Ana Santacruz

The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for key immune system discoveries They won for their work on peripheral immune tolerance, which is one way the body helps keep the immune system from getting out of whack and attacking your own tissues..

apnews.com/article/nobe... Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for key immune system discoveries

Looking forward to our next #globalimmuno talk this Wednesday, October 8th, at 9am PST, noon EST, 4pm GMT by Dr. Mauro Gaya.

Title: “B cell memory in barrier tissues”
ZOOM LINK: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
LIVE ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/@GLOBALIMMUNOTALKS

The evolution of cavefish odor perception shifts fish response from avoidance to approach when exposed to alarm and death odors. An animals survival is dependent on activating the correct behavioral circuit in response to a sensory stimulus. These stimuli include environmental odorants that evoke positive approach behavior and ...

I am happy to report that the lab has its first preprint! We looked at odor perception in cavefish and found a strong attraction to ancestrally negative odors, including appetitive behavior and brain activity when smelling death!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

More new work from the lab! @idrm.ox.ac.uk @oxforddpag.bsky.social
Do all zebrafish regenerate their hearts equally? Also featuring the Mexican cavefish☺️
Thanks to all co-authors and especially the incredibly talented DPhil student Kostas Lekkos who drove the project. #zebrafish #heartregeneration

An MHC class II supertype confers resistance to a sexually transmitted bacterium in females but not in males in a genetically monogamous seabird Abstract. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a gene cluster essential for pathogen recognition in jawed vertebrates. It encompasses the MHC clas

Ribeiro et al. studied #MHC class II variation and infection by a sexually transmitted bacterium (C34) in black-legged #kittiwakes. They found sex-specific links between MHC supertypes, bacterial load and reproduction, suggesting STIs may influence immune gene evolution:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

An image of Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee, from 1965. Photo courtesy CBS Photo Archive / Getty.

The naturalist Jane Goodall died today at 91. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” Revisit a conversation with Goodall, from 2021: nyer.cm/F55JtsS

Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91 She used her global fame to draw attention to the plight of dwindling chimpanzee populations and, more broadly, to the perils of environmental destruction.

“We (humans) have been so jolly arrogant to think we’re so special.”

www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

Beautiful mirror spider.from Australia.

This gorgeous being is thwaitesia argentiopunctata. Also known as the sequinned spider, mirror spider and is found in Australia. Absolutely beautiful! I am at a loss for words.

#nature #arachnid #insect #mirrorspider #Australia

Excited to start being part of the Postdoc Network Münster #PNM! @uni-muenster.de as a board member! A chance to give back to the community, and to the sometimes ‘grey’, neglected minority we postdocs are 💪✨

In the apple eye of evolution: Camera-type eye regeneration - the Node Behind the paper stories from "A genetically tractable non-vertebrate system to study complete camera-type eye regeneration" We are all stepping into a

#Behindthepaper stories: @accorsi-alice.bsky.social & @planaria1.bsky.social share how curiosity & passion driven research revealed that apple snails can regenerate full camera type eyes.

@the-node.bsky.social
@ucdavis.bsky.social
@stowersinstitute.bsky.social
#regeneration #applesnails #devbio

Scientific productivity gap based on English-language peer-reviewed papers. Shown are the maximum % differences in the number of peer-reviewed papers published by female native English speakers from a high-income country (-45%), female non-native English speakers from a high-income country (-60%), and female non-native English speakers from a lower-middle income country (-70%), compared to male native English speakers from a high-income country (red flag). Credit: Tatsuya Amano

How do your #linguistic, #economic & #gender backgrounds impact your #scientific productivity? @tatsuya-amano.bsky.social & co reveal that being a woman, a non-native English speaker, and from a low-income country is associated with a 70% reduction in productivity @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4n3RLRQ

Congrats to Aurelie Hinterman aurhin.bsky.social, Chase Bolt chasebolt.bsky.social, and Brent Hawkins @homeobox.bsky.social!

Coverage in NYTimes by @carlzimmer.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/s...

Amazing work, my friend! @aurhin.bsky.social, always thinking outside the box!

Back from the Cavefish Retreat — amazing people, gorgeous location, great science, and a strong community! 🐟✨

The future looks bright for the #cavefish field!

🧬2nd Semester 2025 lineup is here!
Join us for a new round of cutting-edge immunology seminars from top researchers around the world!

Mark your calendar & share!
For more info: linktr.ee/globalimmuno...

