BARI’s Seth Shipman and team describe in Molecular Cell, a retron that stays quiet until phage appears. Then it makes DNA that flips a translational switch and releases a toxin, stopping the virus by sacrificing the infected cell. #Retrons #UCSF www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Exciting opportunity at UCSF! The Department of Cell and Tissue Biology is recruiting a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor studying the cell biology of disease, with applications on the cell biology of aging especially encouraged!
BARI spotlight: Guo Huang and team show mitochondria can shape the heart through signaling, not just ATP. Coq10a keeps coenzyme Q properly distributed, without it, postnatal hearts grow too large via PPAR pathways. #mitochondria #cardiology www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
BARI’s Seth Shipman and team built Detectrons: sensors that catch a specific RNA and leave a durable DNA barcode behind. In Nature Biotechnology, they use them to see which phages infect which bacteria in mixed cultures. Clever way to turn transient signals into sequenceable records.
BARI’s Aric Prather and colleagues ran a pilot trial of lemborexant for daytime sleep in night-shift workers. No clear win vs. placebo overall, but the 10mg dose showed a hint of benefit. Useful pilot data for a tough problem. #sleep #circadian link.springer.com/article/10.1...
BARI spotlight: Dengke Ma’s review maps therapeutic strategies against APOE4, from structural correctors and protective variants to antibodies and lipid-modulating drugs. A practical look at turning a major risk gene into a treatable target. #neurodegeneration #agingresearch
BARI’s Daniel Mordes and Julie Smeyers unpack how low TBK1 raises risk for ALS and related dementias. Cells can’t clear junk as well, and the brain’s immune cells get out of balance. Helpful look at a dual problem. #ALS #dementia www.frontiersin.org/journals/neu...
BARI spotlight: Hanna Marten’s review traces how matrix crosslinking, weak adhesions, and nuclear fragility feed senescence, and how that loop further degrades tissue mechanics. A clear case for resetting the aged mechanical niche. #aging #ECM journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
The mechanisms and mechanics of aging
Summary: A Review of evidence suggesting that aging arises from progressive loss of mechanotransduction fidelity across the extracellular matrix (ECM)–cytoskeleton–nucleus axis, linking ECM remodeling...
journals.biologists.com
BARI’s Dr. Kevan Shokat and colleagues in Nature: a design playbook for bitopic kinase inhibitors. Two grips on one kinase. Their ABL1 lead, PonatiLink-2, stays potent against resistance mutations and could be given at higher doses in mice without the toxicity seen with ponatinib.
BARI spotlight: Margaret Wallhagen co-authors a Nursing Outlook piece on why geroscience is richer with nurses as the table. Trusted messengers. Holistic care. A life-course view of aging. #nursing #geroscience www.nursingoutlook.org/article/S002...
Scott Bauer and colleagues show that older adults report more urinary symptoms when slow walking takes a bigger part of their energy capacity, pointing to a possible shared pathway with mobility decline. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #aging #geriatrics
New protocol from BARI’s Andrew Yang: isolate cerebral vessels, then pull high-purity nuclei for multi-omics. Blood-brain barrier cells are usually undercounted, this gives labs a clearer look at them. #neuroscience www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This week is Postdoc Appreciation Week and we’re grateful for the BARI postdocs who keep our science moving! You bring the experiments, the ideas, the late nights, and the questions that push aging biology forward. Thank you for being such a vital part of this community!
BARI spotlight: Kevan Shokat maps adaptive cell-cycle control in cancer and the emerging toolkit for CDK2 targeting. Useful reading for anyone thinking about kinase drugs after CDK4/6. #cancer www.nature.com/articles/s41...
BARI’s Isha Jain maps the surprising diversity of terminal electron acceptors across eukaryotes. Oxygen isn’t the only destination, and those anaerobic backups still matter in low-oxygen tissues and disease. www.cell.com/action/showP...
BARI spotlight: Martin Kampmann’s group used genome-wide CRISPRi to find regulators of the interferon-responsive microglial state. Known interferon genes plus unexpected hits. A toolkit for asking when this program helps or harms the aging brain. #Microglia #aging bit.ly/4reK3az
BARI’s Katrina Abuabara & team find higher estimated salt intake is associated with more IL-17-related inflammatory disease in ~470,000 UK Biobank participants, especially skin and joint conditions. Worth asking whether cutting salt could help. www.clinicalnutritionespen.com/article/S240...
Cool story from one of BARI’s newest members, Jason Gestwicki. Tau fibrils formed without cofactors are dynamic, and evolve over weeks unless agitation or polyanions stabilize them. A fresh look at how disease-specific tau folds may mature. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Congrats to BARI’s Orion Weiner & team for their recent work in Nature Cell Biology identifying a mechanical cause of age-related implantation failure: embryos from older females are overly contractile, hindering their ability to implant.
BARI spotlight: Martin Kampmann’s & team present a new CRISPR screen for genes that change how neurons depolarize. In human iPSC-derived neurons, they found known excitability players and disease genes not previously tied to firing. Excellent resource for the field. #Neuroscience #CRISPR
New BARI member Marina Sirota and colleagues used computational drug repurposing to identify simvastatin and primaquine as candidates for endometriosis. Both eased pain behaviors in rats, simvastatin was also linked to lower disease risk in patient records. www.cell.com/action/showP...
New BARI member Reza Abbasi-Asl & colleagues find that daily step patterns, especially mid-day activity, reflect disability in progressive MS and can complement traditional clinic tests. Great use of wearable data! #MSResearch #wearables journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
BARI spotlight: Jeanne Paz & colleagues report a new focal ischemic model of thalamic stroke that produces persistent spontaneous pain-like behavior in mice, closer to what many stroke survivors actually experience. An important new tool. #stroke #painresearch www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A focal ischemic stroke of the somatosensory thalamus produces persistent spontaneous pain–like behavior
Ischemic injury to the somatosensory ventrobasal (VB) thalamus is strongly associated with central post-stroke pain (CPSP), yet preclinical models of …
sciencedirect.com
BARI’s community just got stronger. Please join us in welcoming our newest members. Their work ranges from how the brain and immune system change with age to the molecular and computational tools that will help us understand those changes. Meet the new members: geroscience.ucsf.edu/news/new-mem...
Proud moment for BARI: Greg Bieri from the Villeda lab has been named a 2026 Simons Fellows-to-Faculty Awardee. This highly competitive program provides support to help outstanding postdocs transition to faculty positions.
Job alert from BARI! Seeking a passionate, highly motivated person to lead community building across our aging biology network. If you love connecting people and advancing the science of aging, this could be your role! Know someone perfect? Share or apply here: careers.ucsf.edu/careers/JobD...
Congrats to BARI’s Brian Feeley on this Science Translational Medicine paper! His group mapped human fibroadipogenic progenitors in rotator cuff muscle and found that a DLK1+ subset acts as a natural brake on fatty infiltration. Beautiful work with real clinical relevance. #muscleinjury #orthopedics
New review! BARI’s Su Guo discusses how intranasal delivery offers a promising route to get therapies into the brain for Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s, but significant hurdles remain. Excellent overview of platforms, models, and computational tools. #Alzheimers #Parkinsons
Huge congrats to BARI’s Martin Kampmann on this landmark Neuron paper! His team mapped the transcriptional regulators of six microglial activation states linked to brain disease and showed how knocking down specific factors can drive disease-associated programs. A real toolkit for the field!
Big congrats to BARI’s John Greenland on this thoughtful ERJ Open Research editorial! Frailty improves for most lung transplant patients, especially those who start most frail, yet understanding which cases are driven by biology versus deconditioning could sharpen candidate selection and care.
