Rob Mullins (he/him)

@choroidlab.bsky.social

Cell biology, aging, vasculature, choroid, retina, just enough omics to be dangerous. Peace and love, friends.

Tipping etiquette/ golden rule question. I’m invited to give a talk and the sponsoring department pays a driver to lug me from airport to hotel. It’s usually like 20 minutes or something. Assume the department has it covered or tip (which probably has to be cash). If tip, how much?

Trying to find some protocols for cone isolation from frogs that don't involve transgenics or freezing. There is a surprising dearth of information out there for cone isolation? Seems to be mostly rods. Is anyone familiar with any simple-ish protocols? 🧪 👀 #xenopus

I was born around the time of the release of the Sgt. Pepper's album. Then about 30 years ago my brother bought me this cap celebrating the 1967 NHL expansion (including my hometown St Louis Blues!) and with my birth year. Now suddenly this hat has found its moment in the Gen alpha Zeitgeist.

Photo of a black baseball cap with the NHL logo and the letters class of 67

My AI Qualtrics survey answer: OK, I'm a dinosaur, but look. I am very concerned about how ChatGTP etc are going to affect classroom assignments. If the students are going to write their reports with AI, why should I have to use my actual brain to grade that stuff?...

New paper from the lab! In collaboration with Patrice Tankam lab at Indiana University, we evaluated changes in the Descemet's membrane thickness in the double mutant FECD mice. Congrats to the co-first authors Hadiya Pattan and Subashree Murugan! iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx...

Enabling In Vivo Longitudinal Evaluation of Descemet's Membrane Thickness in Wild-type and FECD Mice Using Self-Referenced Optical Coherence Microscopy | IOVS | ARVO Journals

iovs.arvojournals.org

So the lab now has 7 big freezers (mostly tissue storage). When I had 4 they were named after the Beatles, but once I got past 4 I named them after kaiju in the Godzillaverse - Godzilla (obvs), Rodan, Mothra, etc. Well we got a new small one which we named Minilla and he is so disturbing.

Door of a -80C freezer with a placard labeled Minilla, the son of Godzilla from the Toho Godzilla universe, and with a picture of the same. He is pretty strange

It’s incredibly hard to express what Professor Pete Coffey meant to so many of us. The Macular Society has written a beautiful tribute to Pete and I'm honoured to have contributed a few words. Thank you, my friend, for so many happy days. www.macularsociety.org/about/media/...

Tributes paid to pioneering eye researcher Professor Pete Coffey

Tributes have been paid to one of the world’s top eye researchers, Professor Pete Coffey, who has sadly passed away after a long illness.

macularsociety.org

Now that it is official, I am pleased to announce that the Shyam lab will relocate to the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa, effective August 2025. I cannot remember ever being this excited about a new chapter in my professional life!