How can a single cell learn without a brain? We explore this in my paper with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social! We discovered that single cells may learn using molecules similar to those that animal brains use to learn, like CaMKII. Cells can also propagate memory states to their progeny!

We discovered a new species! Our paper on Stentor stipatus is now published @wallaceucsf.bsky.social @aralbright.bsky.social

Just a few more days until we launch The B'K Volume 17, Issue 2 featuring poetry by: Ashen Speir, Cypher, David Anson Lee, @deeparajan.bsky.social, Jamez Terry, Joni Thomas, Kieran Fu, Leslie Dianne, Maxochitl Cortez, Muheez Olawale, and Theodora Bonis. Stay tuned!

If you're in SF, come celebrate St. Patrick's day with me and learn about how single cells learn! I'm giving a lecture about my research at a bar as part of the Lectures on Tap series🍻

dissertation book haul!

Trump minimizes domestic abuse during a talk at the Museum of the Bible: "Things that take place in the home, they call crime ... If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?"

Help us record firefly flashes! 👇🙏

Our research on wound resistance in Stentor is live on bioRxiv! Tldr; we squeezed the cells through microfluidic constrictions and the formidable lead author Rajorshi Paul characterized what makes the cells get wounded!

Our paper on single-cell learning is now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social! @wallaceucsf.bsky.social sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I'm leading a program at the Exploratorium @exploratorium.bsky.social this weekend! Come check out "Mini Microbe Missions", an opportunity for kids (and adults) to do citizen science using the single cell Stentor coeruleus, supported by our Stentor in Every School initiative t.co/VX8r9BHxsJ

Went to a wonderful reunion for the birthday of dear friend and colleague Gerd Blobel yesterday. In the end, it’s funny how all the papers and grants fade away and the main thing you remember are the people.

pete hegseth carrying out his effort to resegregate the military www.military.com/daily-news/2...

channeled my inner Joan Baez at the Stand Up for Science protest today

I am so proud to share a major part of my graduate school research, published today in Science, where we use cell-free replication assays and cryo-EM to describe a central mechanism of eukaryotic DNA replication: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When your kids ask you what you did to save US science in the crisis of ‘25, you will say that you showed up! Please spread the word and join us!! @standupforscience.bsky.social

Today they went nuclear. Imagine all firefighters were told "You all still have salaries, but as of today the government will no longer pay for building maintenance, firetruck maintenance and repair, hydrant upkeep, or admin assistants." That's what they're doing to US universities.

transcription people: are there examples where a transcriptional program gets re-set by cell division?

you know what *is* available. TiK ToK by kesha

HNY! In case you thought 2025 is the year of the snake, it's actually the year of the SQUID 🦑 Excited to present this new protocol paper from the @brangwynnelab.bsky.social on isolating+transfecting squid primary cells 🧫✨! Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

after a week in Chicago for the Biological Systems that Learn workshop @nitmb.bsky.social, I've been traveling back to SF via train over ~55 hours. Today is Day 3 on Amtrak for me and I've never experienced more scenic backdrops for working on a manuscript

love learning about the neurobiology of the two genders (lordosis and aggression) 🫠

Mitochondria consist of networks of cylindrical tubes, right? Not necessarily! - in our new preprint, @gavsturm.bsky.social investigates how mitochondria transiently adopt a beads-on-a-string morphology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share our new preprint on the cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant ciliate that maintains Chlorella endosymbionts in surface-associated microtubule baskets. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

check out my new dispatch article with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social in @currentbiology.bsky.social about cellular cognition! www.cell.com/current-biol...

If you are at ASCB and you missed the poster by @DeepaRajan about the molecular substrates of memory in the single cell Stentor, its not too late - you can see her talk tomorrow (Tue Dec 17) at 5:35 pm in Ballroom 20A

If you're at #ASCB2024 and want to learn more about my research on learning in single cells, please come to my talk "Probing the molecular substrates of memory in the single cell Stentor coeruleus" at 5:35 pm today!

not yet published, already taught at the College de France by @thomaslecuit.bsky.social

A corollary is that remembering is the privilege of an empty life -- the bar drained of people renders even whispers audible, but who wants to go to that bar? I'd rather surrender remembering to the stupendous blare of life. Forgetting is living!

found 2 stentor cells fused together!

Where does pattern come from inside cells? in this revised preprint, @aralbright.bsky.social Shows that regionalization of mRNA in a Stentor cell depends on dynein motors and the microtubule cytoskeleton doi.org/10.1101/2023...

Which one are you? Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics. –Peter Medawar

Writing letters of recommendation on Thanksgiving because some PhD programs require December 1 submissions. We know you programs aren’t going to look at these applications until January!

How can a single cell learn without a brain or nervous system? We explore this in our new preprint with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social! We discovered that central features of learning in single cells can be accounted for by a model based on receptor inactivation bit.ly/3CDukfS 🧵 1/n

Single cells can learn without a brain, but how? Our new preprint from @deeparajan.bsky.social describes a model for habituation in Stentor coeruleus, based on receptor internalization and recycling, along with new experiments inspired by the model. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...