Jeff Saucerman

Missed the #aurora but still good stargazing in #cville

Happy New Year! Just 5 days until the 4th Netflux and Network Biology Virtual Conference on Jan 7, 1-5 pm ET. Please share. Agenda and free registration at: tinyurl.com/netfluxnet2026

Reduced TBX5 dosage undermines developmental control of atrial cardiomyocyte identity in a model of human atrial disease While atrial septal defects (ASDs) and atrial fibrillation (AF) present differently, there is evidence that they share some genetic basis. Here, we used directed differentiation of human induced pluri...

Accepted ms on modeling human atrial disease posted @dev-journal.bsky.social just now. Congratulations to @irfankathiriya.bsky.social @jsauce7.bsky.social and team! @gladstoneinst.bsky.social @ucsfanesthesia.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article-...

More 🥾 pics

Snowy hike to Hawksbill Summit, Shenandoah NP

Making the Right Moves is great www.hhmi.org/sites/defaul...

Always fun collaborating on networks of cardiac development with Irfan, @benoitbruneau.bsky.social, and team!

The 4th Netflux and Network Biology Virtual Conference is coming, Jan 7! Talks on network modeling across methods and biological systems. Free! tinyurl.com/netfluxnet2026

More snow hike pics, Percival's Island, #Lynchburg

Winter wonderland 🥾❄️

Here's the comparison of time-evolving phase portraits of cardiac differentiation in WT (2 saddlenode bifurcations: mono->bi->new monostable) vs. Brm-KO (reversal of 1 saddlenode bifurcation: mono->bi->old bistable)

Still, I'm very excited by the potential for more generalized Waddington/energy landscapes such as yours for revealing a wide range of transition types.

In contrast, as @benoitbruneau.bsky.social noted the original Waddington diagram only shows pitchfork bifurcations (2 stable states split off from 1)

Great questions, agreed! There are a number of possible transition types. I think this demo by my daughter of how Brahma KO breaks the second saddle node bifurcation was surprisingly our most intuitive.

Yes this is very cool! Our Brahma model was more focused and hypothesis driven, but would be cool to see if this data driven approach can find the saddle node bifurcations automatically.

I think "should" is very important during review. "Suffering happens in the gap we hold between the expectations we have (of preliminary data) and reality."
— Poppy Jamie

Would love to see a survey on what percent of an NIH grant should already be completed as preliminary data.

Sure thanks will DM!

Announcing the 4th Netflux and Network Biology Virtual Conference, Jan 7! Free registration and abstract submission (Dec 12). Live demo of the new user-friendly Netflux webapp, student talks, keynote by Suzanne Gaudet (Novartis): bit.ly/4i1eQD6

Sauce lab dressed for Halloween as favorite proteins! 🎃👻🕷️. I was a serotonin receptor bound to LexaPro for Taylors recent paper.

More Riprap #hiking

Rain fog and leaves turning along Riprap. One of my favorite trails in Shenandoah NP. #hiking

These show that neuregulin-1 induces cardiomyocyte Feret elongation via sustained PI3K signaling, while transient p38 signaling increases cell size but not shape. This study leverages experimental-computational methods to dissect how signaling dynamics distinctly regulate cell size vs. shape. 3/3

We first characterized the proteomic, gene expression, and phenotypic responses of cardiomyocytes (including our new cell shape metric Feret elongation) to diverse ligands. We integrated this data with data-driven and mechanistic computational models, validated with new perturbation experiments. 2/

How do signaling pathways differentially control cell size vs. shape? In a new preprint led by Alice Luanpaisanon, we iterate between experimental and computational methods to discover such pathways. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I would say that tracks but...

More pics

Spooky fall day in Shenandoah NP

Finally, check out the eye candy! Awesome multi-channel live-cell videos analyzed with machine learning segmentation and tracking. Shows the complex fates that cells commit to. 3/3

Inhibition of caspase-3 changes a cell's bias from apoptosis to hypertrophy. Initial cell and nuclear morphological features also bias a cell's decisions. These results demonstrate that the single-cell dynamics of cardiomyocyte growth and death are highly heterogeneous and dynamic. 2/3