Excited to share a new study from our lab in Cell: “Non-invasive control of gene editing in vivo by photoswitchable Cas12f and focused ultrasound” We engineered a compact CRISPR system that can be activated at specific locations in the body using focused ultrasound (🧵) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Non-invasive control of gene editing in vivo by photoswitchable Cas12f and focused ultrasound

Remote activation of a single-AAV-deliverable photoswitchable Cas12f system enables precise spatial and temporal control of genome editing in deep tissues without surgery or implanted devices.

cell.com

I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.

Repeated Inertial Stimulation Reveals Divergent Plasticity in Peripheral and Central Vestibular Pathways https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.22.752866v1

Campus rape is really widespread; statistics suggest a significant percent of women who go to college will be raped there; feminism opened up a good conversation about it around 2012-13; it's weird when people treated Cornell like an isolated rather than dramatic example of a pervasive problem.

Precise structural and functional organization of the olfactory bulb neuropil early in development, revealed by volume EM, dense reconstruction and 2P calcium imaging in zebrafish. Great work by Ruth and others in collaboration with @michalwj.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fine ultrastructural organization of glomerular neuropil in the developing zebrafish olfactory bulb

Across animal phyla, odor information is represented in the first olfactory processing center by combinatorial activation of discrete glomeruli. To examine how this organization of olfactory processin...

biorxiv.org

When a fish sees the world move, it immediately swims with it. This is the optomotor response: a visual reflex found across animals that helps us maintain our position and orientation as our surroundings appear to drift. 🐟👀

Are there key discoveries made with spatial RNA seq? Or what are your favorite spatial rna seq papers? Pls reski!

Rainy Saturday project complete.

Amazing sky before the storm tonight in #nyc.

Thrilled to see this published today! Truly special because we made the initial discovery >15 yrs ago! We found two copies of a human gene called BC200 embedded in a human poxvirus. BC200 blurs the line between gene & transposon—both functional & mutagenic! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/n

Escape of the BC200 gene to a human poxvirus reveals its persistent transposition in primates

Transposable elements mobilize within and occasionally between genomes, including from host to virus. We identified two insertions of the human BC200 noncoding RNA gene in the poxvirus molluscum conta...

science.org

The Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University is hiring! Come and do cutting edge research on the neural basis of natural behaviors at NBB (nbb.cornell.edu). No animal too small, no behavior too strange! Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32592

Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social

preprint🚨 ✨A Stickiness Response System in Rats tinyurl.com/4wnu88v9 What underlies that sticky, icky feeling? Sticky sensing is surprisingly underexplored. we investigated its neural and behavioural basis Congrats to Sandra, @simonerencken.bsky.social @jasmine-stone.bsky.social Adam, Tom & Pam! 👏

Seeking a PhD at Cambridge in collaboration with NovoNordisk? Consider this funded opportunity titled "Human cellular models of leptin signalling and resistance": bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/project-refe... Application details: bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/how-apply Thanks for spreading the word!

1/11. New preprint from our lab! Serotonergic Control of Spine Morphology During Growth in Zebrafish www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Serotonergic Control of Spine Morphology During Growth in Zebrafish

Scoliosis is a three-dimensional deformity of the vertebral column that commonly emerges during growth, yet the biological mechanisms that initiate and drive curve progression remain poorly understood...

biorxiv.org

Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain - Nature Neuroscience

This study shows that the brain arises from two distinct progenitors: one forms the forebrain and midbrain, whereas the other generates the hindbrain. These insights enable the generation of human hin...

nature.com

The Agrawal lab has published its first paper! "Sticking the landing: leg mechanosensory feedback coordinates the transition from flight to landing" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... This project was led by a technician in the lab, Tse-Wei (Wayne) Kuo. Brief 🧵on what we found

This is timely, lucid, and something worth having handy the next time it comes up. Because it will keep coming up.

Crip Dyke@cripdyke.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/x Once again, I have to say this, bc even allies, even some trans ppl are being taken in by the rhetoric of "fairness in sport" to the point where they don't know how to respond when the topic comes up. So buckle up, it's another Crip Dyke megathread you need to read all of.

“the only certainty we have is the certainty we had at the start: At fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky—falling through time as well as through space…The picture is his cenotaph“

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is a really good piece.

🧬🔬 Why are enhancers transcribed and how does that impact gene regulation? I’m really excited to share our new paper in @science.org showing that noncoding RNAs control the timing of gene activation in embryos. With Mike Levine #ScienceResearch @columbiamed.bsky.social A few highlights below... 🧵👇

Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation

The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely ...

science.org

Just out in Nat Neurosci: disentangling of neural odor manifolds in "olfactory cortex" of adult zebrafish after learning. Great work by Bo, Nesibe et al and wonderful collaboration with @sueyeonchung.bsky.social that fundamentally changed my view of olfactory cortex. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is a great resource that encapsulates a lot of hard-won knowhow.

@adamezracohen.bsky.social · 3w ago

We wrote a tutorial guide on voltage imaging, now out in Neuron: authors.elsevier.com/a/1nlgh3BtfH... Indicators, microscopes, and software have all advanced to the point that it's not so hard -- you can now directly watch the electrical activity of neurons in live animals or in culture.

Lovely article about a 99-year-old retired math professor who recently published a major result. It's the story of mentorship and multi-generational collaboration. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...

The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice (Gift Article)

Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.

nytimes.com

Nathan wrote a good article. I'm quote tweeting in the Black way (to talk about a different point without derailing his thread). 🤔If Ben thinks you need to play football to build character, learn teamwork, leadership, etc, and girls don't play football... what does that say about his view of women?

Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 4w ago

Yet, Ben Sasse and the @wsj.com seem to think that it is appropriate to double down on sacrificing American boys to the death sentence that is this sport. www.wsj.com/opinion/free...

We are hiring! Come join us in the Straw Lab at the @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social . Seeking a scientist to work on the neural and computational mechanisms of visual navigation in honey bees. uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00005...

I thought the point was to empty the building? 😝

Benjamin Cowley@benjocowley.bsky.social · last mo.

CSHL is hiring a new BioAI faculty member, part of a multi-year hiring process for the Foundations of the Future. We need to fill a new BioAI building, come join! www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...

“Lost media” no longer! I finally got permission to upload “AL’S BRAIN,” an 11-minute educational 3-D film attraction which ran at the Orange County and Western Washington fairs, and hasn’t been seen publicly since 2009. You can watch the whole thing here: youtu.be/2xujU87ZHt4

Happy to share our new study comparing aggression level across 7 strains of mice, led by a talented undergraduate student, Xiuzhi Dai. Strain differences in aggression can be explained a lot by differences in the physiological properties of VMHvl cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New PNAS paper from our lab! 🪰🐭👩‍🦰 We developed a toolbox AutoGaitA to compare locomotion across species, revealing conserved velocity gradients and aging effects despite divergent strategies for propulsion. A step toward understanding conserved principles of motor control. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

I really want to see the protocol for this....