Leading Edge Fellows Program

This #MicroscopyMonday is a developing Apple Snail embryo. On the left is the shell, the middle the body & the foot at the bottom. On the right the head with the eye (green circle) & the tentacle bud. (@planaria1.bsky.social lab) #ResearchSky #SciSky

YouTube video by Stowers Institute for Medical Research How Apple Snail research began at the Stowers Institute: unlocking the secrets of eye regeneration

🐌👀What do apple snails have to do with human vision?

Stowers scientists took a chance on a tiny creature, with big results. Learn how @planaria1.bsky.social & then postdoc @accorsi-alice.bsky.social brought apple snails to the Institute. ⬇️ #ResearchSky #SciSky

Learn more: youtu.be/U-yQ7z1e6nA

HOME Visit the post for more.

This week we said farewell to the amazing @caitlinkowa.bsky.social as she moves to start her new lab at Dartmouth. So grateful for all her leadership and mentoring the last few years.

If you’re interested in all things skin microbes (especially fungi) check out her lab! I can’t recommend enough.

The essential host genome for Cryptosporidium survival exposes metabolic dependencies that can be leveraged for treatment An arrayed microscopy-based CRISPR screen revealed host genes affecting multiple infection phenotypes of the intracellular parasite Cryptosporidium. Hits in the host cholesterol biosynthesis pathway a...

Our paper has finally graduated from pre-print to peer-reviewed, pretty much unscathed, and is out now! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Antigen specificity shapes distinct aging trajectories of memory CD8⁺ T cells - Nature Communications Homeostasis of memory T cells is modulated by each antigen encounter, thereby creating a heterogeneous population preventing precise tracking. Here, the authors use barcode-assisted tracing of Epstein...

I’m excited to share our new T cell aging study published in Nature Communications @natcomms.nature.com !

We show that T cells do not age uniformly but undergo distinct aging trajectories even if they were primed simultaneously early in life.

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

👇👇

Which llms are best for coding help? what strategies help students actually learn how to write and eval code? I'll continue asking probing q's and emphasize checking work, but rn feel like i cant trust any of their plots...2/2

This summer I'm noticing students embracing vibe coding for data analysis to worrying effect. #Neuroskyence #🧪 1/2

Super excited to share my final postdoc paper from Rabinowitz lab- on how whole-body and tissue metabolism changes in viral infection!
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40581045/

My postdoc work on attention in the mouse whisker system is out now in @natcomms.nature.com! We show that mice flexibly allocate attention to recently rewarded touch stimuli on a trial-by-trial basis, with corresponding modulation of the S1 neural code (1/6).

Functional amyloid proteins confer defence against predatory bacteria Nature - Escherichia coli uses curli fibres, oligomers of the functional amyloid CsgA, as a barrier to protect against the predatory bacteria Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and Myxococcus xanthus in a...

Words cannot describe how excited I am to share the findings from the second half of my postdoc in @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social's lab where we discover that bacteria use functional amyloids to defend themselves from predatory bacteria. rdcu.be/euu5Y. See thread for details on this epic adventure 1/.

a picture of a woman with the words this is exciting below her ALT: a picture of a woman with the words this is exciting below her

Exciting news:
⭐I'm thrilled to receive a grant from the Brain Research Foundation! tinyurl.com/2p9ku4sd

⭐"Atypical retinal ganglion cell function in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome" was published! tinyurl.com/htk3ekce

⭐my review on retinal receptive fields was published! tinyurl.com/48b9xbs2

Shining a Light on the World of Tiny Proteins

A recent study from @shiraweingarten.bsky.social, a former postdoc in the Rice laboratory, revealed 4,208 previously unknown proteins that are made by viruses such as influenza and H.I.V. using a new technique called massively parallel ribosome profiling.

Congratulations @allynguyen.bsky.social !!!

Testicular somatic and germ cell maturation during rhesus macaque development | PNAS The formation of bilateral testes in animals is critical for puberty, reproductive capacity, and testosterone production across the life course. In...

Just out @pnas.org : our work on primate testis maturation during fetal development.

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

So excited to announce our preprint describing a high-throughput method for mapping connectivity across neuron types! Using a combination of optogenetics, voltage imaging, and mFISH in over 1000 neurons, we describe new connectivity motifs in long-range inputs to the motor cortex.

