Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦
Physicist interested in complex living systems
@lendertgelens.bsky.social Lab, KU Leuven
Complex Systems | Systems Biology
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Latest work from the lab by Aude Nommick et al., in which we propose a "size-scaling" model for microtubule force exertion that regulates centrosome centration vs decentration during embryo development! @ijmonod.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Happy to highlight our collaborative work from our @ijmonod.bsky.social team with @destriano.bsky.social, B. Goyeau and M. Chabanon. Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium that hinders macromolecular diffusivity. Plus: a clever way to measure cell volume. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦
Our review on Marr's levels in embryonic development is now out in @prxlife.bsky.social ! journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...- How can we organize current theoretical approaches for developmental biology - from information to dynamical systems & GRNs - into a common framework? We propose to think along Marr's 3 levels: computational problem, algorithm, implementation Check out our review: arxiv.org/abs/2510.24536
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦#LivingArchitectures We put cells and cytoskeleton filaments on the architecture of the musée d'Orsay. www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/agenda/ev... Scientists of the #CytoMorphoLab adapted their protocols to illustrate the questions that keep them awake at night. -> Two shows on the 24th and 25th of January.
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Come join us in beautiful Roscoff for this Conference Jacques Monod on Developmental regulation: from molecular to ecological niches May 18-22, 2026 Roscoff, France Abstract deadline: January 31, 2026 Apply here: cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en
- Insightful talk with many amazing pictures of microtubule-motor patterning by Manuel Théry @manuelthery.bsky.social at the Paris Cytoskeleton Day 2025
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Finally out in #PRXLife: our theory on the effect of temperature on the completion time of large networks. Using graph theory, one can show that the Arrhenius plot is quadratic, in excellent agreement with experimental data from fly development. Read the open access paper here: go.aps.org/48brig2
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Preprint 🚨! B cells form localized patterns in the immune synapse when mature, allowing improved affinity discrimination. How? We suggest a new mechanism using dynamic active forces and feedback! Read more @ arxiv.org/abs/2510.18771. Great colab with Shenshen Wang, Tom Chou and Tony Wong (UCLA).
- 🚨 Late preprint alert! Why do biological process rates scale nonlinearly with temperature, deviating from the straight line on an Arrhenius plot? The key may lie in their inherent complexity! More in thread and here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- [1/8] Biological processes are governed by complex biochemical networks – far beyond single reactions – and often form multi-step transition cascades. Together with Simen Jacobs, Federico Vazquez, and @lendertgelens.bsky.social, we show that modeling these as Markov chains has striking consequences.
- [2/8] Our model is relatively straightforward: a cascade of n (reversible) Markov jump processes, each transition rate following Arrhenius-like temperature scaling, with forward transitions favored near a reference temperature.
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View full thread[8/8] Curious to learn more? Check the link in the first post for the whole story ☝️ Lastly, huge kudos to Julian Voits and @ulrichschwarz.bsky.social, who independently reached similar conclusions: arxiv.org/html/2403.17... (soon in PRX Life).
- Last year at EMBL, Prof. McIntosh gave a historical overview of the discovery of dynamical instability, and it was one of the most insightful and fun lectures I've ever listened to. Really excited to read this piece from him.
- Perspective from Richard McIntosh describing the history of research on #microtubule polymerization in terms of the ideas, technologies, and observations that have emerged as countless researchers have studied the dynamics of these essential cytoskeletal polymers. rupress.org/jcb/article/...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦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 Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Learn all things #cytoskeleton #research in an interdisciplinary environment at EMBO Workshop "Structure and Function of the Cytoskeleton" in Paris, FR, 7–10 April 2026. Deadline: 20 December 2025 meetings.embo.org/event/26-cytoskeleton #EMBOCytoskeletalFunction #EMBOevents #conference 🧪
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Join us next Tuesday (30/09) for talks by @gautamdey.bsky.social @embl.org & Andreas Heim @uni-konstanz.de & Simonetta Piatti @crbm-montpellier.bsky.social
- Looking forward to our next #DGZ Focus Workshop on #Mitosis & #Meiosis on Sept. 30 at noon, organized by simonereber.bsky.social & Thomas Mayer - join us!
