The second meeting of the FBI Mechanobiology WG will take place on the 26 and 27 of March 2026 at the Institut de Biologie Paris Seine and the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris.

The programme will include a seminar by Kate Miroshnikova (NIDDK/NIH, Bethesda USA and Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Münster, Germany), presentations by participants and practical mechanobiology workshops (a choice of 4 workshops from a dozen: optical tweezers, micro/nano-fabrication, microfluidics, AFM, micropipette aspiration, mechanical confinement, force measurements, etc…).

Preliminary program:

Day 1 – 26/03/2026, Paris 5^e (IBPS / Curie / IPGG)

• Morning : scientific presentations, small group discussion
• Afternoon : 2 sessions of practical workshops on real set-ups in participating labs (Paris 5e)

Day 2 – 27/03/2026, Paris 13^e (IJM / MSC / LIED)

• Morning : scientific presentations, poster session
• Afternoon : 2 sessions of practical workshops on real set-ups in participating labs (Paris 13e)

Infos & registration:

Registration is free, but places are limited and priority will be given to contributors whose abstracts have been selected.

Registration will open in September.

Any question? Please contact : Joseph d’Alessandro (joseph.dalessandro@ijm.fr)

Join us on June 3rd at 14:00 for the next FBI.data webinar, where the France-BioImaging team will share the latest updates and improvements to their data management solution, and answer all your questions!

Agenda

• Project Background and History: Overview of deployments across the France-BioImaging’s Nodes
• Théo Barnouin: System Security Enhancements – Implementation strategies at the Nodes and collaboration with Information Security Officers (RSSI)
• Guillaume Gay: New Project Developments – Data import scenarios and insights from user testing

How to join?

Join us here: https://umontpellier-fr.zoom.us/j/97450221050

Last weeks to apply to the last canSERV Open Call, a unique opportunity designed specifically for early career cancer researchers worldwide. This initiative aims to provide these researchers with access to cutting-edge services and training, helping them advance their groundbreaking work in cancer research.

Who can apply?

This call is open to:

• First-stage researchers: PhD students and junior researchers without a PhD.
• Recognised researchers: Postdoctoral fellows, assistant professors or young investigators.

What’s on offer?

Selected applicants will gain free access to imaging services and expertise provided by 36 Euro-BioImaging Nodes, as well as state-of-the-art image data analysis resources. This support empowers researchers to elevate their projects through innovative technologies and expert guidance.

Research focus areas

Your project should address one or more of the following:

1. Cancer research topics, spanning discovery science, translational research, personalised oncology or clinical studies.
2. At least one of the four strategic goals of the EU Cancer Mission:
   • Understanding cancer,
   • Prevention and early detection,
   • Diagnosis and treatment,
   • Quality of life for patients and their families.

Deadline?

July 15th, 2025 at 14.00 CEST

How to apply?

Find all the informations here: https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/news/final-open-call-from-canserv-more-nodes-more-services/

Our colleagues from the National Biomedical Imaging Center (NBIC) in China are organizing a summer school focused on biomedical imaging. As International Research Network partner, France-BioImaging invites you not to miss this opportunity!

Program overview

Five modules covering cutting-edge technologies applied to the biomedical field:

• Optical Super-resolution Imaging
• Fluorescent Probes and Optogenetics
• Illuminating the Mechanobiology
• In Vivo Imaging
• Computational Imaging & Visualization

General informations

• Training Schedule: July 14 – July 27 (2 weeks), combining lectures and hands-on workshops
• Application Period: April 1 – June 30
• Application Requirements: Personal statement + two recommendation letters + academic transcripts. Please send your application to beiliu@pku.edu.cn
• Participants: Graduate students (Master and PhD students), selection of 30 students + 10 internal students
• Training Fee: Application fee of 5000 RMB (approximatively 620€). Accommodations and meals throughout the two-week training will be fully covered by the center

Detailed schedule

A research team from the Laboratoire de Biogenèse Membranaire (CNRS/University of Bordeaux), in collaboration with the Bordeaux Imaging Center, has recently developed ROOT-ExM, a novel protocol enabling the application of expansion microscopy to plant tissues, specifically the primary root of Arabidopsis thaliana. This method overcomes key limitations that had so far prevented the use of expansion microscopy in plant systems.

