Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)
EMBLAustralia Group Leader @ UNSW Sydney| Ex Asst Prof IISc Bangalore | EMBO YI 2018 | MPI-CBG Dresden & BITS Pilani alumna | Co-founder @ biaswatchindia | Ally 🏳️🌈
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)Thrilled that our recent paper has received the SBMS November 2025 Paper of the Month award. Grateful for this recognition, to the entire team for their hard work, and to my mentor @vaishananth.bsky.social , for her constant support. www.cell.com/current-biol...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)If anyone wondering about academic funding in Aus, this is the stark reality at present. I have written countless letters to politicians like @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social, @davidpocock.bsky.social who like to say they are leading this conversation in Aus but it is really like shouting into the void.
- Australian #NHMRC Ideas grants are out. 8.1% success rate. Lowest since the scheme began. Congrats to the successful few, as it looks like less than 200 were funded. 🧪
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor. The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2. www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny. #ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)📣 We are hiring! An education-focused Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Biomedical or Biophysical sciences. It’s a chance to be a part of a team of single molecule /cellular biophysicists building a brand new undergraduate curriculum, here at UNSW in sunny Sydney. Happy to answer queries.
- Thrilled to share that this work has been accepted for publication @currentbiology.bsky.social 🥳 Special shoutout to the editorial team – the process was incredibly smooth and productive. Read more here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- How is mitochondrial volume maintained across successive generations of dividing cells? In our new preprint, we show how fission yeast cells use mitochondrial activity to control division timing and maintain mitochondrial homeostasis! (1/n) 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)My first post on Bluesky! Very excited to share our work just published in @science.org. We find that “Interphase cell morphology defines the mode, symmetry, and outcome of mitosis” - in angiogenesis and other tissues! www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)New(ish) preprint! 📰What whole-cell patterns emerge from the arrangement, morphologies, and interactions of organelles in the 3D space of the cell? What would we see if we could gather ALL the whole-cell reconstruction data that's out there in one place? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/11
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)@ucsusa.bsky.social is running a "science advocacy training webinar on writing letters to the editor to inform and influence different audiences about the impacts of federal cuts to science and science workers" next Thursday April 17 🧪 It will be recorded for those who register but cannot attend
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)We're disappointed to see Ben Barres's powerful book "The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist" among the ~400 titles removed from the Naval Academy Library. Needless to say, we're proud to have published his book and will keep it — and his memory — alive.
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)REPOSTING this here just to officially leave "the other place" Our work on the role of endogenous electric fields in guiding collective cell migration during #morphogenesis is out @naturematerials.bsky.social nature.com/articles/s41...
- How is mitochondrial volume maintained across successive generations of dividing cells? In our new preprint, we show how fission yeast cells use mitochondrial activity to control division timing and maintain mitochondrial homeostasis! (1/n) 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- At cell division, small newborn cells inherited fewer mitochondria from the mother, while larger received more. But by division, all cells ended up with the same mitochondrial volume! (2/n)
- We compared pairs of daughter cells that divided symmetrically but partitioned mitochondria asymmetrically - cells with fewer mitochondria grew slower. Those with more mitochondria grew faster. Both daughter cells eventually divided according to the 'sizer' mechanism, but at different times. (3/n)
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View full threadtagging @leeba.bsky.social!
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)openRxiv has arrived! We’re thrilled to announce the launch of openRxiv as an independent, researcher-led nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world’s leading preprint servers for life and health sciences. openrxiv.org/introducing-... #openRxiv #OpenScience #Preprints #bioRxiv #medRxiv
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)Posting this here now that the orange man has erasing scientific literature. What people, perhaps without any strong opinions on this, never understand is the barriers that academics have to overcome to publish papers on gender and trans identities. He can burn the journals, but we will keep PDFs 😘
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)Aaaand that’s a wrap at Asia Pacific Microscopy Congress 2025 in sunny Brisbane, attended by a big team from Single Molecule Science. Lots of exciting new 🔬 tools and translation in biomedical investigations. @ijayas.bsky.social @arindam92.bsky.social
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)U2OS labeled with OMP25-GFP, an outer membrane marker for mitochondria. Left shows a zoom-in on the dimmer cell. Imaged by OPM (oblique plane microscope). #Microscopy
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)Reading the paper in Cell about how to close the scissor plots in gender representation at senior academic positions, I feel just a touch of pessimism. Having reached a level of seniority (middle management) I didn’t think I ever would, I read these great ideas wanting more, much more /1.
