I'm excited to be featured on one of my favorite podcasts!! I binged @nightsciencepod.bsky.social during my PhD. Listen to this episode to hear about how the crop rotation system can be applied to the scientific creative process. And learn about our beloved Stentor in Every School program!

The Night Science Podcast@nightsciencepod.bsky.social · 3w ago

🔥New Night Science Podcast episode! We talked with PhD students & postdocs about finding ideas in art museums, making sketches, transferring concepts, going to unrelated seminars, swimming, hiking, talking in pubs and letting ideas lie fallow like in a crop rotation system.

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! 👇🙏

George Musser@georgemusser.com · last yr.

Do you have fireflies in your backyard? Biologist @oritpeleg.bsky.social is collecting data! #emergence docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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!

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · last yr.

Characterization of cellular wound resistance in the giant ciliate Stentor coeruleus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.23.661154v1

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

A receptor-inactivation model for single-celled habituation in Stentor coeruleus

The single-celled ciliate Stentor coeruleus demonstrates habituation to mechanical stimuli, but the mechanism of learning in this single cell, which l…

sciencedirect.com

Deepa Rajan, PhD@deeparajan.bsky.social · 2y ago

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

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...

Marines with Skin Condition Affecting Mostly Black Men Could Now Be Booted Under New Policy

A new Marine Corps policy says troops with a genetic skin condition that can cause pain and scarring from shaving and mainly affects Black men can be separated if the health issue persists.

military.com

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/...

G-quadruplex–stalled eukaryotic replisome structure reveals helical inchworm DNA translocation

DNA G-quadruplexes (G4s) are non–B-form DNA secondary structures that threaten genome stability by impeding DNA replication. To elucidate how G4s induce replication fork arrest, we characterized fork ...

science.org

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.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · last yr.

8. It is difficult to overstate what a catastrophe this will be for the US research and education systems, particular in biomedical fields. It is deliberate and wanton devastation entirely out of scale with any concern about DEI activities on campuses. The goal is destroy 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...

Squid primary cell culture as a model system and experimental tool

Squid primary cells from various tissues and ages are isolated, maintained in culture, and express exogenous genes. This protocol opens up numerous opportunities in molecular biology, neuroscience, an...

biorxiv.org

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...

Cellular cognition: How single cells learn using non-neural networks

Single cells can perform surprisingly complex behaviors and computations, including primitive forms of learning like habituation. New work highlighted here uses mathematical modeling to show that relatively simple biochemical networks can recapitulate many features of habituation in animals.

cell.com

Deepa Rajan, PhD@deeparajan.bsky.social · 2y ago

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

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!

Deepa Rajan, PhD@deeparajan.bsky.social · 2y ago

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

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