DMartin

Let's recreate the photo they said. My character is the only upside down one....

Ugh. CELL-ebrate!

I hope to see this look at your next talk!

Therapeutic modulation of the calpastatin/calpain pathway restores calpain-mediated synaptic proteolysis and preserves motor neurons survival and function in C9orf72 ALS A hexanucleotide repeat expansion (GGGGCC) in the C9orf72 gene is the most prevalent genetic cause of ALS, with early neuromuscular junction (NMJ) dysfunction being a key pathological feature. Current...

🎉 Excited to share our latest preprint📰 !
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Many thanks to everyone involved in this project ! Using a zebrafish model 🐟 and iPSC-derived motor neurons 🔬 we show that restoring the calpastatin/calpain pathway preserves motoneuron survival and function in C9orf72 ALS!

It's baffling that we're cutting research funds, but recruiting more US researchers during massive hiring freezes. Politicians like to blame researchers for not 'being innovative.' Despite 'punching above our weight' we're continously in survival mode bc of bad policy. Fund basic research!

Institutional autonomy is a major facet of academic freedom. Institutions set academic priorities through internal collegial processes.

Starving unis into hiring freezes and then telling them they can only have funds to recruit if they check vapid government PR boxes attacks that autonomy.

CELL-abrate the Holidays with the NeurdyPhagy Lab!
'Dashing through the cell
Proteins all around
Cysteines free to bind,
With Palmitate they're crowned!'

All I want for Christmas is my CIHR grant to get discussed!

Creative Credit to @cailyncreative.bsky.social

I think it is still too early to study how many of the CERC and Canada150 stayed in Canada after the $$$ ran out, but someone needs to do this analysis. I think we'll find that these programs, without increasing CIHR and NSERC budgets, are not doing what they intended.

There's a reason Julia Child was an icon & this cookbook is timeless. First time making coq au vin. Not sure there's a good way to photograph it. Only took 3 hours, but damn that was amazing. Paired it with spatzle. Worth the time.

Welcome to the Canadian Hunger Games where the motto truly is 'May the odds be ever in your favour!'

“Canada is the best place to live, and top talent from around the world want to come here because they see opportunities and possibilities to contribute to cutting-edge research”...

...he says while allocating $1.7B to bribe people to move here and cutting grant funding. Unbelievable.

This! Often a rare disease only occurs because the protein or gene is so critical. It typically suggests that understanding the mechanism will help us understand critical pathways.

Definitely. Sink my grant for whatever reason, but not this. But also, why isn't CIHR removing these comments?

Trying to get a diagnosis for a rare disease can be incredibly hard & take years. Sometimes the only hope is in the research.

Imagine what it must be like to read that your disease isn't worth funding because it doesn't affect enough people!

Dear CIHR Reviewers, pls keep in mind that knowledge users on grants see the reviews. If you tell us a protein/gene is not interesting/less important because it's rare, it reads as those patients aren't important.

If I interpreted the other sections correctly a huge amount is going towards tax credits for IP and such. The insult IMO is constantly saying we're not innovative. We barely have enough funds to survive publish or perish but they think it's patent or perish.

The sad thing is they missed the point that a strong research environment attracts AND retains top talent.

Scientists, please come to Canada! We'll pay to bring you here, but you need to fund your own research!

Came here to see if I was interpreting this correctly. Seems like I am.

The Canadian government has seemingly never read a single one of its own commissioned reports on what Canadian science needs. (It's not more people.)

What a week! Submitted my NSERC today. Submitted a paper today. Incoming PhD got a scholarship today! And PDF landed an award/small grant! Can't wait to tell you all the details when we can.
Now I need to rest before a double header talks tomorrow at the HSC meeting!

Been awhile since I've been so nervous & excited to work in the lab. Today I'm helping culture human stem cells into muscle & motor neurons. The cells need to be fed daily & I'm helping while a student is away. Contamination is a constant fear. Thank you @stemcell.com for the help!

During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost!

apply.interfolio.com/174756

We used live-cell imaging with plus-end binding protein EB3 to determine microtubule polarity in astrocytes for the first time. They are ~88% plus-ends out.

3/x

Excited to share our preprint on cytoskeletal organization in astrocytes!
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Postdoc @mewynne759 looked at microtubules, IFs/GFAP & actin along long elaborate processes.

Wonderful to collaborate w postdoc @dharshinigopal & @NogalesLab on cryo-ET 🤓

1/x

Amazing news today for HD patients! I hope this keeps up.

Working on my NSERC renewal & being reminded about all the projects we had lined up that have been scooped. At $37k/yr there's only so much we can do. And it's not much. Canadian science is laughably underfunded.

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children's Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability - PubMed Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children's risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis. This suggests that associations observed in other mo...

A big study in JAMA last year in which 185 909 children were exposed to acetaminophen during pregnancy. Conclusion: Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children's risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38592388/

SKY-0515, an oral drug, safely lowers huntingtin in people with HD—and may also reduce PMS1, a DNA repair protein. This two-pronged approach could open new doors for HD treatment. A larger Phase 2/3 trial is now underway.

Full article: en.hdbuzz.net/sky-0515-low...

David Letterman on his career mocking presidents: “Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy—not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.”

Watch more: bit.ly/4n0Uv2p