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Please allow me to introduce... our new preprint 🎉 Together with Michael Zhao, Anna Erzberger and Alexander Aulehla, we investigate pattern formation due to aggregation in confined systems. You can find it at arxiv.org/abs/2509.08533 @michaelzhao.bsky.social @erzbergerlab.bsky.social
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦On Thursday, Sept 25, we host Lendert Gelens (KU Leuven) for a seminar: "Beyond Arrhenius: How temperature scales biological time". He will show how biological timing changes across temperatures. barcelonacollaboratorium.com #seminar #KULeuven #EMBL #BCNCollaboratorium
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦In this Viewpoint, Adam Zweifach explains how to calculate how many cells to analyze per sample to achieve reasonable statistical power in #microscopy experiments. rupress.org/jcb/article/... 📕 In #Reproducibility and Best Practices in Cell Biology: rupress.org/jcb/collecti...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Complex behaviour is not limited to animals! Here we map the entire spectrum of waveforms dynamics on a quadriflagellate single cell with 4x 70um (!) #cilia, to a low dimensional behavioural manifold with surprising structure! #protistsonsky All revealed in our new preprint doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦New research shows that the cytoskeleton of human cells have a lot more in common with our ancient ancestors than we might think.
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Are you ready for a symposium dedicated to microtubule dynamics, function, and structure? 🙌 #EESMicrotubules will bring together researchers who share an interest in microtubule biology and its relevance to health and disease 🩺 💻 s.embl.org/ees26-09-bl ✒️ Submit your abstract by 11 March
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦📣 Paris Cytoskeleton day 2025 - Registrations are open! 📆 November 14th 📍 Institut Jacques Monod 🔗 pcd2025.sciencesconf.org Abstract submission closes on 19 October Registration closes on 7 November @romet-jegou-lab.bsky.social @upcite.bsky.social @cnrs-idf-villejuif.bsky.social
- Proud moment! The central results of my research over the last three years – specifically, on how the nucleus contributes to cell cycle scaling – were recently published in Current Biology. Check out the paper and the thread below for more details! 👇👇👇
- 🧵Does the nucleus set the cell cycle clock? 🕒 In frog egg extract “mini-cells” we see that as nuclei grow, cycles slow down. The period scales with the nuclear-to-cytoplasmic ratio, across Xenopus species, and even when DNA replication or transcription are blocked. 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦This piece of work from my PhD is FRESHLY out of the oven in @natureportfolio.nature.com Nature Physics! It illustrates how architecture and active stress mutually regulate Criticality and exhibit Anderson Localization-like phenomenon. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦These people are the enemy.
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Kseniia Petrova is still in detention since Feb 16! I Came to Study Aging. Now I’m Trapped in ICE Detention. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...
- This is very disturbing. Harvard PhD student Kseniia Petrova (Russian citizen) was arrested by ICE for transporting xenopus embryos into Boston from Paris. She has been detained in Louisiana since Feb. 16. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦New insights in to the physical properties of the 🐸 #Xenopus cytoplasm! Great work @mctwo.bsky.social & @biswashere.bsky.social! Together with @gucklab.bsky.social & @vasilyzaburdaev.bsky.social 😍 @mpi-scienceoflight.bsky.social @mpiib-berlin.mpg.de www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- It's been a very stimulating conference, many thanks to the organizers for making it possible!
- We can't believe #EESTCBio is over! 😱 Thank you to the organisers, speakers, and participants for creating such a vibrant space for critical thinking. It was a joy to see you exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and explore new perspectives 💡 We hope to see you again at the next edition! 👋
- Need some time to process all the brilliant talks and discussions to come back stronger to my research 💪🧑💻
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦The Americans are doing to Kseniia what the Russians did to Brittney Griner for having 0.7 grams of cannabis oil. Except no one is coming to negotiate her freedom and Harvard is sitting on their hands. I am so ashamed. Please share this story. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/s...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Our 11yo is telling us science dad jokes as a way to delay having to go to bed. It's working. My favorite of the evening: Why did the amoeba fail its math test? .... .... because it multiplied by dividing
- Today’s the kimchi night, in celebration of the KU Leuven Patron Saint’s day
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦From random gliding to ordered patterns. The movie starts with microtubules gliding on a minus-end directed molecular motor. Then, @bhagyanaths.bsky.social added a plus-end directed motor (magenta) to induce this polarity sorting and ordering process. more details here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦When did the taste of the scientific community changed from liking simple elegant experiments to preferring complicated and expensive experiments?
