Merja Joensuu

Thank you for your kind comments. And congratulations on your 2022 Nature Metabolism discovery on astrocyte-neuron ketone shuttle www.nature.com/articles/s42...!

Good question. If you read how that view came to be, it’s from studies e.g. using isolated mitochondria (excluding neuronal and Ddhd2 activity), supplementing short-chain fatty acids, or by comparing beta-ox capacity to cells with robust beta-ox such as astocytes or cardiomyocytes.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 #neuron #energy #metabolism #fattyacid #raredisease #HSP #mitochondria #betaoxidation #brain #health #neurodegeneration Read more here: rdcu.be/eIQA0 🧠 🔬

🎉 Our discovery opens up exciting new research avenues for supporting healthy brain aging, and treating other metabolic brain disorders. 3/3 #raredisease #mitochondria #neuronalenergy #fattyacids #beta-oxidation #HSP #SPG #metabolism #lipids

💊 Loss of DDHD2-fatty acid pathway causes hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP54), a childhood-onset neurodegenerative disorder. Excitingly, we found that a combination of activated fatty acids restored neuronal energy and function in HSP54-model neurons, identifying a potential therapy for HSP54. 2/3

🌟 Thrilled to share that my lab’s first publication is now out in @natmetabolism.nature.com. Congrats to the team 🎉

🧠 We discovered that neurons use endogenous fatty acids as an energy fuel, challenging long-standing models of sugars being the exclusive energy source for neurons. 1/3

Yesterday I was honored to receive 2025 Queensland Young Tall Poppy Award #YTP25 from The Australian Institute of Policy and Science @aipscience.bsky.social. The award celebrates scientific achievements & community outreach. Big thanks to my lab and AIBN at UQ for making this possible. 🏅

Some commiserations for fellow #ARC applicants - I was a 2020 ARC Future Fellow. With that support, I now have a senior author Nature Cell Biology paper. Here’s my grant outcomes for that period. You are not alone. There simply isn’t enough money in the system.

Out study suggests that dynamin function at endocytic pits can be essential for infection with single-receptor viruses, while it is not essential but increases uptake and infection efficiency of multi-receptor viruses that otherwise rely on a functional actin network for infection.

Dynamin independent endocytosis is an alternative cell entry mechanism for multiple animal viruses Author summary To initiate their infection cycle, most viruses first need to enter their target cells, a process called endocytosis. In mammalian cells, endocytosis often involves a class of proteins ...

Check out our latest publication: Dynamin independent endocytosis is an alternative cell entry mechanism for multiple animal viruses.
Congrats to all authors, especially A/Prof Balistreri, University of Helsinki, for this classic host-virus interaction paper. 🦠🧫🔬

journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Could you please add me to this list? :)

Could you please add me? My lab does all things microscopy 😊

Please add me too

Heya! Introductory post on 🦋 I am a lab head at The University of Queensland. My lab studies molecular mechanisms of cellular and neuronal membrane trafficking, aiming at discovering new therapeutic strategies for human conditions caused by mutations, neurotoxins and viruses. aibn.uq.edu.au/joensuu