Our latest work on the formation of Shh morphogen source (floor plate) in the growing spinal cord is now available at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.01.582751v1. By supporting computational results with experiments @Kicheva Lab we showed that the floor plate is formed in two distinct phases: rapid formation through gene regulatory interactions, followed by passive expansion by tissue growth. This result might be of general relevance for pattern formation in growing organs.

Last week our commentary on assessing the precision of patterning in spinal cord appeared in Nature Communications. The text is open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45148-8

Joanna Doliwa and Maciej Kania are co-organising Neuronus conference this year. The conference will be held at the Auditorium Maximum of Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland from 25-27 April, 2024. The program includes four sessions dedicated to biological, cognitive, computational, and medical neuroscience. Neuronus Neuroscience Forum is the biggest international neuroscience event in Poland and presents a wonderful opportunity to learn about the latest findings, share your work, and network. For more details on the registration process, invited speakers, workshops, and previous editions please visit https://neuronusforum.pl/.

There is another opportunity to join our team as postdoc. Details can be found at: https://zagorskigroup.com/open-positions/. I encourage to contact me in advance. We wait for your applications till 14 February 2024!

Last week we participated in conference “Condensed Complexity” – The Essence of Information Processing and Cognition?, https://indico.cern.ch/event/1311584/overview. The conference program included three sessions on processing information by biological systems and was great opportunity for networking.

We organize conference ‘Dynamics of biological systems: emergent phenomena at different scales’ on 1-3 December. We have excellent line-up of speakers and expect many great contributions from participants! The conference is stationary in Krakow with possibility to attend on-line. Register now at: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1290437/

This week the 36th Marian Smoluchowski Symposium on Statistical Physics is taking place in Krakow. On Tuesday Helder presented our joined work on robustness of Turing patterns in developing tissues. The project is ongoing and we got lot of useful feedback.

Today Joanna successfully defended her Bachelor thesis on the role of repressilator in modelling of the mammalian clock. Good luck Joanna in your future research!

Today Qi Qin who is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, will give a talk on integrons that are bacterial genetic elements that play important roles in microbial adaptation. The talk will be focused on integrated molecular and quantitative framework for characterising integrons in environmental bacterial hosts. The talk will take place at 12:00 in room D-2-43. Everyone is welcome!

The results of joined project with Sokolowski group at FIAS on self-maintained stability of gene expression patterns in the absence of morphogen gradients are now available on-line at https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00537 . By combining microscopic stochastic simulations of gene expression and analytically derived conditions for pattern stability we identify optimal repression strength ratio between genes in neighbouring domains of pattern mimicking gap gene expression in fruit fly.