Okay, well, I painted some new neurons in burnt sienna and black #sciart

Everyone's New Year resolution or hope: let 2026 be calmer with no existential or literal crisis. America: hold my beer 🍺

Baby Snowda!

Why is Pearson always a mess? More than an hour & we're still waiting for our bags.

Ruby says Merry Christmas all! And 'Sir. Please put me down at your earliest convenience. Thank you!'

Some great news in ALS treatments & research. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Was puzzling wih Die Hard in the background. Although I couldn't see the movie, I realized even all the background music is Christmas music. Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

Pleased to share our new paper published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle. doi.org/10.1002/jcsm...

Dunno who needs to hear this, but before your start writing your reviewer comments, eat a cookie. Only you can prevent rude reviews.

It may be of interest to you to know that the best way to go about science funding is to actually fund all scientists regularly and universally, and UBI does that best. www.scientificamerican.com/blog/beautif...

I just got off an extremely depressing call with my amazing Canadian collaborators at Natural Resources Canada who are facing cuts, retirement buy-outs, and layoffs for biologists across the board. This just seems a slap in the face to scientists in Canada.

Let's recreate the photo they said. My character is the only upside down one....

🎉 Excited to share our latest preprint📰 ! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... Many thanks to everyone involved in this project ! Using a zebrafish model 🐟 and iPSC-derived motor neurons 🔬 we show that restoring the calpastatin/calpain pathway preserves motoneuron survival and function in C9orf72 ALS!

It's baffling that we're cutting research funds, but recruiting more US researchers during massive hiring freezes. Politicians like to blame researchers for not 'being innovative.' Despite 'punching above our weight' we're continously in survival mode bc of bad policy. Fund basic research!

Institutional autonomy is a major facet of academic freedom. Institutions set academic priorities through internal collegial processes. Starving unis into hiring freezes and then telling them they can only have funds to recruit if they check vapid government PR boxes attacks that autonomy.

CELL-abrate the Holidays with the NeurdyPhagy Lab! 'Dashing through the cell Proteins all around Cysteines free to bind, With Palmitate they're crowned!' All I want for Christmas is my CIHR grant to get discussed! Creative Credit to @cailyncreative.bsky.social

I think it is still too early to study how many of the CERC and Canada150 stayed in Canada after the $$$ ran out, but someone needs to do this analysis. I think we'll find that these programs, without increasing CIHR and NSERC budgets, are not doing what they intended.

There's a reason Julia Child was an icon & this cookbook is timeless. First time making coq au vin. Not sure there's a good way to photograph it. Only took 3 hours, but damn that was amazing. Paired it with spatzle. Worth the time.

Welcome to the Canadian Hunger Games where the motto truly is 'May the odds be ever in your favour!'

“Canada is the best place to live, and top talent from around the world want to come here because they see opportunities and possibilities to contribute to cutting-edge research”... ...he says while allocating $1.7B to bribe people to move here and cutting grant funding. Unbelievable.

Dear CIHR Reviewers, pls keep in mind that knowledge users on grants see the reviews. If you tell us a protein/gene is not interesting/less important because it's rare, it reads as those patients aren't important.

Scientists, please come to Canada! We'll pay to bring you here, but you need to fund your own research!

The Canadian government has seemingly never read a single one of its own commissioned reports on what Canadian science needs. (It's not more people.)

What a week! Submitted my NSERC today. Submitted a paper today. Incoming PhD got a scholarship today! And PDF landed an award/small grant! Can't wait to tell you all the details when we can. Now I need to rest before a double header talks tomorrow at the HSC meeting!

Been awhile since I've been so nervous & excited to work in the lab. Today I'm helping culture human stem cells into muscle & motor neurons. The cells need to be fed daily & I'm helping while a student is away. Contamination is a constant fear. Thank you @stemcell.com for the help!

During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost! apply.interfolio.com/174756

We used live-cell imaging with plus-end binding protein EB3 to determine microtubule polarity in astrocytes for the first time. They are ~88% plus-ends out. 3/x

Excited to share our preprint on cytoskeletal organization in astrocytes! biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Postdoc @mewynne759 looked at microtubules, IFs/GFAP & actin along long elaborate processes. Wonderful to collaborate w postdoc @dharshinigopal & @NogalesLab on cryo-ET 🤓 1/x

Amazing news today for HD patients! I hope this keeps up.

Working on my NSERC renewal & being reminded about all the projects we had lined up that have been scooped. At $37k/yr there's only so much we can do. And it's not much. Canadian science is laughably underfunded.

A big study in JAMA last year in which 185 909 children were exposed to acetaminophen during pregnancy. Conclusion: Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children's risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38592388/

SKY-0515, an oral drug, safely lowers huntingtin in people with HD—and may also reduce PMS1, a DNA repair protein. This two-pronged approach could open new doors for HD treatment. A larger Phase 2/3 trial is now underway. Full article: en.hdbuzz.net/sky-0515-low...

David Letterman on his career mocking presidents: “Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy—not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.” Watch more: bit.ly/4n0Uv2p

So, maybe this is a good time for Canadian networks to rescue shows like @jimmykimmel.com & The Late Show?

The very talented @cailyncreative.bsky.social took inspiration from Ruby at the vet & created this masterpiece on our whiteboard in the lab. Pretty sure we can never use it again & I'm ok with that. Makes me smile every time I see it. Thanks again Cailyn!

Sometimes I think everything is going to be ok, and we’ll be able to secure grants to keep doing this cool stuff we’re doing. Sometimes I don’t really know. Sigh. Tomorrow will be better.

Feels like the world is on fire lately. So enjoy this pic of Ruby at the vet's office just after getting her vaccines. She loves the vet. Feel like she'd make a great receptionist.

Pridopidine has been studied for decades as a possible treatment for Huntington’s disease. The PROOF-HD trial didn’t meet its primary goals, but its full results are now published—making valuable data available for the HD community. en.hdbuzz.net/proof-in-the...

Save the Date for the next @csmb-scbm.bsky.social meeting: Membrane Proteins in Health & Diseases April 8-12, 2026 in beautiful Banff! Looks like there's something for everyone. event.fourwaves.com/2026csmb/pages

I have reached the stage of file saving where the grant is labled as final, final-maybe, final maybe maybe... pray for me.

Come join us at University of Toronto. We're hiring a Professor of computational cognitive neuroscience. #neuroAI #compneuro jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

For anyone on the neuroscience job market, our ads are up. We are looking for anyone working in systems neuroscience of animals to join us in southern Alberta 🇨🇦 #academicsky #neuroskyence #neuroethology #academicjobs #Canada neurojobs.sfn.org/job/39049/as...

Someone is continuing to take good care of me while I'm home sick. Just nestled into the crook of my leg. :)

The upside to being home sick is all the Ruby cuddles. At least I submitted my CIHR in time....

Highly recommend.

Ugh. Just got a grant rejection that I had very high hopes for. Sadly, I think it was the death knell for Huntington disease work in the lab...

One of the perks of running is you get to see all the sites of the cities you run in first thing in the morning.

We were asked Autophagy Reports to summarize our work on S-acylation of SQSTM1/p62 in autophagy & Huntington Disease. @jesuisyasmeena.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....