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)My lab at UMass Chan Med School uses a variety of approaches to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of membrane traffic. Striving to make academic science a more diverse, equitable, welcoming and inclusive place. Incoming President for the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB)! Opinions are mine.
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)I am delighted to share our new preprint in which we reveal the crucial role for mechanical forces in myoblast fusion. Great work from Yoann, Sushil and Aleksandra and great collaboration with Christophe Marcelle and Amin Doostmohammadi! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)Non-native English speakers need 50% more time to write a paper When they do, they face a 2.5 times higher chance of being rejected because of language journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)I agree with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social's great synthesis here, it's a super exciting time for physical biology! We are in the process of transitioning from simply cataloguing the parts to actually understanding how they interact to produce the high-level behaviors we see.
- Super cool work! Congrats to the authors!
- How do organelles fit together inside a crowded cell? Answering this question requires a way to image many organelles in a whole cell at high resolution with high throughput. Our new preprint shows how to do this in yeast using soft x-ray tomography www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)So proud of Adam Fenton and his work defining the role of FMRP in the local regulation of mitochondrial fission in neurons via local translation: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Sunny Sydney Friday ☀️☀️
- Reposted by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her)I *see* you BSKY. Cleared #lightsheet #microscopy of the human #eye from Marie Darche in Paris and rendered in www.syglass.io.
- Back on Twitter (I refuse to call it the other name) after a long-ish hiatus, and a challenging 2023. Here's hoping for a happier, science-filled 2024! Cat tax:
- First attempts at micropatterning in the lab - tubulin staining in HEK293 cells. Thanks to @ManuelTHERY for getting us started on this journey!
- Check out @lets_experiment project by Greg (Postdoc) & Jack (PhD student) from the lab! Greg and Jack are awesome scientists working towards delineating antidepressant effects & hallucinations of psychedelics to inform future drug dev. Back them here:
- The @ictpnews Workshop on non-equilibrium fluctuations in life at beautiful Trieste kicks off with a talk from Jim Hudspeth @RockefellerUniv Full program : @edgarroldankb
- Felicity @felicitydavis2 and I have had numerous conversions in DEI (or the lack of it) in academia. Happy to see this article (with @theeliaslab) that collates our convos and provides a framework for inclusion. (1/2)
- I’m finally ready to talk about the experience of appalling mistreatment we had with peer review of one of our papers. This was by no means the only time I’ve had to contend with bias in academic publishing, but it definitely is the worst thus far. A 🧵 (1/n)
- For those who didn't know, @polybiotique and I had not met in person..until yesterday! We started brainstorming 2+ yrs ago on Twitter, and worked together completely remotely to make @biaswatchindia happen. Thanks for being the best partner in crime one could hope for!
- The @EMBO Workshop on Birth and Fisson of Cellular Compartments kick-started yesterday at beautiful Bilbao, Spain. Excited to finally be here for a conf that was originally meant to be held in 2020! Pic below - the Guggenheim Museum, which is a stone's throw from the venue.
- Reuniting with old friends at the @EMBO Microtubules meeting! Bliss! #EESMicrotubules
- After an amazing whirlwind of a networking session #EMBOYIN2022 @EMBO_YIP, I'm excited for my upcoming visit and talk at @IGCiencia on 6 and 7 June. But until then, this will be my view as I work on manuscript revisions 🤩. Thanks @NordenLab and @IGCcentrioles for hosting me!
- Really excited to participate in my first Australian conference @HunterDevCell #hunter2022 with the rest of the lab! It's been lovely getting to know more about the amazing cell bio research community. @ANZSCDB
- Back on SciTwitter after being stuck in grant land for way too long. Looks like I've missed quite a bit (not all of it good) 👀
- Thanking my lucky stars for friends like @polybiotique and @vaccinatedvadam. Had this handmade gift waiting for me when I got back from SF - it was a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. Thinking of them, and my Ukrainian friends. 🇺🇦💙
- So glad for this serendipitous meeting with @CytoLabKoc hours before I head back to Sydney! Always a pleasure to talk to you about science and the scientific ecosystem 😊
- Excited to travel to SFO to attend #BPS22 @BiophysicalSoc annual meeting in a couple of days! My talk is part of the 'Biological Fluorescence' subgroup on the 19th at 9am. If you plan to be there, do DM/email (vaish @ - it would be lovely to catch up.
