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⚡️🧠Thrilled to share our new preprint on pain-related valence cell-types + circuits — A nociceptive amygdala-striatal pathway for chronic pain aversion Check out the stellar work of Jessica Wojick, in a co-senior collab with KorbLab biorxiv.org/content/10.110… THREAD 1/13

Neurons and astrocytes closely coordinate their gene expression, in a program we call “SNAP” – a collaboration that we find to be central in protection from schizophrenia and cognitive aging. nature.com/articles/s4158…

We are recruiting! Open projects related to enzyme engineering, protein directed evolution, computational protein design, spatial proteomics, RNA tools, protein therapeutics, and molecular technology development for cell biology and neuroscience. We especially welcome trainees

Precisely

A team led by the Ajo-Franklin group’s very own Biki Kundu has uncovered the mechanism through which E. coli utilizes redox shuttles for extracellular respiration and growth, showcasing the unexpected versatility of microbial metabolism biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh…

Can AAVs be evolved for better brain delivery after targeted ultrasound insonation? We report new AAVs optimized for focused ultrasound BBB opening. Congratulations to all involved! Richard Hongyi Li Manwal Harb John Heath @JakeSTrippett Mikhail Shapiro (same on bsky) 🇺🇦 nature.com/articles/s4146…

🧬 🧠 Exciting news from Rice BIOE Jerzy Szablowski team! Their innovative gene therapy method could revolutionize brain disorder treatments by targeting specific regions with unprecedented precision. Discover more in Nature Communications! news.rice.edu/news/2024/rese…

Thrilled to announce that I have accepted a TT faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh in Pitt Neurosurgery, starting 01/2025! We will develop noninvasive molecular tools to control and monitor endogenous processes in intact cells and tissues, focusing on the brain. 1/2

How could we check if a gene therapy reached the desired brain region? Here, we noninvasively measure gene delivery and endogenous gene expression in specific brain sites with ultrasound-released synthetic serum markers. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Published today in nature, we describe an approach for single-molecule protein reading on Oxford Nanopore arrays. By utilizing ClpX unfoldase to ratchet proteins through a CsgG nanopore, we achieved single-amino-acid sensitivity. nature.com/articles/s4158…

I am looking forward to coming back to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for Neurotech 2024 tomorrow! I will talk about noninvasive interfacing with the brain, including new projects with our postdoc Sho Watanabe Sho Watanabe and collaborators Vincent Costa and Rui Chen (UCI). neurotech.mit.edu

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2/3 of Korea will disappear every generation. Population collapse.

Absolutely true

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 transgene expression and real-time

qPCR can measure expression of virtually any gene... in homogenized tissues. Here, we show an "in-vivo qPCR" equivalent, where we measure a sequence-specific transcript with synthetic serum markers and enzyme-based signal amplification. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

I am very thankful to BrightFocus Foundation and their donors, for the grant we received today. Using these funds we will enable monitoring of gene expression in the intact retina to understand the molecular basis and progression of age-related macular degeneration and improve diagnosis.

Usually serum markers are detected as they are - often hard to detect, long half-life, or with high background that reduces temporal resolution. What if we could modify the markers in vivo so they can better match our needs? Introducing this concept with erasable serum markers.

How can you know if gene delivery in a primate worked? Typically through expensive scans or histology. With Vincent Costa and first authors Sangsin Lee and McKenna Romac we made synthetic markers that monitor gene delivery and Cre-dependent expression with a blood test. PDF👇