Jesse Garcia Castillo, PhD

NIH shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs Special Report: The NIH has shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs.

“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.”

MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling

Next installment of American Science, Shattered:

www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...

YouTube video by CellMorphoJSero Introduction to CellProfiler - by a biologist, for biologists!

If you or your trainees are just getting started with image analysis of cells & are #CellProfiler -curious, here is a fairly thorough walk-through demo I did recently. Loading files, extracting metadata (fun with Regex!), identifying objects, measuring, filtering, QC, exporting:
youtu.be/fO5nJdhj_7I

Guidelines for T cell nomenclature - Nature Reviews Immunology This Consensus Statement clarifies the existing subset-based nomenclature for T cells. Furthermore, it proposes an alternative modular nomenclature that is designed to be brief and flexible and to avo...

..cross your 't's folks.. here's how!

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

A fluorescent embryo on black text, with the words Halfway to I2K: Virtual Tutorials on Image Analysis November 17-19, 2025 Virtual Conference for beginners to developers i2kconference.org Image Credit - "Sweet Embryo",Travis D. Carney, BINA Image Contest 2024

Just 4 days until the start of I2K and its 33 totally free image analysis tutorials and events! Please share with your "home networks", especially early career researchers - the videos will be amazing and high-impact no matter how many people attend live, BUT (1/x)

Not every mentor is for every person. I always tell grad students to listen to what folks in the lab say about a mentor, but it’s okay to also see it for yourself in a rotation. It’s about the match - finding the person who can meet your needs (which are unique!).

UC to Stop Funding Systemwide Postdoc Program Established in 1984 to encourage women and minority Ph.D.s to pursue academia, the program has attracted right-wing criticism for prioritizing diverse candidates.

this is devastating for so many reasons and honestly, shame on the UC. Was hoping to keep the high going after Mamdani's win only come to falling back to earth and register that this country does not want us to succeed. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Mitochondrial ABHD11 inhibition drives sterol metabolism to modulate T-cell effector function - Nature Communications α/β-hydrolase domain-containing protein 11 (ABHD11) is a mitochondrial hydrolase, and its expression in CD4 + T-cells has been linked to remission status in rheumatoid arthritis. Here the authors repo...

Ecstatic to share out latest research looking at the role of mitochondrial ABHD11 in controlling T-cell responses. We think this may be a viable target for autoimmunity. Please do give it a read, we would love to hear your thoughts.

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

What we know, 12:10am
[Now in 2 parts]

—Prop 50 wins
—VA Dems flip Gov, LG, AG
—Dems flip ≈13 seats in VA House
—Dems defend NJ-Gov + Assembly
—Dems win NJ+VA trifectas
—Mamdani wins
—PA Dems win supreme court
—ME vote-restricting measure loses
—GA Dems flip 2 statewide offices
—Krasner & Bragg win

Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race, in a historic victory for progressives Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, will make history as the first Muslim and South Asian person — as well as the youngest in over a century — to serve as New York City mayor.

JUST IN: Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, will make history as the first Muslim and South Asian person — as well as the youngest in over a century — to serve as New York City mayor.

A reminder that Zohran won IN SPITE OF his party and not because of it. This matters because while Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries might SAY "Vote Blue No Matter Who" and "Party Unity," they LITERALLY found it easier to go to bat for a guy with a Nazi tat than Mamdani. They will not accept this.

BREAKING: The Democrats have seized the majority in the Minnesota Senate!

From a former DuPage lab member, hope you enjoy!

FSP1-mediated lipid droplet quality control prevents neutral lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis - Nature Cell Biology Lange et al. identify a lipid droplet quality control pathway in which FSP1 safeguards stored neutral lipids from lipid peroxidation, thereby preventing the induction of ferroptosis.

Excited to share my postdoc work @olzmannlab.bsky.social! We found lipid droplets, the cell’s lipid storage depots, are subject to oxidative damage and are protected by FSP1. Loss of FSP1 triggers droplet peroxidation and cell death, revealing a new layer of lipid quality control!

shorturl.at/B5XYD

Mitochondrial and lysosomal signaling orchestrates heterogeneous metabolic states of regulatory T cells Mitochondrial and lysosomal signaling orchestrates Treg cell metabolic states and functional fitness.

A new #ScienceImmunology study shows that deleting the lysosomal protein Flcn from regulatory T cells can prevent their accumulation in some tissues, thus boosting antitumor immunity in mice. https://scim.ag/4o1g1of

Pre-print alert! And this one really is a must read for anyone that does spectral #flowcytometry. It is a complete, fully-automated spectral unmixing pipeline that reduces error up to 9000-fold.

Want to get a tough sample, like lung, looking like this? Read more!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Decoding Peripheral Tolerance: TCR Rules for pTreg differentiation in the Gut https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.20.683415v1

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social The normal human lymph node cell classification and landscape defined by high-dimensional spatial proteomic
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share this fun collaboration with Rafael Rivera-Lugo and Dan Portnoy. We developed a Listeria strain that induces long-lasting MAIT cell expansion in B6 mice that normally lack MAIT cells with broad anti-bacterial activity and contribute to tumor control independent of CD8+ T cells!

Cleary and Semmrich et al. focused on identifying antibodies that specifically target and deplete tumor-specific Tregs while sparing systemic Tregs (spleen and blood) and effector T cell populations. bit.ly/4pWrzdT  @unisouthampton.bsky.social

Lipid imaging on the cover of @nature.com! Great times for lipid cell biology indeed. And a fantastic recognition of all the hard work by the team, especially Juan M. Iglesias-Artola and Kristin Böhlig (who made the cover). Link to article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pre-division TCF1 drop determines long-term CD8 T cell fates @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#goals

Site-specific genome engineering of primary human natural killer cells for programmable anti-tumor function https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.05.680386v1

📣do not miss out on 7&8 October: Spatial Biology in cancer and immunology research. Register NOW: events.bizzabo.com/SpatialBiology @yefis-immunology.bsky.social @efis-immunology.bsky.social

The impact has been enormous, with Tregs going from being a niche frowned-upon subset of immunology, to underpinning our entire understanding of how the immune system works. Therapies based on boosting Tregs (e.g. IL2) or bypassing Tregs (anti-CTLA4) are in the clinic.

Great to see Tregs win a Nobel prize!!

B and T cells—the organizing principle of the adaptive immune system - Lasker Foundation For their discovery of the two distinct classes of lymphocytes, B and T cells – a monumental achievement that provided the organizing principle of the adaptive immune system and launched the course of...

Renewing my yearly bet on Cooper/Miller for the Nobels.

One might think that I would learn after being wrong so many times, but one would be mistaken.

laskerfoundation.org/winners/b-an...

Foreign epitope–specific naïve Treg cells fine-tune the primary response of Tconv cells specific for the same epitope by curbing the Th1 fate while allowing a robust response @jimmunol.bsky.social @uminnpress.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/jimmunol/adv...

Eomes controls the acquisition of regulatory and cytotoxic function in CD4+ T cells that are critical for limiting immune toxicity, while maintaining persistence and tumor control after immunotherapy @cp-immunity.bsky.social
www.cell.com/immunity/ful... @fredhutch.org

Congrats!! 😀