Extremely excited to share I have accepted an offer to be an Assistant Professor in the MCDB department at the University of Michigan! Go Blue! The Ledvina lab will investigate the molecular interworking of the bacterial immune systems including defense against both viral and bacterial pathogens.

Congratulations @almudenachaves.bsky.social !!!

New paper from the lab officially out! Congratulations @marisosa.bsky.social - amazing work - and just before she sets off to UC Boulder to start her own lab!

Excited to present our lab’s work at #ISSCR2025 at Hong Kong! Looking forward to catching up with friends and making new ones. Catch me at the concurrent session on “Stem cell models of tissue injury and repair”.

Congratulations to postdocs Melissa Pamula and Amelie Raz, who have both been named 2025 Leading Edge Fellows! www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows @remlehmann.bsky.social @leadingedgeprogram.bsky.social

A covalent recognition strategy enables conspecific mate identification The olfactory system can detect an uncountable number of volatile molecules while retaining the ability to discriminate amongst very similar ones. We identified a unique mechanism employed by insect o...

New preprint in the lab combining what we like best: insects, love, chemistry and the olfactory system! 1/8
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Balanced synapse-to-synapse short-term plasticity ensures constant transmitter release Basal synaptic strength can vary greatly between synapses. Aghi et al. find a similar large variability in short-term plasticity between synapses of a Drosophila single motor neuron. Strikingly, the c...

🧪 The final work from my PhD is finally out today! We found that synapses at the larval fruit fly neuromusculsr junction (NMJ) were individually highly diverse in their synaptic release properties. However... (1/5)

Not that it matters, but my MOSAIC was scored a 14. Reviewed in study section w non-MOSAIC K99s. I'm to write another grant that may not be funded, that doesn't provide transition to faculty funds, instead of doing the work that was reviewed so highly?

That's the best use of time & tax payer money?

Text reads "Congratulations to the 2025 Leading Edge Fellows" followed by the Leading Edge logo and www.leadingedgesymposium.org. Below are the headshots and names of the 40 new Leading Edge Fellows. They are Cel Welch Lianna Wat Maria Toro Moreno Sarah Talley Xulu Sun Ines Sturmlechner Virginia Savy Amelie Raz Kali Pruss Caterina Profaci Sarah Pierce Melissa Pamula Kehinde Odufowora Patricia Nano Ariana Musa de Aquino Nour El Houda Mimouni Kathleen Martin Brea Manuel Mable Lam Miri Krupkin Elaine Kouame Megan Kirchgessner Sumin Kim Shubhangini Kataruka Geraldine Jowett Andrea Jones Leanne Iannucci Emily Heckman Allison Girasole Florencia Fernandez Chiappe Tonie Farris Hannah Elam Erin Doherty Xiaoyun Ding Maria Bustillo Julia Brunner Debadrita Bhattacharya Lorena Benedetti Ashley Anderson Krisha Aghi

We are thrilled to announce the 2025 Leading Edge Fellows! 40 outstanding postdoctoral fellows doing pioneering research in a wide range of biological and biomedical disciplines.

Learn more about these exceptional scientists:

www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows

I am thrilled to share our preprint where we take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism potentially playing a role in preimplantation 🧵. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hooray for @accorsi-alice.bsky.social !!!!!! 🐌🎉🧪

So great to see @xintong.bsky.social while visiting UT Dallas @leadingedgeprogram.bsky.social

Exciting news!! I’m joining the tenure-track faculty at University of Colorado Boulder this fall as an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience!

The Sosa Lab will study how memory is shaped by cognitive and physiological demands, including during pregnancy and the postpartum period. 🧵

Excited to share that our story on S. aureus antagonism by Malassezia is live today in Current Biology! The paper has changed a lot since the preprint with the very exciting addition of having identified the antimicrobial effector generated by M. sympodialis.

authors.elsevier.com/c/1kwzj3QW8S...

Fia holding a cake with a sign that says congratulations

Huge congrats to talented graduate student Fia Stratton on receiving the NSF GRFP today! So proud and excited to see all the incredible science you'll do — well deserved! @einsteincellbio.bsky.social @einsteinmededu.bsky.social