These days at @naturalsciences-be.bsky.social I had the chance to visit the world’s largest otolith collection! Mostly marine specimens from a project started more than 100 years ago! Amazing to be a scientist and get the chance to go behind the scenes!

#fish #otolith

Back from my first #FishBase conference! It felt like a journey through the history of key databases and the exciting ones still to come! Times are changing, and so is how we understand #fish.

Truly honored to have been invited to speak at this one!

Human fungi-associated variants (FAVs) associate with 9 fungal taxa and overlap protein-coding genes. A Manhattan plot shows all FAVs and their associated fungal taxa at the three significance levels (exploratory, black; genome-wide, red; study-wide, blue).

What determines the human gut fungal community? @emilyvansyoc.bsky.social @erdavenport.bsky.social @symbionticism.bsky.social &co present the first #GWAS of human genetic loci that influence the abundance of gut #fungi, linking these to disease risk #mycobiome @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/42bCKou

Back from one of the best conferences I’ve attended!The @embo.org Workshop on Barrier Immunity,brilliantly organized by @maurogaya.bsky.social & @immunologyking.bsky.social!

Outstanding science from many, including @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social, @danmucida.bsky.social& @martinaparigi.bsky.social

Lake Masoko in Southern Tanzania, also known as Lake Kisiba, is only ~40m deep and 600m in diameter. It was formed around 50,000 years ago, and is isolated from all nearby rivers and lakes. Genetic data suggest it was colonised by Astatotilapia calliptera around 10,000 years ago.

In Lake Masoko, Astatotilapia calliptera has two ecotypes. The shallow living "littoral" ecotype has yellowish males, while the deep living "benthic" ecotype has blueish males. Recently published research led by Madeleine Carruthers and colleagues shows how these fish occupy different light regimes, and have correspondingly different visual sensitivities. Males of these ecotypes have brightly coloured eggspots, used to signal their prowess. The colours of those spots have shifted to maximise their visibility to other fish of the same ecotype. Genetic data suggest these ecotypes are largely reproductively isolated, and started to separate only 1000 years ago. Photos are kindly provided by Ad Konings.

In crater Lake Masoko one fish species is splitting into shallow and deep-living ecotypes occupying different light environments. New research shows their visual systems are diverging, and how colours of male eggspots have changed to maximise their visibility. doi.org/10.1093/molb...

Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social

Amazing fantastic great talks so far @embo.org Barrier ImmuniTy 🤩 what better place to learn all about B/T cells in the gut/lung/liver/bladder/brain - eeeeeverywhere!!
#EMBOBarrierTissues

An extremely engaging talk on a sometimes overlooked tissue, the bladder, by Molly A. Ingersoll at #EMBO. Not only that, the study showed that 'sex matters,' and it matters a lot during infection, with strong differential responses between sexes!!!

Learning so much!!

#EMBOBarrierTissues

Great analogy to illustrate the question @carlanowosad.bsky.social is pursuing on her lab: how GC are form and how GC cells find their way to their specific locations

#embo workshop Basel

#immunalogy

Selective remodelling of the adipose niche in obesity and weight loss - Nature An atlas study of adipose tissue in people with obesity undergoing weight loss and their lean counterparts reveals that weight loss reduces cell senescence but cannot reverse all the metabolic problem...

Weight loss improves health but What happens to cells in the fat during weight loss? Intriguingly, immune cell numbers decrease but their activated states persist w chronic inflammatory potential. Beautiful work from neighbors @mrc-lms.bsky.social Will Scott et al www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How subtle bacterial shifts keep gut inflammation at bay One of the most captivating mysteries about the immune system is how it manages to keep its healthy equilibrium—staying on high alert and ready to react to harmful invaders or damaged cells, while rem...

medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08...

Percopsiformes phylogeny showing three independent cave colonization events

Check out our new paper! We find cavefish colonized caves 3x and global cooling events may have influenced these events.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

When populations evolve different strategies to defend against a recently acquired parasite (e.g., tolerance, resistance), what sets of gene expression responses are conserved, or diverge? Using a vaccination experiment with #stickleback @laurenfuess.bsky.social reports some fun results...

How the cavefish lost its eyes — again and again Mexican tetras that got swept into pitch-black caverns had no use for the energetically costly organs. They lost their eyes in multiple ways — and gained some nifty traits too.

Mexican tetras living on the surface (left) look dramatically different from populations that were washed into caves generations ago (right) – and not just on the outside. Featuring @rohner.bsky.social‬ and others. knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

My brilliant friend, Dr. María Recuerda, presenting her work on bird pangenomes at #ESEB2025!