Zoom in on expansion microscopy

Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a super-resolution imaging technique that relies on the physical enlargement of biological specimens embedded in a swellable hydrogel. By expanding the gel, the distance between fluorescent labels increases, thereby enabling nanoscale resolution with conventional microscopes.

©Donatelle Liens

The challenge of plant tissue rigidity

Plant cells are embedded in a dense network of polymers (cell walls) that provide mechanical strength and prevent expansion. These structural barriers are especially problematic for expansion microscopy, as they hinder both the penetration of labeling molecules and the isotropic expansion of the sample.

ROOT-ExM: Tailoring expansion microscopy for plants

To adapt ExM to plant roots, the team developed a two-step strategy combining:

• A mild cell wall digestion, sufficient to relax the cell wall structure and facilitate labeling,
  
• And a plant-optimized ExM protocol, compatible with common fluorescent markers and preserving tissue architecture during expansion.
  

Promising results

Looking ahead

ROOT-ExM demonstrates that super-resolution imaging of plant tissues is possible using conventional microscopes and accessible labels. While currently limited to the primary root of Arabidopsis thaliana, this protocol lays the groundwork for expanding ExM to more complex plant organs and other species. Rather than replacing high-end super-resolution techniques, ROOT-ExM stands as a complementary approach, providing an accessible, scalable alternative for plant imaging at the nanoscale.

A French-Danish team (Jacques Monod Institute — FBI Paris Centre Node & Niels Bohr Institute) has recently highlighted a new regulator of cell competition: cadherins!

How it works?

These proteins, which promote cohesion between cells, appear to facilitate the transmission of mechanical stress from one cell to another. The researchers demonstrated that colonies of cells capable of transmitting these mechanical forces are more likely to “win the cellular competition” compared to other colonies with similar characteristics but fewer cadherins — and therefore less ability to share the stress caused by mechanical forces.

These new findings open up new perspectives for understanding how cells compete within healthy tissues, and also during the proliferation of cancer cells.

As the journalists at Le Monde nicely put it: “unity is strength”!

Want to know more? Read the article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-025-02150-9

For this second edition of Challenge, “Fuse My Cells”, we had 136 registrations and 6 participating teams. After a preliminary test phase, teams submitted their methods for evaluation on 32 images, with just one unique submission allowed!

We’re thrilled to reveal the top 3 winners of the challenge

• 1st place: Marek Wodzinski – FuseMyCells algorithm
• 2nd place: Shengyan Xu – Fuse_my_cells_dual algorithm
• 3rd place: Cyril Meyer – M²N² algorithm

What’s next?

Dorian Kauffmann, our Challenge Project Engineer, will present the results at the ISBI conference on April 17th, joined by challenge winner Marek Wodzinski!

Curious about the winning methods? You can explore the submitted algorithms here: https://fusemycells.grand-challenge.org/results/

To start, could you tell us a bit about yourself? What has been your academic journey so far, and what is your current role or area of work?

My name is Atitheb Chaiyasitdhi. I am a research fellow in Benjamin Warren’s lab at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. At the lab, we focus on auditory mechanotransduction and hearing loss in insects. Before joining the lab, I did my PhD at the Institut Curie in Paris, where I studied the biophysics of hearing in vertebrates.

What are you currently working on in your research? What is the main topic or challenge you’re exploring?

I have always been fascinated by how hearing works. Currently, I am investigating how insect ears operate. Unlike humans, insects possess ears in a wide variety of shapes and locations—sometimes on their legs, antennae, or abdomens. Despite this diversity, they all rely on a similar mechanosensitive structure known as a chordotonal organ. Interestingly, insects also use chordotonal organs to detect other mechanical cues, such as gravity or body position (proprioception), and these organs are located in different parts of the body as well. 

This raises two key questions:

How does the chordotonal organ convert such a broad range of mechanical forces into electrical signals? And do these organs share a common underlying mechanism?

