Santos Franco

If I had whatever 'PhD level intelligence' means colloquially, I definitely wouldn't have gotten a PhD.

Respiratory viral infections awaken metastatic breast cancer cells in lungs - Nature Mouse models show that respiratory infections from viruses such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2 can trigger metastasis of dormant breast cancer cells in the lungs, a finding supported by epidemiological d...

Very interesting study published in nature this week. Using a murine model the authors show that respiratory viral infections like flu & COVID-19 do more than inflame airways, they may awaken dormant breast cancer cells in the lung.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s this shit. This right here.

I’ve given my entire professional life to serving this country’s educational needs.

But being brown in this country means I’m less than. And will always be.

Congratulations to Dr. Katie Ranard, postdoctoral fellow in the @bruceappel.bsky.social lab, on receiving a NINDS K99/R00 award for her proposal entitled, “Impact of nutritional status on mechanisms guiding brain development”! @cupediatrics.bsky.social #zebrafish #devbio

Apocrine secretion by the choroid plexus - Fluids and Barriers of the CNS The choroid plexus (ChP) epithelium secretes cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and signaling factors that influence brain development. In addition to classical secretory pathways, the ChP also employs apocrin...

🔬 Calling #CellBiology and #EpithelialCell enthusiasts! My new review article w @lehtinenlab.bsky.social dives into a fascinating, somewhat niche, but critical secretory mechanism by the Choroid Plexus (ChP) that's been historically confusing: apocrine secretion!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Cover of the July 2025 issue of Nature Neuroscience (Vol. 28 No. 7), featuring a high-resolution confocal microscopy image of the embryonic mouse fourth ventricle choroid plexus, highlighted in cyan and magenta on a black background. The title reads: “Choroid plexus secretion reshapes brain development.”

Screenshot of a webpage from nature.com describing the cover story of the July 2025 issue of Nature Neuroscience. The text explains that the cover image shows the choroid plexus of an E16.5 mouse stained for AQP1, revealing how apocrine secretion influences CSF composition and brain development. Technical details include the use of a Zeiss LSM 710 microscope with AI-based denoising and image processing. The image is credited to Ya’el Courtney, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the cover design to Marina Spence.

My first journal cover :) @natneuro.nature.com @lehtinenlab.bsky.social

www.nature.com/neuro/volume...
Volume 28 Issue 7, July 2025

4% payline demoralizing for reviewers - review 9 grants each taking 3-4hrs (total reviewed by all is 90) flying to DC, a hotel conference room to discuss the top half of grants (45) 15 min each, 3x a year for 4 yrs. Paid $300. 4% = maybe 3/90, 0-1 that you reviewed funded. I couldn’t.

Check out our latest work co-led by @dcsoto.bsky.social and @jmuribescr.bsky.social identifying hundreds of human duplicated gene families using the new T2T-CHM13 assembly, with a focus on those potentially contributing to brain evolution 🧪: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lTQtL7PXu...

Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: Themes from the Work of Matthew J. Brown This book provides an update on the values in science literature by featuring new topics and showcases a broad range of HPS perspectives

Glad to have a paper in this volume about Matt Brown's work (@thehangedman.com). Following up on something Matt mentions in his book, my paper is about noncognitivism and some arguments from the 1950s and 1960s for and against a role for values in science. #HOPOS

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

How do RGCs in the neocortex 'know' it is time ⌚ to start making oligodendrocyte precursors cells? Check out this great work by my colleagues @luulitran.bsky.social & @thefrancolab.bsky.social to find out!! Congratulations! 🧠

In this study, Tran et al. show that Notch signaling controls the switch from neuronal fates to oligodendrocyte fates—in response to Sonic hedgehog signaling—during late embryogenesis.

Learn more here:
➡️ tinyurl.com/gd352555

Challenge accepted. All my lab’s papers now being exclusively submitted to Journal of Philosophy until one gets published there. The race is on.

Nique!!!

It’s a picture of a poster taped to a light post in front of the Denver state capitol, with text reading NO ICE IN CO. Blucifer the demon mustang is shooting fire at an ice cube with the lasers from his demonic red eyes. If you live in Colorado this makes perfect sense.

Myelin–axon interface vulnerability in Alzheimer’s disease revealed by subcellular proteomics and imaging of human and mouse brain
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After spending most of the last 5 months writing grants (x6) and reviewing grants (x23), I finally escaped to the mountains this weekend.

We hiked to waterfalls, explored caves, rode horses, and soaked in hot springs. And I didn’t open my computer for 4 glorious days.

PDGFRα is required for postnatal cerebral perivascular fibroblast development https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.07.658411v1

Two scientists sitting in a seminar room. One is masked. They are both smiling.

A PREP scholar standing in front of his final talk.

Congratulations to Christian Torres Lopez on giving a fantastic final PREP presentation! Christian is an amazing postbac scholar in my lab who will be starting his PhD @cuanschutz.bsky.social this fall! We still have him for another month or so, and then he’s off on an amazing adventure! 🤩💫

Distinct functional domains of Dystroglycan regulate inhibitory synapse formation and maintenance in cerebellar Purkinje cells Communications Biology - Genetic manipulation of functional domains on Dystroglycan reveals distinct developmental roles in inhibitory synapse formation and maintenance in cerebellar cortex.

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Another amazing discovery from @lehtinenlab.bsky.social about how the choroid plexus shapes brain development. 🤩

New Neuron issue! Discover methods for accessing neuronal and non-neuronal cell types in the CNS from the BRAIN Armamentarium Consortium. 🧠🔧

Read insights from Bosiljka Tasic & @gordfishell.bsky.social: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Explore the full issue here: www.cell.com/neuron/current

An enhancer-AAV toolbox to target and manipulate distinct interneuron subtypes

CCN1 forms a complex with GPC4 and heparin to fine-tune signaling activities for embryonic cortical neural stem cell maintenance https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.16.654402v1

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am an adjunct professor (for a living if you can call it that), and I am more working-class than a hundred fucking car dealership owners because I'll work until I drop dead, I'll probably never own a home, and spend like six of my ten-hour work day on my fucking feet talking to people nonstop.

Activity-driven myelin sheath growth is mediated by mGluR5 - Nature Neuroscience Employing pharmacology, genetics and all-optical approaches in zebrafish, Braaker et al. find that neuronal activity influences the growth of myelin sheaths along axons by signaling through metabotrop...

Neuronal activity influences the growth of #myelin sheaths along axons by signalling through metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) on oligodendrocytes 🧪🧠

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

Congratulations, Debby and team! This is such a cool project and great manuscript!

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...

The canceled grants aren't a perfect 1:1 with DEI-related projects, but what a reminder of who is and isn't doing the work to make science more equitable.