- [1/2] Preprint alert ‼️ When I joined @lendertgelens.bsky.social Lab, they experimentally observed atypical spiral waves in the frog egg cytoplasm, which resulted in almost twice faster cell cycle oscillations.
- [2/2] Using dynamical modeling, we show that such a speed-up via spiral waves is a generic property of wave propagation in an excitable medium and depends on the reaction-diffusion parameters. Check out our preprint for more info and cool microscopy pictures 🔬🌀
- [3/2] Returning to the office, I realize this post doesn't look attractive without any visual content. I'm fixing it urgently so you can see a fantastic movie of cdk1 activity spirals displayed by the microtubule polymerization in the frog egg cytoplasm! For clarity, we show the wave's phase as well
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦📢 Institut Jacques Monod Seminar 📅 January 10th 📍 Institut Jacques Monod Invited by the Wassmann Lab, Lendert Gelens, will give an Institut Jacques Monod Seminars on the theme "Nuclei coordinate the cell cycle in space and time" ➡️ buff.ly/3ZM7Ykl
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦My New Year’s resolution is to berate myself less for things I wish I could have done better, to learn from my mistakes, and give myself more credit for the things I did well but promptly forgot/ignored because academics love to live from crisis to crisis
- I got two rejections in the last two weeks before Christmas. The academy is not always a success story; it is more of an adventure journey without a map for one to find their way. I continue to follow this thought and keep on going! Happy Holidays ✌️
- Hey @alisonkickuth.bsky.social , great to see you here! ✌️
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦
- 🎨 In case anyone need… The NIH BioArt Source is an awesome library of *free* professionally drawn illustrations for scientific presentations or figures. Downloadable in HD. Thank you NIH for this invaluable tool 🙏! Check it out 👇 bioart.niaid.nih.gov
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦And they should all be equipped with a blackboard like those at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna (couldn’t help taking a picture 😅). #BringYourOwnChalk
- Hear me out: individual bathrooms (a series of non-gendered doors into individual rooms). Saw them in @guijacquemet.bsky.social's institute in Turku and it made so much more sense than all the current craziness
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦It's okay to say 'I don't know', particularly if you don't know.
- 1/2 Cool paper alert 🚨 Despite extensive research on mitotic spindle formation and the discovery of most molecules involved, what provides its stable bipolarity is still puzzling.
- 2/2 In their latest paper, the Molodtsov lab revealed a minimal model allowing for spindle bipolarity, in which the force generated by growing microtubules balances the minus-end-directed motion produced by the molecular motor. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Hi to everyone in #ScienceSky! I’m happy to see the community migration and to find most of my Twitter contacts hire in BlueSky 🖐️🤝
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦When you submit your research to eLife, we publish it as a #ReviewedPreprint. But what does that mean? And how do they differ from other publication routes? Check out our latest explainer blog: elifesciences.org/inside-elife...
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦The Journal of Cell Science sponsors amazing meetings and this is no exception: Diversity and Evolution in Cell Biology. 24 - 27 June 2024. This is one of the most exciting areas in our field revealing the remarkable ways evolution shaped basic cellular machinery 🧪 www.biologists.com/meetings/jcs...
- Nice start of the year! Feel relieved. As we say “a mountain has lifted off my shoulders” :)
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Some talks that are online or hybrid that may be of interest to the biophysics and theoretical biology community, @saramitri.bsky.social
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦Phase separation on microtubules: from droplet formation to cellular function? See what Anna Akhmanova and I had to say in response to this question in our new review: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0962-89…
- Reposted by Nikita Frolov 🇺🇦He died doing what he loved.
