, spirals of droplets emerge!

arxiv.org/abs/2507.16030

Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce “Pasta alla Cacio e pepe” is a traditional Italian dish made with pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. Despite its simple ingredient list, achieving the perfect

"Phase behaviour of Cacio e Pepe sauce" got published in Physics of Fluids as part of the "kitchen flows" series!

An important addition to the preprint is the analysis of trisodium citrate preventing clumps

What a crazy journey, thanks everyone for the support!!

pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/arti...

🎉Visit our COSMO event this Friday 🎉

Calling all music and science lovers! @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social from @mpi-cbg.de will give a fascinating talk on how new stem cell models shed light on the fundamentals of life, followed by a musical journey from the 80s to now. Learn more: tud.link/fktb9k

How can organs regenerate fast? Bioelectricity helps -- by coupling sub-second electrical injury signals to regenerative proliferation.

First preprint from my potsdoc :D with @liujinghui.bsky.social @ritamateus.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de and collaborators @mpipks.bsky.social @csbdresden.bsky.social

Whaaat?! Cell-estial Bloom took 1st place in the Node–FocalPlane image competition! 🤯🤯🤯

Bravissima!!

"Cacio e pepe" physics: In arxiv.org/abs/2501.00536v1, eight Italian scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems explain the physics behind a perfect dish of "cacio e pepe" and how to eschew the dreaded "mozzarella phase" - work featured @nytimes.com.

It takes a lot of cheese to become a Ragazzone ;)