To explore these questions, I am focusing on the chordotonal organ in the locust ear. On one front, I am using a high-speed camera to capture sound-evoked motion of the organ and electrophysiology techniques to measure electrical current in the chordotonal neurons evoked by the sound.

On another front, I am collaborating with Claire Boulogne at Plateforme Imagerie-Gif, using Focused Ion Beam Electron Microscopy (FIB-EM) to reconstruct the organ’s three-dimensional structure. These complementary approaches will provide insights into the mechanics of insect auditory transduction and bring us closer to solving the two questions I previously talked about.

At what point did you come across France-BioImaging, and what made you want to use its services or connect with the infrastructure?

I first learned about France-BioImaging during my PhD in France. At that time, I had the opportunity to collaborate with and use the excellent resources provided by one of the France-BioImaging Nodes—the Cell and Tissue Imaging Platform (PICT-IBiSA) at the Institut Curie. That experience left a strong impression on me, highlighting the expertise and support that France-BioImaging offers. Since then, I have been interested in collaborating with France-BioImaging platforms again.

Could you walk us through your experience accessing France-BioImaging? Which facility did you work with, how did the process go, and what stood out to you during your time there?

I worked with the Plateforme Imagerie-Gif in Gif-sur-Yvette, near Paris, using Focused Ion Beam Electron Microscopy (FIB-EM) with the support of Claire Boulogne, the lead engineer. Since I am based in the UK, and thanks to modern communication technology, our collaboration could start remotely. We discussed the experimental plan online, and I prepared the preliminary samples here before shipping them to the platform in France. Claire then carried out further sample preparation and image acquisition.

We worked closely, going back and forth to establish an optimal workflow, and soon began obtaining promising results afterwards. Despite the platform’s tight schedule, I always received prompt responses and consistent support from Claire.

What did microscopy bring to your project specifically? Were there insights or results you couldn’t have obtained otherwise?

The first ultrastructural image of a chordotonal organ was captured over 60 years ago, and it provided key insights into how the organ functions. In our lab, we have been able to resolve the mechanics of the chordotonal organ with unprecedented temporal resolution using high-speed cameras.

However, we still lack the spatial resolution to fully understand its structure. FIB-EM enables us to visualize the ultrastructure in three dimensions at a level of detail that has not been previously achieved. Seeing how each cellular component connects in 3D allows us to answer questions that arise from our high-speed recordings of sound-evoked motion in the organ.

At the same time, it opens up new questions and research opportunities. While there are other techniques, such as array tomography, they cannot match the spatial resolution of FIB-EM and would require hundreds of hours of manual effort.

Looking back, would you encourage other researchers to use France-BioImaging’s platforms and access program? What would you say to someone considering it?

Yes, I would. I would tell them that I have extensive experience working with France-BioImaging platforms, and the collaborations have always delivered reliable results. I trust their expertise and the quality of their support. In fact, I’ve already recommended France-BioImaging to colleagues here in the UK, as well as from the US and Germany. We are currently exploring the possibility of continuing our collaboration with Imagerie-Gif to investigate the diversity and evolution of chordotonal organs in various insect ears, even those involved in proprioception in the legs.

Celebrate the four seasons through imaging! Submit your best scientific images that capture the essence of each season, from electron micrographs of flu viruses in autumn to heat shock proteins in summer!

Who can participate?

This contest is open to all members of the Euro-BioImaging community and anyone involved in scientific imaging and research worldwide. The contest has four quarterly sessions, each linked to a season.

How to participate?

Register, submit as many entries as you like, and upload your images. Only images captured with a microscope or other imaging devices are eligible (macrophotography is not allowed).

What can you win?

Quarterly winners will receive reimbursement for travel expenses (up to 1000€) to attend a scientific conference or event. Runner-ups get up to 500€. Selected images will be featured on Euro-BioImaging’s website and social media.

Contest timeline:

• Spring: 31 Mar – 20 Jun 2025
• Summer: 21 Jun – 21 Sep 2025
• Autumn: 22 Sep – 20 Dec 2025
• Winter: 21 Dec 2025 – 20 Mar 2026

You are interested? Find more information and detailed rules here.