Bruno C. VellutiniCephalic furrow paper
The peer-reviewed version of our cephalic furrow paper is out 🎉
Vellutini, B. C., Cuenca, M. B., Krishna, A., Szałapak, A., Modes, C. D. & Tomancak, P. (2025). Patterned invagination prevents mechanical instability during gastrulation. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09480-3. Led by the Tomancak and Modes research groups at the MPI-CBG and CSBD in Dresden, Germany.It was published back-to-back with another cephalic furrow study:
Dey, B., Kaul, V., Kale, G., Scorcelletti, M., Takeda, M., Wang, Y.-C. & Lemke, S. (2025). Divergent evolutionary strategies pre-empt tissue collision in gastrulation. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09447-4. Led by the Lemke and Wang research groups at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany, and the RIKEN BDR, Kobe, Japan.Research mutualism
This was a wonderful collaborative effort to understand the developmental role and evolutionary origins of this prominent but overlooked tissue fold of fly embryos.
We were two teams working on a similar question, doing similar experiments, and observing similar results. But instead of competing and eventually scooping each other, we decided to join forces. The overlapping experiments became an asset as they were performed independently by different people in different labs. And since we were tackling the problem from different angles and using different approaches, the two studies neatly complemented each other and strengthened the main conclusions.
From the start, we posted the preprints and submitted the manuscripts together, and I’m delighted that the papers got to be published together back-to-back, as we had originally envisioned it.
To top this emotion, our findings and overarching story were carefully summarized in a great overview piece written by Thibaut Brunet:
Brunet, T. (2025). Flies evolved a shock-absorber tissue used during embryonic development. doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02532-8Some thank yous
I have more to say about this cephalic furrow endeavor, but for now I’d like to highlight the immediate people who made it possible.
Marina Cuenca who performed crucial experiments and analyses that were a turning point for the project into tissue mechanics; Abhijeet Krishna, who did an outstanding job coding the model and running the simulations; and Alicja Szałapak who greatly contributed to the model and visualizations early in the project. Carl Modes, who supervised the theory part and could always explain so clearly the math and modeling intricacies to this biologist here. And, finally, Pavel Tomancak who provided all the support and input along the course of this project and was a guiding light for the entire endeavor. It was a pleasure to work with such talented scientists and wonderful people.
Additionally, I’d like to thank Steffen Lemke and Yu-Chiun Wang and their teams, who agreed to embark with us on this mutualistic scientific collaboration; our reviewers Thibaut Brunet, Alfonso Martinez-Arias, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive feedback that helped shape and consolidate our work; the editor Henry Gee for handling our manuscripts during the revision process; and the Max Planck Society for paying the article processing charges to make the article open access.
There are many more people to thank. I’m writing it up on a new post, which I’ll link below when ready.
Some related posts
- The Great Divide
- Mechanobiology EMBL Symposium 2022
- The MeMoDEvo QBIO Symposium 2022
- Cephalic furrow on bioRxiv
- Cephalic furrow thread
- Improving Z-resolution of lightsheet data using CARE upsampling
- Cephalic furrow preLights
- In the spotLights
- EuroEvoDevo Helsinki 2024
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URL: https://brunovellutini.com/posts/cephalic-furrow-paper/
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