In small enclosed structures (like vesicles), the flickering of individual ion channels can have substantial effects on membrane voltage and internal ion concentrations. Mean-field conductance-based models break down. We studied what happens: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nemo needs gap junctions, too. New preprint with Marleen Klann, Vincent Laudet, et al. showing anemonefish Snowflake mutant due to E42K substitution in Connexin Gja5b. Found exact same E42K in zebrafish gja5b (= leopard) by ENU, to the nucleotide! Details, inferences: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Voltage Imaging of CA1 Pyramidal Cells and SST+ Interneurons Reveals Stability and Plasticity Mechanisms of Spatial Firing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.20.671230v1

"The axon does not think. It only ax." George Bishop, 1965 😂

I like this 😀.

Jurassic parking.

A rare appearance of my Dad on the internet!

My father worked in a tire factory in Appalachia. Friends and family in the military. Used to vote Republican. Got into college on a diversity program for the underprivileged. Ended up a Harvard professor. And now my funding is terminated because we're trying to stick it to the elites.

I wrote about the government's attacks on Harvard. Hope this reaches a few persuadable minds. prosyn.org/PhWi74r?h=Ky...

My debut on BlueSky! Here’s how we harvest the firing of neurons to see them better in the living brain! 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Grateful for the amazing dyes from @rhodamine110.bsky.social and insightful suggestions from @adamezracohen.bsky.social !

Now out in JACS. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.... Grateful to thoughtful reviewers who found some errors in our model and encouraged us to make a better one! A renaissance in magnetobiology is coming...

This guy deserves a Nobel Prize, an IgNobel Prize, and a Darwin Award (honorable mention, for effort). www.nprillinois.org/2025-05-02/h...

Using light to sculpt vertebrate development! OptoNodal2 converts patterns of illumination into patterns of morphogen signaling. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Thrilled that our paper has been published in @elife.bsky.social doi.org/10.7554/eLif... We ask: how can a neuron integrate information across multiple time scales? Twist: This neuron has extreme properties that helps it work ~300x times faster than neurons in the hippocampus Summary 🧵to follow

Here's a little essay on dendritic excitations -- what are they for? (hint: I don't think it's for integration, at least not in hippocampal pyramidal cells) brain.harvard.edu/hbi_news/exc...

Injury-induced electrochemical coupling triggers regenerative cell proliferation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.03.647033v1

Honored to help enable two back-to-back papers in @natureneuro.bsky.social; first DELTA www.nature.com/articles/s41... with collaborators at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social and then EPSILON www.nature.com/articles/s41... with @adamezracohen.bsky.social; @dyerfulchymist.bsky.social is always in the mix!

The claim that the destruction of essential civilizational institutions is being done in the name of the Jews is itself a form of antisemitism—cultural vandalism carried out in our name. That, my friends, is rank bullshit.

Which synapses get stronger when we form a memory? We developed a technique to tag recently potentiated synapses in live mice. Pulse-chase labeling with membrane-impermeable HaloLigand dyes distinguishes fresh AMPA receptors from old ones. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Whole-brain, all-optical interrogation of neuronal dynamics underlying gut interoception in zebrafish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.26.645305v1

We are hiring a new lab manager! Our wonderful lab manager Albert is headed off to grad school and we are looking to fill his position this summer. This is a great opportunity for a new graduate to spend a couple years immersed in research before applying to PhD or MD programs. 50% of the job is...

It's such a trip to see former lab members flourish (fluoresce?) in their independent careers. Four generations present at the Dendrites GRC!

At the Dendrites GRC. Now where, oh where, did I park?

Angry rant: We have a @thermofishersci.bsky.social Countess 2fl automated cell counter. It recently bricked. Tech support said this model is no longer serviced, but they'd be happy to sell us a new one for ~$9k. I opened the old one, replaced a $4 battery buried inside, and voila, it works again!

magneticScarlet3

Did you know that when zebrafish swim, this motion evokes calcium signals in their *blood vessels*? Bill Jia and Xin Tang showed that this effect is mediated by Piezo1, and only requires physical motion, not neural activity or blood flow.

Microscopes used to be tools for passive observation. Now you can use them to tickle a sample with light too. Our pandemic project was to make user-friendly software for integrating light-patterning, imaging, and other parameters (e.g. behavior, electrophysiology). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do tiny magnetic fields affect biochemistry? Overflowing with pride over Katherine Xiang's study on a giant magnetic field effect in a red fluorescent protein, www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PREPRINT OUT ✨ "hack" your microscope to work as a 3D printer! print micrometer sized features at cm scale. a method for easy and cheap microfabrication, with a focus on biological applications. THREAD ↓ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is very clever! I wonder where the short-term memory of trial type is stored.

Tetanus on demand! (not for bioweapons, but for neuroscience research) Tetanus toxin induces paralysis by using a protease to cleave VAMP2, a protein required for synaptic vesicle fusion and neurotransmitter release. To harness this toxicity and use it as a beneficial tool for neuroscience,

Amazing scientific legacy, and he stayed sharp and productive for so long! Glad to have known Karplus during grad school. His memory will live on in comp chem

Exciting news from the lab! In collaboration with our #EU-Nanobrigth partners, we’ve developed and tested a new probe for vibrational fiber photometry, enabling minimally invasive Raman spectroscopy deep into the 🧠. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturemethods.bsky.social

I am super excited to share our article addressing a longstanding question in neurobiology: how Ca²⁺ signaling cascades initiated at dendritic spines operate at a distance. Check it out here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... @cp-cell.bsky.social.

job offer! I am looking for a postdoc to join the nascent team. Come work with us to build microscopes and study spinal cord circuits. #ZebrafishCareers

Our paper on ketamine’s effect on astrocytes and behavior is out in Neuron by Marc Duque, Alex Chen, Eric Hsu, and colleagues @marcduque.bsky.social @alexbchen.bsky.social @ehsu6.bsky.social, with the Engert, Fishman, & Bergles labs, www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

If some calcium enters a dendrite, how far does it diffuse? Rebecca Frank Hayward (who is on the job market!) measured this. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... She combined a blue light-activated Ca++ channel with a red-fluorescent Ca++ sensor. The length constant is about 5 microns.

In one year, I genetically engineered the boring Arabidopsis into a beautiful ornamental flower 🧬🌹 Here is how and why I gave this model organism a visual upgrade 🧵(1/7)

New preprint out. Light transmitted diametrically and detected through the human head. This was a lot (lot) harder than it sounds. arxiv.org/abs/2412.01360

Could one envision a synthetic receptor technology that is fully programmable, able to detect diverse extracellular antigens – both soluble and cell-attached – and convert that recognition into a wide range of intracellular responses, from gene expression and real-time fluorescence to modulation..

Thrilled to present our latest BioRXiv on brain/body interactions during defensive freezing behaviour! (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). You might think that a frozen animal has, well, frozen muscle activity, right? Wrong! Underneath the still surface of a fly, something in the legs is beating… 🧵

Life with a 5-year-old: [From the bathroom]: Baba! Baba! Come here! Come here! [Me, running]: What's the matter, kiddo? [5-y-o]: I'm going to tell you about the differences between sharks and killer whales. 🥴

Our digital overlords are drunk. From my inbox:

🔊 Exciting AI Research Opportunity! my team at @czbiohub SF is hiring a Research Scientist to develop foundational AI models for BioImage analysis. Join us to work on cutting-edge ML/CV! 💻🔬🧪🧠 #AIJobs #ML job-boards.greenhouse.io/chanzuckerbe...