Michael Ward

How Congress can restore the independence of US science Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.

For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
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Temporal proteomic and phosphoproteomic dynamics during neuronal differentiation in the reference iPSC line KOLF2.1J Trace protein and phosphoprotein dynamics during neuronal differentiation in the iPSC-derived cell line model are described.

A new #ScienceSignaling study offers insights into the KOLF2.IJ cell line, which is derived from induced pluripotent stem cells and has been proposed as a neuronal model for Alzheimer’s disease and related #dementia research. https://scim.ag/4aFNY9O

CLCC1 promotes hepatic neutral lipid flux and nuclear pore complex assembly - Nature CRISPR–Cas9 screening identifies CLCC1 as a factor that increases neutral lipid flux to prevent hepatic steatosis and promotes nuclear pore complex assembly by promoting membrane bending and fusi...

Sooo happy to share our new paper in @nature.com “CLCC1 promotes hepatic neutral lipid flux and nuclear pore complex assembly.” A terrific collaboration with @arrudalab.bsky.social, led by co–first authors Alyssa Mathiowetz and Emily Maymand.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Losing sleep over #iPSC transgene silencing after differentiation?
Same here.

Bright in iPSCs.
Gone after differentiation.

Our paper in @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social maps what actually keeps expression on👇
www.cell.com/cell-stem-ce...
🔗 Free access (50 days):
www.sciencedirect.com/science/auth...

Thrilled to see our paper out in @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal principles of tau proteostasis CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal that the E3 ubiquitin ligase CRL5SOCS4 ubiquitinates tau, that CUL5 expression is correlated with resilience in human Alzheimer’s disease, and that electr...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

We have had great luck with these kits (and the dyes are quite bright): biotium.com/product/mix-...

But honestly prefer secondary nanobody pre-mixing with primaries (site specific and slow off kinetics): nano-tag.com/technology/s...

TDP-43 dysfunction leads to the accumulation of cryptic transposable element-derived exons, crypTEs, in iPSC derived neurons and ALS/FTD patient tissues TDP-43 is an RNA and DNA binding protein that plays major roles in regulating RNA processing. In particular, TDP-43 dysfunction leads to the accumulation of cryptic splice isoforms that result from im...

📣Excited to announce a new pre-print from the lab 📣

Led by my student @storiesofisobel.bsky.social in collab with Hemali Phatnani @nygenome.org
We discovered a novel class of TDP-43 dependent cryptic gene-TE spliced transcripts: crypTEs

#TEsky #RNAsky #ALS
doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.09.698641

Latest preprint from our lab reports that the distinct pH of anterograde (less acidic) and retrograde (more acidic) lysosomal vesicles in the axon depends on assembly of the V1 and V0 domains of the vacuolar H+ ATPase, mediated by the metazoan RAVE complex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Ranking categories found on a recommendation portal for a PhD program. It reads: Top 5%: Applicant is exceptional in this category and is among the best I've collaborated with in my career Top 10%: Applicant has demonstrated consistent excellence and has performed well above the average of their peers in this category Top 25%: Applicant has consistently performed above the average of their peers in this category Top Half: Applicant has consistently performed at an average level or midpoint of their peer group's performance in this category Bottom Half: Applicant has consistently performed below the average of their peers in this category No Basis for Judgement: I have not interacted with the applicant in a manner that allows me to fairly assess their competency in this category

Begging PhD programs to agree on a common app with only letters of rec that writers upload once. These inane likert scales when students are applying to 15-20 programs is destroying my soul

👉 New publication ahead of print from our lab: tinyurl.com/ye7pntte
We show that the protein SPG21, mutated in hereditary spastic paraplegia 21, localizes to endolysosomes via RAB7A, where it promotes mTORC1-dependent TFEB phosphorylation, reducing expression of a subset of TFEB regulated genes

