Janet Song

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!

We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

Applications for our Next Generation Leaders program are open!

For 3 years, accepted early career scientists will join a supportive network and contribute to our research initiatives.

Apply by Mar. 31: https://bit.ly/3OjzdRa

📸 Photo by NGL Alum @bjmarlin.bsky.social

Sosa Lab - Postdoctoral Researchers We are seeking postdocs to start in 2026!

The Sosa Lab is going to #SfN25 and actively recruiting ✨postdocs✨ with systems neuroscience experience! We study both fundamental memory processes and how memory changes during pregnancy and postpartum.

If you are interested in meeting at SfN, please email me! www.sosaneurolab.com/join/postdoc...

Thrilled to start my Group Leader adventure with these and other great scientists!

Thank you!

Candid photo of Zara Weinberg. She has short red hair, bangs and glasses. She is laughing.

The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor.

The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2.

www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

Meet our 2025 cohort of Next Generation Leaders! For the next 3 years, they will network with other rising stars, participate in professional development, and share their ideas for future research directions.

Induction of menstruation in mice reveals the regulation of menstrual shedding During menstruation, an inner layer of the endometrium is selectively shed, while an outer, progenitor-containing layer is preserved to support repeated regeneration. Progress in understanding this co...

I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model Nature - Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK.
Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

Sosa Lab

The Sosa Lab website is now live!
www.sosaneurolab.com

We will be seeking a postdoctoral researcher to join the growing team! If you are a rodent neuroscientist and interested in doing systems neuro work in the mountains 🏔️, please check out the "Join" page.

I'm excited to share that I've started my lab @stanford.edu in the Neurobiology Department! neurobiology.stanford.edu/who-we-are/f...

#stanford #newPI #neuroscience

Very cool, congrats!

The evolution of hominin bipedalism in two steps - Nature The human pelvis exhibits distinct spatiotemporal ossification patterns and an ilium cartilage growth plate that is shifted perpendicularly compared with those of other mammals and non-human primates—...

1) I am delighted to present this terrific tour de force research conducted by my post-doc Dr. Gayani Senevirathne @gayani.bsky.social and published today in Nature -
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Thawani Lab at Columbia University The Thawani Lab at Columbia University describing their research on mobile genome, cryo-electron microscopy and genome engineering

Extremely excited to share that I’m joining Columbia University @columbiauniversity.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor!

We will explore how the mobile genome works—how transposons shape us, our DNA and how they can be harnessed to build useful technologies. #NewPI #RNAsky #TEsky

thawanilab.org

Thanks for featuring my new lab @thetransmitter.bsky.social!

Diet/microbes place the gut epithelium as a nexus for evolutionary change. With Jason Spence and Craig Lowe labs we use #organoids to explore how evolution prepared the developing human intestine for exposure to the environment. @science.org #evodevo www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/11

Congrats!! 🎉 🎉 🎉

A chart showing cancelled NIH grants

“I would like to cure brain cancer. I think that's not particularly controversial.” Be that as it may, the NIH terminated that scientist's grant. Here's a huge survey of the 2,500 grants that NIH has killed or delayed...so far. Gift link: nyti.ms/43Jz1yJ

A flyer with the heading McClintock Letter-Writing Workshop. Details are Friday, June 6th, 12pm ET and 9am PT, virtual.

Want to write to your community about the importance of science funding?

Join me on zoom this Friday at 12pm ET / 9am PT to learn to write an op-ed as part of the #McClintockLetters initiative!

Sign up to write a letter and register for the workshop here:
blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-...

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

Postdoc position in human brain evolution at the amazing @janetsong.bsky.social lab at Harvard! Despite the freeze, she’s hiring! Send her a message.

A human-specific enhancer fine-tunes radial glia potency and corticogenesis - Nature HARE5, a human accelerated region enhancer, modulates cortical development by influencing neural progenitor cell behaviour, leading to an enlarged neocortex with increased functional independence betw...

Thrilled to share our latest study out in @natureportfolio.nature.com led by the fantastically talented Jing Liu. Our study provides insight into a long standing question in biology: What molecular features make us uniquely human and how do these function? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today in @nature.com , we report a spatial single-cell atlas of human cortical development, revealing surprisingly early specification of human cortical layers and areas.
We built an interactive browser to explore the spatial data: walshlab.org/research/cor...
Paper link below 👇

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...

Woohoo, congratulations!! 🎉

A phylogeny of the 7 ape genomes that have now been completed from "T2T", with Homer Simpson representing mankind.

A project five years in the making, we've now published complete "T2T" genomes for six additional ape species! It turns out that finishing (and analyzing) six genomes is slightly more work than one... doi.org/10.1038/s415...

FOS binding sites are a hub for the evolution of activity-dependent gene regulatory programs in human neurons After birth, sensory inputs to neurons trigger the induction of activity-dependent genes (ADGs) that mediate many aspects of neuronal maturation and plasticity. To identify human-specific ADGs, we cha...

Compelling evidence that the activity-dependent gene expression program has changed between human and chimpanzee neurons (new preprint by @janetsong.bsky.social and collaborators) 🧪🧬🧠
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fascinating new work by @janetsong.bsky.social and colleagues on species-specific neural gene regulation, using human-chimpanzee tetraploid cells 🧪🧬🧫🧠
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

These preprints result from a close collaboration with Ava Carter, who is on the job market this year --- hire her!!! And a huge thanks to our postdoc mentors, Chris Walsh and Mike Greenberg, for supporting these projects!

We show that regulatory changes in neural progenitors affect neurogenesis-related gene programs and that regulatory changes in excitatory neurons affect synaptic gene expression and neuronal firing.