Check out this feature of our team’s recent work! 🐭🦷

Rodents love to gnaw… which can be cute or annoying (e.g. when they decided to destroy my car wiring). But our new study uncovers why: incisor tactile input is relayed by a sensorimotor-motivational circuit to drive gnawing! So fun collaborating with lead author Xinyu Su and Bo Duan Lab on this!

Our new @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social paper is out! It was an honor to co-lead this project with Shuhao Wan. Finding ways to selectively activate sensory neurons within internal tissues is particularly challenging. This is especially true for the tooth. Check out how we solved this! 🦷⚡️

Beautiful new work by @manduh21.bsky.social and our team! Clumsy, a kainate-type glutamate receptor, mediates noxious cold sensation and cold behavioral avoidance in fruit flies. This expands our prior work demonstrating this class of receptors also functions as a cold receptor in worms and mammals.

Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice. 👇 New paper by the ENES Bioacoustics Research Team in @currentbiology.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/a/1llMH3QW8S...

New preprint with @manduh21.bsky.social ! 🎉 We introduce LabGym, an open-source AI platform for analyzing C. elegans behavior.🪱 LabGym makes worm behavior analysis accurate, customizable, and accessible, no coding or costly setup required.

LabGym has been used in reseach across many labs. The latest example is this excellent study from @jjemrick.bsky.social lab. cell.com/cell-reports... @cp-cellreports.bsky.social @elizabithian.bsky.social

Register to attend the virtual 2025 LabGym Symposium! LabGym is a powerful and customizable AI-based tool enabling automated quantification of behavior (+ more!)

Really interesting (ha ha i can't stand this roller coaster) back and forth on NIH funding. 9 Senate Republicans sent a letter warning Vought not to hold NIH funds. Vought tries to hold NIH funds. He loses. [though still lots of budget shenanigans] www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

This “administration” acts like it’s playing musical chairs with people’s lives.

Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science! Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans

This is a catastrophe. There is nothing else to be said.

Check out our first research article from the Emrick lab, published in Cell Reports! We define the sensory neurons in the tooth as sentinels: tuned to detect tooth damage and trigger a protective jaw opening reflex. 🦷🔨 I’m officially a mammalian somatosensory biologist (but I still 🩷 worms 🪱)

Official paper thread coming soon… this work represents a major career milestone for many of the authors 🥹 I couldn’t be prouder to work with such an inspiring team to bring this project to the finish line! 💙💛

C. elegans, ba ba ba. #Worm25

A laureate and a trend setter #worm25

C elegans can sense sound AND serve as a genetic model for an understudied form of human hearing loss! As the moderator mentioned- what CAN’T worms do?? 🤩 🪱 #worm25

Worm meeting bucketlist: ✅ Photo with Nobel laureate (and @manduh21.bsky.social) Thank you Dr. Ambros, for spending time with early stage scientists! I love this community 🪱 #Worm25

Day 4 of #Worm25: 15k+ steps/daily, sweating through 95°F+ Cali heat, followed by shivering in AC, all while being immersed in the latest C. elegans research. Is this a genetics conference or a worm-themed detox?

“Do you have any advice for aspiring young scientists?” “Do genetics.” *mic drop* #worm25

Go worms! #worm25

“The idea that taking walks, reading things unrelated to your research, and hanging out with strangers in a campus pub should be considered part of the serious process of thinking, but might well meet with skepticism in practice.” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

As it’s my first time joining Worm Meeting, I was excited to participate in Worm Art show as well. This year’s topic is resilience. In times of scarcity, worms gather holding one another to reach new grounds. Alone - they are fragile, together - they rise. Even the sky yields in unity. #worm25

".....but a key feature of this community became abundantly clear: Worm people tend to help one other. They readily share insights, lab processes, even worms themselves." So true. The worm community is the best.

The fast approaching June K99 deadline is getting to me but flowers and NA rose from my husband are helping with the final push 🥹 🌺 💪

The brain drain will be when scientists are forced into other careers/jobs so that they can keep paying the bills. They will never return. There aren't enough science jobs in other countries to absorb even a fraction of those laid off.

Great News, Michigan! Lansing #StandUpForScience2025 is happening. Friday, March 7, 12-4pm, East steps of the Capitol Bldg. Tell 3 friends! Make a carpool plan! Have a sign-making party! Share with your networks! #ScienceIsForEveryone @standupforscience.bsky.social

THIS FRIDAY in Lansing, MI, 12-4pm #StandUpForScience with featured speaker: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed! Dr. El-Sayed is a physician, epidemiologist, educator, author, and public servant. @michigan4science.bsky.social @michigannoah.bsky.social @mallorymcmorrow.bsky.social @leahlitman.bsky.social

PubMed has gone dark A database I've used for over 30 years I hope and pray it comes back soon!

It seems PubMed has disappeared. This is the digital equivalent of burning a library.

OH SNAP!!! OHIO VS. MICHIGAN HEADED INTO OVERTIME!!! Which rally will have the biggest crowd?!?! #standupforscience #scienceforall @standupforscience.bsky.social

At the NIH, posters of women and scientists of color have been taken down. Shared by @ivancalcantara.bsky.social on X. 2/x

Becoming a daily struggle 😮‍💨

Get in Dorks, we are going protesting. STAND UP FOR SCIENCE. MARCH 7th 12-4pm. DC AND YOUR STATE CAPITALS. More information to come.

🧵: I am getting texts on what scientists should do in this perilous and scary moment. My advice: your biggest power is to organize through your professional societies. A few ideas -

The Genetics Society of America @genetics-gsa.bsky.social is "advocating for science and for scientists. We seek to cultivate an inclusive, diverse research community that engages with the public...& serves as an authoritative source of information." Pls consider joining genetics-gsa.org/membership/

Our PhD interview weekend 10 years ago changed my life in so many ways 🥹🫶 Thank you PIBS for all the special memories and friendships you helped me create ☺️

I worked too fucking hard to get here for this fucking asshole to take it away. This is the attitude I’m going with. Now, to stop reading social media and do some science.

As a c elegans neuroscientist… is there a worm community starter pack tho 😂

my gender is "large reproductive cell"

Really getting tired of living through unprecedented times every few years 😮‍💨

Before panic sets it. The New NIH Director and Congress will want research to continue, so the machine will start up at some point. Keep writing papers and preparing proposals. AND educate the public about the key role peer review plays in science and the time and infrastructure investment needed

The most important thing in writing is to finish. A finished thing can be fixed. A finished thing can be published. A finished thing can be made into a movie. An unfinished thing is just a dream. And dreams fade if you don't hold on tight enough. So finish the thing.

I made a starter pack for neuroscience folks but I just saw that it’s capped at 150 people. Sorry if I missed anyone! Maybe #neuroscience folks should start making subfield starter packs? 🧪 go.bsky.app/Q69XurQ

HERPETARY🌿✨

I’m in Malaysia for 2 weeks meeting my husbands family. We decided to be adventurous last night and booked a rainforest resort near his hometown in Seremban. Finishing our Nasi Lemak breakfast and going to unplug for the next 24 hours 🔌 🏊‍♀️

Introduction: I’m Liz, I recently finished my PhD in sensory biology using C. elegans. These days, you can find me in the dental school, studying sensory innervation of the oral cavity. Here’s a recent photo I took of pain-sensing neuron endings (in green) penetrating the tooth pulp and dentin.