Rodents love to gnaw⦠which can be cute or annoying (e.g. when they decided to destroy my car wiring). But our new study uncovers why: incisor tactile input is relayed by a sensorimotor-motivational circuit to drive gnawing!
So fun collaborating with lead author Xinyu Su and Bo Duan Lab on this!
Our new @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social paper is out! It was an honor to co-lead this project with Shuhao Wan. Finding ways to selectively activate sensory neurons within internal tissues is particularly challenging. This is especially true for the tooth. Check out how we solved this! π¦·β‘οΈ
Very grateful to @byneuron.bsky.social for his unwavering support and mentorship with many project ideas over the years (beginning as a rotation student in my first year of grad school!) π₯Ή
Beautiful new work by @manduh21.bsky.social and our team! Clumsy, a kainate-type glutamate receptor, mediates noxious cold sensation and cold behavioral avoidance in fruit flies. This expands our prior work demonstrating this class of receptors also functions as a cold receptor in worms and mammals.
Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice. π New paper by the ENES Bioacoustics Research Team in @currentbiology.bsky.social
authors.elsevier.com/a/1llMH3QW8S...
Proud to share this work, which we spearheaded as a team with several early-career scientists (including myself and the brilliant @manduh21.bsky.social )π±
Grateful to @byneuron.bsky.social for continued mentoring & encouraging us to harness LabGymβs abilities across model organisms!
We developed LabGym models capable of automatic quantification of key worm behaviors:
πͺ± Forward vs. reverse locomotion
πͺ± Omega bends & overlapping postures
πͺ± Multi-worm tracking
πͺ± Quantifying behavior across lifespan
Our approach can be customized by users to include other behaviors of interest.
New preprint with @manduh21.bsky.social ! π We introduce LabGym, an open-source AI platform for analyzing C. elegans behavior.πͺ±
LabGym makes worm behavior analysis accurate, customizable, and accessible, no coding or costly setup required.
Can you add me? Thanks!
LabGym has been used in reseach across many labs. The latest example is this excellent study from
@jjemrick.bsky.social lab. cell.com/cell-reports...
@cp-cellreports.bsky.social @elizabithian.bsky.social
Register to attend the virtual 2025 LabGym Symposium! LabGym is a powerful and customizable AI-based tool enabling automated quantification of behavior (+ more!)
Really interesting (ha ha i can't stand this roller coaster) back and forth on NIH funding. 9 Senate Republicans sent a letter warning Vought not to hold NIH funds. Vought tries to hold NIH funds. He loses. [though still lots of budget shenanigans] www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
This βadministrationβ acts like itβs playing musical chairs with peopleβs lives.
Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science!
Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans
This is a catastrophe. There is nothing else to be said.
Check out our first research article from the Emrick lab, published in Cell Reports! We define the sensory neurons in the tooth as sentinels: tuned to detect tooth damage and trigger a protective jaw opening reflex. π¦·π¨
Iβm officially a mammalian somatosensory biologist (but I still π©· worms πͺ±)
Official paper thread coming soonβ¦ this work represents a major career milestone for many of the authors π₯Ή
I couldnβt be prouder to work with such an inspiring team to bring this project to the finish line! ππ
π«Ά didnβt expect it to feel so healing. very grateful to be a part of it.
C. elegans, ba ba ba. #Worm25
Humming this as I sadly pack my luggage to leave π₯²
A laureate and a trend setter #worm25
Weβve tried to look into the sound frequencies of rustling leaves etc to see if worm crawling could elicit detectable frequenciesπ€
Proud moment witnessing our very own talented graduate student Xu Bai present the labβs most recent work in C elegans auditory sensation!
C elegans can sense sound AND serve as a genetic model for an understudied form of human hearing loss! As the moderator mentioned- what CANβT worms do?? π€© πͺ± #worm25
Worm meeting bucketlist:
β
Photo with Nobel laureate (and @manduh21.bsky.social)
Thank you Dr. Ambros, for spending time with early stage scientists!
I love this community πͺ± #Worm25
Day 4 of #Worm25: 15k+ steps/daily, sweating through 95Β°F+ Cali heat, followed by shivering in AC, all while being immersed in the latest C. elegans research.
Is this a genetics conference or a worm-themed detox?
βDo you have any advice for aspiring young scientists?β
βDo genetics.β *mic drop*
#worm25
Go worms! #worm25
βThe idea that taking walks, reading things unrelated to your research, and hanging out with strangers in a campus pub should be considered part of the serious process of thinking, but might well meet with skepticism in practice.β
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
