Lori O'Brien

I think this is it. While this isn’t a change for some ICs in terms of percentile cut offs, how are these additional criteria, that were not always taken into account before, going to be balanced? What is their weight in decisions on funding?

UNC's Center for Molecular Medicine has up to three open-rank positions for faculty conducting research with relevance to gene therapy, including: novel iPSC and animal models of disease and basic cell biology. Join us in beautiful Chapel Hill! Deadline 1/31/26: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/309...

Durham, NC about 10 minutes ago

Flashback #FluorescenceFriday to some of the first light-sheet imaging we were doing. Video shows the collecting duct system of the developing kidney labeled with a pan-cytokeratin antibody. Courtesy of former talented technician Deanna Hardesty.

🆕 KidneyCure is committing up to $6 million over three years to help eligible NIH R01 applicants ranked in the top 15% continue their kidney research with a $100K award.

Learn more and explore every KidneyCure opportunity: https://bit.ly/kcgrantsfunding

Yeah, this year is chaos for study sections. Mine was scheduled for last week. We got a email from CSR communications the night before telling us it was postponed and not to join the scheduled meeting.

We present multi-immersion Oblique Plane microscope (miOPM), a light-sheet platform that can be adapted to a wide range of applications, from sensitive live cell imaging to imaging organs and cleared tissues.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Figure from our review paper showing various fluorescence microscopy images of cells and structures of the kidney

Sharing this excellent review now out from postdoc Sarah McLarnon! Lots of useful info on 3D imaging, quantification of imaging data, and how this has been applied to the kidney. And since it's #FluorescenceFriday, sharing a figure with our own imaging data!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

RhoA (blue) and the actin cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown in a set of primary microglia.

For #FluorescenceFriday, RhoA (blue) and the actin cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown in a set of primary microglia 🔬 #Neuroscience #Microscopy

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing
🔵 lifeact &
🔴 RFP-nls

Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨

🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

#NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

Zoomed up image of the collecting ducts of an adult mouse kidney. The collecting ducts are labeled with an AQP2 antibody and are green. They look like long green squiggles.

And a zoomed view of the intricate collecting system.

Image of a fluorescently labeled adult mouse kidney showing AQP2 staining of collecting ducts and connecting segment in green and alpha SMA staining of the arterial tree in magenta. The collecting ducts look like squiggly branches.

For this #FluorescenceFriday, a gorgeous image of an adult mouse kidney labeled with AQP2 and alpha SMA antibodies. AQP2 (green) marks the collecting duct and distal connecting segment while SMA marks the arterial tree. Courtesy of talented postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

Rescued these two beauties today, one stuck in the parking garage stairwell and one from inside the house (and rescued from 3 very interested cats)

Sensory neurons drive pancreatic cancer progression through glutamatergic neuron-cancer pseudo-synapses @cp-cancercell.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cancer-cell/...

❤️ I have one too and love it!

I am very sorry, how incredibly frustrating. From canceled and rescheduled study sections and council meetings, excellent scores being told they would be funded, only to end up here. It certainly has been exhausting.

Thank you, am trying to cheer myself up by looking at hot off the press cool new data related to this renewal app. 😭

Thank you and totally agree, too many of us here between canceled grants and new funding models just dropped on us. Hoping there’s a chance for change in FY26 so there’s not more of us in this situation.

This is me, one of those 211. My A1 R01 renewal would have been funded otherwise, and I was even initially told they planned to fund it. Now very unlikely. No more chances with this one. We had so many good things going-how do we keep moving forward? A question many of us will be asking.

How can cells self-organize rapidly into complex patterns during development?

Let’s explore a powerful and underappreciated mechanism: Directed Cell Migration (DCM).

Preprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1101/2025...

👇Thread 🧵(1/11)

In the same boat with my R01 competitive renewal. Feeling any hope is now gone.

They managed to perform somite transplants 😱

Somites are a source of nephron progenitors in zebrafish - Nature Communications This study reveals that cells of the zebrafish kidney can originate from the somites, structures traditionally held as precursors to the skeletal muscle, challenging a century-old paradigm and prompti...

Intermediate mesoderm isn't the sole contributor to nephrons in zebrafish-new manuscript out showing somites are a source of nephron progenitors! Very cool, dogma challenging study led by Alan Davidson's group. Many fun discussions were had-grateful for the inclusion! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@jeremymberg.bsky.social If they can stop or stall the multi year funding from moving forward in FY26, can this 50% multi year strategy still be enforced for the remainder of FY25? Currently have an R01 caught in this limbo for FY25 funding consideration.

Alert: The Trump administration is quietly slashing new NIH grant awards, and it's not via the budget NIH’s sudden move to multiyear grant funding is forcing shocking cuts in the number of grants funded. This is an effective budget cut. It's bad, folks.

New, from an anonymous NIH insider: Trump is being pushed to spend more NIH money. The White House is ordering NIH to do multi-year budgets for awards. This budget trick means fewer awards, fewer labs funded, and lower paylines for researchers. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-...

The NIH was healthiest when pay lines were in the 20th percentile range.

We are headed into an environment where pay lines are in the 5% range.

In my entire career, I’ve only had 3 grants that scored better than 5%. And my lab is considered a successful one.

This is going to destroy science.

Congrats!

A beautiful tour through an AAV-PHP.B-GFP-transduced intact cochlea as visualized via lightsheet microscopy after tissue clearing. Magenta is a hair cell marker, yellow is a neuron marker, and green is AAV-GFP (relatively low hair cell transduction rate in this specific sample).

#FluorescenceFriday! Thanks BPoD!

Baby Atlantic sharpnose shark after being reeled in and still on the hook

Close up picture of a juvenile sharpnose shark

Surprise catch while surf fishing! No baby sharks harmed, was safely released back into the ocean. 🦈