Thrilled we finished this 8 yr study w/@NeuroCellPress Wonder what oxygen, blood vessels, Hif1 has to do with cell polarity & neuron migration? Genetics, gaussian & lattice light-sheet crack the case! Cerebellar blood vessels in cyan #cellfie #Science url:cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S08…

Hey y'all, I'd like networking reposts if you can. Georgios Skiniotis and I are pleased to announce a unique faculty position at St. Jude, and we're both particularly excited about what this search could become. It is a true joint strategic effort between the Center of Excellence for Structural Cell Biology and the Division of Neuronal Cell Biology in the Department of Developmental Neurobiology. The CoE-SCB is an intellectual community of investigators developing and applying emerging structural and cellular imaging approaches to understand biological mechanisms directly within cells and tissues. The Division of Neuronal Cell Biology and Department of Developmental Neurobiology bring a complementary culture centered on fundamental questions of neuronal development, organization, and function, with deep expertise in advanced cellular imaging. We are looking for the rare scientist who pursues important questions in neuronal cell biology wherever they lead and brings advanced structural and cellular imaging to bear. If the intersection between cryo-ET or vEM and neuronal cell biology feels like your scientific home, take a look. Application link to follow in the post below👇

Very excited to share the first preprint from our group! How do active synapses meet their rapidly changing metabolic needs? We find that neuronal activity engages eIF4G2-dependent local translation of mitochondrial proteins and uORF-encoded micropeptides in dendrites. This translational program remodels nearby mitochondria, which in turn sustain calcium signaling, revealing a reciprocal connection between local translation and mitochondrial function. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… The micropeptides opened an especially exciting new direction for our lab, with more work coming soon so stay tuned! Very proud of Madison Jones for her fantastic work and perseverance through some truly challenging experiments, grateful to Natalie Noble for jump-starting the project in its early stages, and, as always, delighted to work with Robert Darnell! #proximitylabeling #RNA #localtranslation #mitochondria

Heat dome hot out there 🥵

Oriented binding of transcription factors to nucleosomes remodels chromatin at human promoters dlvr.it/TVXnmw

Yesterday Cherry Huang @cherryhuang0120 gave us all a friendly reminder at our Department Seminar Series: your fixative is not an innocent bystander. She did an amazing job “schooling” the audience on how crosslinking chemistry can alter (aka blowup ☠️ ) biosensor localization in chromatin imaging. Great science, beautiful slides, and seriously impressive scicomm skills.

Today, I’m thrilled have our lab’s work featured on the cover of @Nature In this article, we have developed a therapeutic approach for a severe condition called Timothy syndrome. This has been a long journey. It started with making hiPS cell-derived neurons in 2D cultures 15 years ago when I was a postdoc and continued with later creating in the lab #organoid and then #assembloid models of this disease caused by a mutation in a calcium channel. Over time, these human cellular models and the biological insights we gained enable us to design a therapeutic strategy, which we validated in vivo following circuit integration of patient-derived organoids into the rat brain. Grateful for the incredible work led by @XiaoyuChenxy and @fikribirey in the lab! And the many close collaborators who participated to this line of research over the years.

Our latest preprint, from @eerinberr is live: Cytoskeletal disassembly by optogenetic control of RhoA signaling termination. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…

Cas9-mediated double strand breaks are sufficient to cause ultra-long-range trans interactions (BREACHes) in the 3D nucleus within a genetic background amenable to glioblastoma Collaboration with @jane_skok @AramModrek - contributions from @keerthivasanrc from our group

📢Our new study is out! An example of collaboration in science @IreneFaravelli & @BolanosAnton had the vision and perseverance to ask how far human brain tissue could develop outside the brain and followed that question for more than five years. Congrats to the team!🧠⏳

My annual culinary tradition: once a year, in an airport somewhere around the globe, I have a surreptitious Big Mac. London. Lisboa. Sydney. Frankfurt. And now, Chicago. The Big Mac world tour continues. 🍔🌎

How do you watch chromatin make a developmental decision while the neuron is still alive? Tomorrow I’ll be presenting a poster of our latest work on live-cell chromatin biosensors at the Neural Development GRC. We’re engineering genetically encoded probes that visualize specific chromatin states inside living neurons, moving beyond fixed-cell snapshots to reveal genome organization in real time. The next frontier isn’t another sequencing assay it’s watching chromatin biology unfold in 4D.

Newport, RI….classic lunch: Anthony’s Seafood Hot lobster roll

How long do polarity proteins and their interaction partners survive as a neuron prepares to migrate? Liam Hallada @limlam17 has answers today at the Neural Development GRC poster session, 4 PM EST. Using a HaloTag pulse-chase imaging strategy at a ton of other live cell imaging bling, he maps protein stability with spatial resolution in developing cerebellar granule neurons revealing how adhesion locally stabilizes a Pard3-centered network and reshapes protein degradation at migration onset. Poster 13. Don’t miss it.

I didn’t realize my resting heart rate had a vacation mode. My Apple Watch showed me it does. Cyan arrow is vacation start 🏖️⌚