And an axolotl boop because why not

Owning a lot of books is great. Packing and moving with a lot of books is not great.

AND getting to visit Xochimilco, the axolotl’s native habitat?! Sign me up😍

This was an amazing opportunity to meet such an influential scientist in my life. Dr. Shubin’s mastery of storytelling has inspired me to utilize my creativity to expand sci comm to all audiences and to commit to outreach in my PhD. Thank you! @ischneider.bsky.social @lsulagniappe.bsky.social

First paper from our program is out 🎉 Our pub in BSSB shares outcomes from our postbaccalaureate training model, demonstrating how research & mentorship can build confidence & career readiness in STEM. Huge thanks to our SREC partners for making this work possible. 🔗 ssbbulletin.org/article/id/6...

One of my fellow LAGNiAppE cohort members, Emma Powers, painted me this AMAZING lungfish art. I’m gonna put it right next to my other lungfish friend that my co-mentor photographed for me 🥰

I created these custom outreach stickers based on the regeneration powerhouses in the Schneider lab at LSU: bichir (left), lungfish (right). Read about our research program here: faculty.lsu.edu/igorschneide.... Follow my page to be notified of future creative science outreach projects. #scicomm

Tripod fish live at depths of up to 6000 m below the surface. They are practically eyeless because of its super-dark habitat but their long fins can feel the vibrations made by approaching prey on the seafloor [📹 Schmidt Ocean] Original post

When scientists work with artists, everyone benefits. Through an artist-in-residence program at UPenn, reseachers improved their communication skills and confidence by working with an artist to paint their own scientific clay “crests” 🛡️! Learn more: www.fromthelabbench.com/from-the-lab... #sciart

Please take 2 minutes! Sign the petition to help stop 130 acre data center across the street from the Forsyth county town hall and 20 minutes from the apartment I will live in while attending grad school at Wake Forest. Read the opinions of the current community members. www.ruralhallinfo.com

I spy @joshcurrie.bsky.social profiled by Wake Forest for cool new work on limb regeneration 🧪 news.wfu.edu/2026/04/16/f...

On NSF’s postdoc page, the biology and earth science fields have been completely eliminated; the only remaining fellowships are in math, astronomy, engineering, and “entrepreneurship.” Weird choice not to support research on the life support system for 8 billion people. www.nsf.gov/funding/post...

We lost Douglas Adams 25 years ago today. This has made a lot of people very sad and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

The MDI Biological Laboratory is hiring a Junior Faculty member! A great opportunity to launch your independent research program in a collaborative, mission-driven environment. Learn more at the link below. 🧪 #sciencejobs #academicjobs #hiring #recruiting

me, after coming up with a revolutionary idea and then immediately forgetting it for ever

Who doesn’t love an #axolotl?! 🧬 But this funny salamander has competition in the regeneration game… youtube.com/shorts/DfeTg...

Here’s me giving a talk at the @lsuresearch.bsky.social Biograds conference despite being only a post-bacc! I’m learning to just volunteer for as much sci comm as possible and if they actually let me do it, I’m better for it. More info about the conference: biograds.wixsite.com/biograds

What a difference a year makes! I’ve grown so much thanks to my post-bacc opportunity and I can’t wait to see what’s to come in my graduate studies.

@lsuresearch.bsky.social Discover Day 2026: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my research with the community!

Now in press @pnas.org! Thread below with some of this story's highlights and contributions. Excited to dig into all the cool questions this project generated about how the wound epidermis works during limb regeneration. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Amazing photography by my co-mentor Dr. Emily Kane, a professor at University of Louisiana Lafayette.✨Reach out to her if you’re interested in getting professional photos of your model organisms for publications or just for fun. -Just Add Water photography justaddwater.picfair.com

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Louisiana Sea Grant Oyster Research Lab in Grande Isle, LA with my LAGNiAppE cohort. Hanging out on the beach was a nice touch. www.laseagrant.org/outreach/aqu...

Preprint out! Salamanders harbor a hypersensitive mTOR, thought to enable their remarkable limb regeneration. But do you need a special mTOR to regrow appendages? In Polypterus, we find that a canonical mTOR pathway supports full appendage regeneration. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is Methuselah, an Australian lungfish whom I first met at the Steinhart Aquarium in 1976. She is probably in her 90s, and has been at the Steinhart since 1938. I love her. 🐟👵

🚨 Preprint Friday! 🚨 Thrilled to highlight this collab with David Brown at Duke @cutitoutdave.bsky.social and Ken Poss at UW Madison/Morgridge @kenposs.bsky.social. By comparing 3(!!) regenerating models we identify a conserved role for Sp-family TFs in appendage regeneration (and more).....🧵

DEADLINE APPROACHING! Apply to Zebrafish Development and Genetics by March 2. This two-week course is designed advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and independent investigators. Financial aid is available. 🔗More info here: go.mbl.edu/zebrafish

Breaking: Regeneration of fins and limbs relies on a shared cellular playbook! Covered in @sciencenews.bsky.social by the amazing Elizabeth Pennisi Fav quote: "The red blood cell thing blew my mind." @lsu.bsky.social @lsuscience.bsky.social @ischneider.bsky.social

www.sciencenews.org/article/rege... @josanesousa.bsky.social @gabrielalima19.bsky.social @perezlouise.bsky.social @patyschneider22.bsky.social

