It’s Sally Temple giving the closing #ARVO2026 keynote about some of her work in stem cells and AMD therapeutics.

Talented Wert lab scientists! Enjoying the Denver food scene at #ARVO2026 @emilyrnett.bsky.social

Come by the @iser.bsky.social booth at #ARVO2026 to hear about the next meeting in Valencia, Spain. Soooooo many travel awards to trainees to participate!

Thank you @michaelfchiang.bsky.social for coming to José-Alain Sahael’s award talk today at #ARVO2026. I am grateful for your calm hand at the head of the NIH/NEI, and your hard work to help vision science move forward.

Great scientists make great friends. #arvo2026 @suprajagv.bsky.social @wertlaboratory.bsky.social

Good morning, @arvoinfo.bsky.social! Interested in the gene regulatory networks involved in retinal development? Come hear @emilyrnett.bsky.social talk this morning! #ARVO2026

Good morning, @arvoinfo.bsky.social! Check out these presentations from UTSW today (Monday) #ARVO2026

TODAY (Sunday) come see Tiffany Yee and Ashley Rowe present their research in poster sessions this afternoon! Amazing work with retinal organoids and looking into steroidal sex hormones #ARVO2026 @arvoinfo.bsky.social

Hello @arvoinfo.bsky.social! Excited for this week of science!

From photoreceptors to visual processing — #Webvision is your open-access deep dive into how we see. Now hosted at our Department, continuing its mission to make vision science accessible to all. Start exploring → www.webvision.pitt.edu#Webvision #Ophthalmology #Neuroscience

We are so excited to see our work out in @nature.com! We present a multi-omic single-cell atlas of 12 organs in human fetal development, explore the enhancer landscape, use deep learning to infer rules of transcription factor activity, and interpret non-coding variants in complex traits: #GeneReg 🧬🖥️

Does anyone know what counts as appropriate professional societies for a graduate student applying for a green card? I have a very talented student, but they were told ARVO and similar societies don’t count since we pay a membership due and therefore it isn’t regarded as selective.

New study led by Ning Shen w/ @phruzycki.bsky.social: a genome-wide in vivo CRISPR screen in a retinitis pigmentosa mouse model identifies genes whose loss accelerates photoreceptor death. Overexpressing two, UFD1 and UXT, preserves photoreceptors, retinal function, and vision. 🧵

New publication: Inner-Retinal Changes In AMD: Evidence, Mechanisms, and Future Perspectives. A fun project with Matt Trinh, Michael Kalloniatis, myself, Glenn Yiu, Enrico Borrelli, and Lisa Nivison-Smith bryanwjones.com/2026/03/inne...

Female mice grow testes after this single DNA tweak www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This may be for April Fool’s Day, but the neuron looks a lot like the newest sculpture at UTSW, so now I will think of it as the “orange cat neuron” 😂

First annual Southwestern Vision Science Summit is done. What an incredible day of cutting edge science from UTSW, UAB, UH, U Iowa, UT Austin, Baylor, UNT, and more!

Some UTSW campus artwork

New lab milestone: first PhD obtained 🎓 I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Emily Nettesheim @emilyrnett.bsky.social

On the next business day (Monday), my first graduate student will be defending her PhD!!! Congratulations to @emilyrnett.bsky.social and looking forward to her defense 🎓

Sex-specific Multi-organ (14x) single-cell #Aging atlas of GRZ killifish🐟 No age-related fibrotic features Actually, COL1A1/2 & ECM organization⬇️with age🥸 IGF2BP3 (m6A reader)⬇️with age across all organs🤓 @emkcosta.bsky.social @jingxunchen.bsky.social #NatAging 2026 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Happy #Caturday from Nola

Very rare artwork at my DC hotel…still can’t believe these aren’t made anymore

Blink and you'll miss it - literally! I managed to capture the moment this Brandt's cormorant (Urile penicillatus) blinked with its nictating membrane, aka third eyelid - while it maintained eye contact with me. More comorant photos below! La Jolla, CA. #birding #wildlifephotography

🚨Next DevBioConnect is live now @devbiol.bsky.social Dr. Emil Kriukov is presenting scRNAseq atlas of human developing retina from week 8 to week 27 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Join us on Zoom😆 utsouthwestern-edu.zoom.us/j/2815736063

UTSW’s Kim Orth receiving the 2026 Earl and Thressa Stadtman Distinguished Scientist Award from Margaret Phillips and Joan Conaway. She gave a great lecture! @asbmb.bsky.social #ASBMB26

Attending #ASBMB26? Stop by the UT Southwestern booth (#225)! Our team would love to meet you, share opportunities from summer programs to postdoctoral positions, and hear about your interests and goals. @asbmb.bsky.social

Yay! @akcasey.bsky.social joined BlueSky. She’s a Research Assistant Professor at UTSW, looking into how cells and tissues respond to repetitive stressors, particularly in diabetes. Amazing colleague, amazing science, and currently on the job market for tenure-track positions! Please share

Great turnout for our interest group session on BMB of Rare Disease: Insights into Conserved Biological Pathways for Human Health at #ASBMB2026

🌍 It’s #RareDiseaseDay 2026! 💜 Today we stand with the 300 million people living with a rare disease. Together, we’re showing our colours, raising awareness, and inspiring change by talking about what equity means to us. 👉 Read more: https://go.rarediseaseday.org/NEWS

I'm excited to share our PNAS paper from 1st author Kasia Hussey. We study how the foveola, the high acuity region of the retina, is patterned by RA and TH. We were surprised to find that cone subtypes appear to convert fates. Our studies are important for AMD sufferers. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Extending previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, a study in Nature Communications shows that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks. #Neuroskyence #medsky 🧪

Beautiful Torino evening during #SNS2026

Some lunch on the autopsy tables during the #SNS2026 conference

At a conference, and I’ve been wondering why I haven’t had many work emails come through today….yeah, it’s 9:30pm here and I finally realized it’s a Saturday 😂

Thanks for the shout out, AWS at UTSW! www.instagram.com/p/DUkEqKfDH1...

The #SNS2026 conference is excellent so far!

Winter in Texas

Beautiful sunset from the lab windows tonight

I am grateful for UTSW providing an environment to discuss such important topics like imposter syndrome. What a great panel discussion with AWS! www.instagram.com/p/DUVs0YcEct...

SEAHAWKS SUPERBOWL BOUND!! (Throwback pic to a Seahawks v. Patriots game where Seahawks won!)

I have a postdoc that started mid-November, and she just won best poster presentation on her project for the Brain Institute Gene Therapy Symposium (with a mug award). Way to go, Siqi!

Today I made a small but momentous start to work in 2026 by changing a single number. I renamed the file “Papers to write and submit in 2025” to “Papers to write and submit in 2026”. Stay tuned for more file updates on 1st January 2027.

Diamonds? Something precious? Intriguing…bring it on, 2026!

Having a great and supportive past postdoc mentor helps a lot, I learned so much to launch my independent career mahajanlab.stanford.edu/news/mahajan...

A bifunctional optical reporter for tracking estrogen response dynamics in neurons https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.14.694224v1

Happy Holidays from the Wert Lab!