Hasegawa-Ogawa, Okano et al. identify a dominant-negative TDP-43 isoform regulated by #ALS-linked #RNA-binding proteins. hnRNP K promotes its expression, while hnRNP A1 and FUS suppress it. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Disease #Neuroscience #ProteinHomeostasis #RNAbiology

Neuron programming! Pro-neural TFs + 480 morphogen conditions + scRNA-seq --> Diverse iN subtypes of forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, spinal cord, and PNS. @hsiuchuanlin.bsky.social‬ @jasperjanssens.bsky.social‬ and Treutlein Lab! @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #NGN2 #ASCL1

Perturb-Multimodal: A platform for pooled genetic screens with imaging and sequencing in intact mammalian tissue Pairing imaging and sequencing to simultaneously measure gene expression and morphological phenotypes in diverse genetically perturbed cells in mosaic animals, Perturb-Multimodal enables systematic ex...

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

EndoMAP.v1 charts the structural landscape of human early endosome complexes - Nature A study presents EndoMAP.v1, a resource that combines information on protein interactions and crosslink-supported structural predictions to map the interaction landscape of early endosomes.

Nature research paper: EndoMAP.v1 charts the structural landscape of human early endosome complexes

https://go.nature.com/3Z6mJ1X

Thanks for hosting me - so much fun to meet with everybody at Berkeley!

Despite some ups and downs at NIH, we do have an open position for a postbac and are considering candidates.
Our work is at the intersection of neuroscience and AI, and we aim to understand how the brain's densely connected recurrent networks operate. 🧪

Multimodal cell maps as a foundation for structural and functional genomics - Nature A global map of human subcellular architecture yields protein complex structures, reveals protein functions, identifies assemblies with multiple localizations or cell-type specificity and decodes paed...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Why do lower-resolution images sometimes yield better results in deep learning for bioimaging analyses? 🤔📉

Mariana Ferreira's new preprint on #ReScale4DL explores this paradox and introduces optimal resolution design! @gomez-mariscal.bsky.social brainchild🧑‍🔬✨

Check: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The White House’s Next Orchestrated Budget Crisis This is something I’m still trying to get my head around –...

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-w...

Not nearly enough coverage of this possibility by traditional media.

Explore #Neurodegeneration and Neural-Immune Interactions, June 8-11! Gain insights from experts like @dulaclab.bsky.social and @weissmanlab.bsky.social. Register now to save $200. Postdocs, enjoy an extra $275 off: hubs.la/Q035NHGV0

#KSNeuroImmune25 #KSNeuroDegen25 @michael-e-ward.bsky.social

LRP10 promotes trafficking of progranulin and prosaposin to lysosomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651888v1

The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do

It is potentially even (much, much) worse than that…

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

Important!! 🚨

“Using the rescission process, which requires only a simple majority in the Senate, the Republican majorities can vote to return the unspent funds. That will lop billions off the NIH budget.” 1/2

The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do

New at Can We Still Govern: An anonymous NIH employee maps out the GOP budget gameplan to permanently gut our most important science agency.
Impoundment, delay and red tape will create artificial "savings" that become the new benchmark for NIH budgets.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

#neuroai #neuroskyence 🧪 #ai

Genome-wide mapping of mesoscale neuronal RNA organization and condensation Subcellular RNA organization can affect critical cellular functions. However, our understanding of RNA microenvironments, particularly biomolecular condensates, remains limited, largely due to a lack ...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Multimodal cell maps as a foundation for structural and functional genomics - Nature A global map of human subcellular architecture yields protein complex structures, reveals protein functions, identifies assemblies with multiple localizations or cell-type specificity and decodes paed...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prevention of Transgene Silencing During Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Differentiation While high and stable transgene expression can be achieved in undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells, conventional transgene expression systems are often silenced upon differentiation. Silencing occu...

Amazing team science effort, led by Marius Wernig’s group, to develop a silencing-resistant transgene cassette that maintains expression following iPSC differentiation. This was major barrier for iPSC-based experiments. Thanks to CZI for funding the research!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...