#Fish #vision #deepsea "The current dogma is that vertebrates develop cone-dominated retinas first, adding rods later. Here we show that larval deep-sea fishes have “hybrid” photoreceptors, expressing cone-specific genes in rod-like cells." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Have you ever seen a Wild Type axolotl? Ambystoma mexicanum is the natural, dark-colored version of the salamander, usually in shades of brown, green or black with spots. The dark color camouflages them in the muddy, shallow lakes of Mexico, to hide from predators. 🧪 📸 Murawala Lab at MDI Bio Lab

A #fluorescencefriday — just in time for Valentine's Day! ❤️ The Godwin Lab at MDI Bio Lab perfects a new method of illuminating the #axolotl heart with a red #fluorescentprotein to simplify the identification of animals with gene deletions during embryonic development. 🧪 🧬 #microscopy

Scientists at MDI Bio Lab developed a transgenic #zebrafish that mimics human muscle aging in just weeks — a leap forward for #sarcopenia research. Read how this model could speed discovery of therapies to keep muscles strong as we age. 🧪 🐟🎸 👩‍🔬 🧬 mdibl.org/mdi-bio-lab-...

We welcomed new #GSBSE hopefuls to MDI Bio Lab for tours, conversations, and a BTS look at our science in action. The Graduate School of #BiomedicalScience & #Engineering connects PhD students with researchers across Maine’s leading institutions through a powerful, collaborative network. 🧬 🧪 #PhDSky

📘 New paper in Maine Policy Review from the University of Maine, "Public Health Concerns at the Intersection of Drinking Water Contamination and Low Healthcare Access in Maine" with Alexis Garretson (she/her), Richard Hilliard, Jane Disney & team. 🦤 #conservation 🧪 🍎 👩‍🔬 🌎

It’s National Day of the Mexican Axolotl! @ischneider.bsky.social @josanesousa.bsky.social @perezlouise.bsky.social @lsuresearch.bsky.social @lsu.bsky.social @lsuscience.bsky.social #axolotl

New in @dev-journal.bsky.social, “Reciprocal inhibition of Wnt signaling pathways pattern the interconnection of epithelial tubules in the regenerating zebrafish kidney” with Caramai Kamei, Iain Drummond & team. 🧪 🐟🎸 #ScientificResearchPublishing doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Hey Regen folks 👋 Excited to share that our single-nucleus RNA-seq dataset for Polypterus fin regeneration is now live at the Broad Institute portal! Dive in here: tinyurl.com/5bck22jx Big thanks to the team for making this happen—looking forward to seeing what you all discover!

A bit late but a paper from our lab has been published! Human fingertip regeneration is a fact, it happens in children and adults (not only in children as it has been long believed). We describe here the regenerative phases and analyse the proteome of wound exudates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s out! 🐟 We compared three regeneration superstars—axolotl, zebrafish, and Polypterus—to ask how animals regrow limbs and fins. We find shared core processes, and other programs fine-tuned by evolution in surprising, lineage-specific ways. tinyurl.com/mpftkn7y

Our regeneration superstar showing off its beautiful fins #polypterussenegalus

Just here to share pretty colors: HCR- fish image, regenerating fin section, African lungfish. Lungfish have 8 myoglobin gene copies and you are seeing the two most highly expressed copies in green and red. Interesting how these gene duplicates are expressed in either the muscle or the skin.

MDI Bio Lab had a great week with Southern Maine Community College at a week-long #MaineINBRE course, Stem Cells and Regeneration in Planarians. Students studied stem cells and regeneration in planarian flatworms!

It's that time of year after graduate school applications are submitted to start preparing for zoom and in-person interviews. I hope this blog post is helpful to those in the same boat. madisonadamsbio.com/2025/12/21/p...

Axolotl regeneration stickers made by my friend Isabella Carollo for the Igor Schneider lab outreach! If you would like to check out more of Isabella’s art, her artstation account is linked here: belladonna9632.artstation.com

Great opportunity for undergrads to experience the magic of MBL and have an immersive research experience.

Applications are open for the Emerging Leaders on Regenerative Biology and Development (ReBilD) course @mdibl.org Here’s an opportunity for researchers at any level to get hands-on lab experience with a variety of regeneration models and network with leading faculty. mdibl.org/course/rebil...

I just visited the Baton Rouge community college Sponge hunters led by Dr. Mary Miller for a tour! They are doing great work monitoring the health and species richness of freshwater sponges as an indicator of environmental health in Louisiana. Learn more: marymiller2.github.io/new_spongehu...

Insights on what to take from PI interviews to write your statement of purpose for graduate school applications. Since I’m currently applying for multiple PhD programs, I have some advice on my blog. madisonadamsbio.com/2025/12/01/y...

How to Prepare for a Graduate Mentor Interview: Tips to stay calm Interviewing with future graduate school mentors can be challenging so this guide covers how to prepare, provides a list of useful questions to ask, and shares how to stay calm and focused. New blog post on madisonadamsbio.com/blog/

Cold Emailing Professors for Graduate School: 10 Steps to Get a Response (and What to Do Next!) Sharing insights from drafting successful cold emails. Preparation, follow-ups, and asking relevant questions increase the likelihood of securing interviews. New blog post on madisonadamsbio.com/blog/