- V grateful for these amazing humans (@LeebaAnnChacko, #NidaUlFatima, #GregRedpath) who joined the lab @SingMolSci at diff times this year - they've kept us going through tough times with their empathy, creativity, and infectious enthusiasm for cool science. #appreciationpost
- 📢📢 New preprint alert! We’re ending the year with a manuscript describing how microtubule-mitochondrial association in fission yeast lies in a ‘Goldilocks zone’ (not too much, not too little), to ensure appropriate cell growth and division. (1/7)
- Grateful to @MBoCjournal for this opportunity. This was a hard one for me - I write about my journey in academia, and like many others' it hasn't always been smooth sailing. But the fact of the matter is that I am where I am now because of my generational privilege. 1/3
- It was wonderful to catch up with some of the past and present members of the lab yesterday! The happy faces say it all ♥️ (Special thanks to folks in the US who woke up early/stayed up late so we could make this happen!)
- 📢📢📢 Postdoctoral Fellow position @SingMolSci @EMBLAustralia: Looking for a future colleague who is interested in live-cell microscopy and cell biology (mitochondrial dynamics, cytoskeleton). Deadline: 8th September, 2021.
- The last few weeks have been rough. I was admitted to the hospital >a week ago now. It started with partial facial paralysis and numbness, which progressed to pins and needles in extremities, reduced lung function, and exhaustion to the pt of not being able to open my eyes. 1/4
- Congratulations on successfully defending your excellent thesis, Dr. Nireekshit Addanki Tirumala @nireekshit! Definitely a special moment when the first PhD student from the lab graduates. Thanks @sidjhun for coordinating and @NitinRammohan for serving as examiner. #proudPI
- Elated to present our latest work which takes us one step closer to understanding how the motor protein cytoplasmic dynein 1 is regulated in living cells: 1/n #preprint #biorxiv_cellbio
- How is mitochondrial dynamics, positioning and movement achieved in living cells via the cytoskeleton, you ask? Read our latest review co-authored by @mitaliakshah @LeebaAnnChacko and @joelpalpath to find out! #mitochondria #cytoskeleton
- I'm elated to present Issue 1, Vol 101 of Journal of @IISc on Cytoskeletal Mechanics, for which I served as guest editor. The special issue features several excellent reviews in this theme, incl. wound healing, cell homeostasis, memb. repair and the immunological synapse. 1/3
- So happy to see so many familiar faces featured in @labhopping's 2021 calender, especially @polybiotique - in recognition of @IndSciComm's excellent scicomm efforts over many years, and of course, for @biaswatchindia 🥳 V. well deserved
- New year, new lab website! 🎊🥳 We have positions open for PhD/Master's students and a Postdoctoral Fellow. More details to follow, but write to me if you're interested in our research. Happy New Year all!
- Dr. Kapley, as others have already pointed out, it is in poor taste to (a) conduct this debate, and (b) have early career women debate against the motion "Do women make better leaders", given the very many issues of gender representation and inequity that exist in this space. 1/2
- Are you a Biologist/Mathematician/Physicist interested in problems at the interface of these fields? The 2nd edition of 'Thirsting for Theoretical Biology' is here! Registration: Deadline: Dec 31, 2020 @Vijay_K_Murthy
- And that concludes 3 days of the @EMBO #EMBOLabLead course! This has been an eye-opener. Thanks to @MelanieGlickman @AidanBudd @LifeSciLearn and @LeadSculpt for putting together all the modules Group Leaders can rely on to build and lead a team effectively.
- Thrilled that our paper was selected to feature in the @jbiolchem virtual issue on eukaryotic cytoskeleton: Congrats to all authors! @Kritika1794 @LeebaAnnChacko #manjyotKaur @sidjhun Link to the paper:
- Check out UInclude’s application that eliminates gender-biased language from job descriptions. The tool scans job descriptions for gendered words, provides replacement words, and gets the job description to a place of gender neutrality!
- First (shared) cover art from the Cytomotors Lab @BiochemistryACS! Guess which one is ours? (Hint: Microtubules in "Green Fire Blue" LUT - this was one of the first images of microtubules I acquired @BSSE_IISc @iiscbangalore)
