Sneak peek at our team’s latest collaborative preprint 👀 We adopted LabGym to create LabGrymace, an accessible and flexible AI-powered platform that can assess pain-related facial dynamics in freely moving mice 🐭

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 3w ago

LabGrymace: Automated Analysis of Mouse Grimace for Quantitative Assessment of Pain Dynamics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.31.742042v1

Check out this feature of our team’s recent work! 🐭🦷

Science Magazine@science.org · 6mo ago

Gnawing helps keep a rodent’s chisel-shaped incisors, which constantly keep growing, in safe alignment. New research finds this isn’t just a blinklike reflex: As a rodent gnaws, nerve signals from the teeth seem to trigger pleasure pathways in the brain. Learn more: https://scim.ag/411Cw2h

Rodents love to gnaw… which can be cute or annoying (e.g. when they decided to destroy my car wiring). But our new study uncovers why: incisor tactile input is relayed by a sensorimotor-motivational circuit to drive gnawing! So fun collaborating with lead author Xinyu Su and Bo Duan Lab on this!

Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Our new @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social paper is out! It was an honor to co-lead this project with Shuhao Wan. Finding ways to selectively activate sensory neurons within internal tissues is particularly challenging. This is especially true for the tooth. Check out how we solved this! 🦷⚡️

STAR Protocols@cp-starprotocols.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Protocol for the precise activation of intradental neurons in mice via electrical stimulation #protocol #starprotocols #cellpress

Beautiful new work by @manduh21.bsky.social and our team! Clumsy, a kainate-type glutamate receptor, mediates noxious cold sensation and cold behavioral avoidance in fruit flies. This expands our prior work demonstrating this class of receptors also functions as a cold receptor in worms and mammals.

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Cold sensing by a glutamate receptor drives avoidance behavior in Drosophila larvae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.05.680544v1

Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice. 👇 New paper by the ENES Bioacoustics Research Team in @currentbiology.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/a/1llMH3QW8S...

New preprint with @manduh21.bsky.social ! 🎉 We introduce LabGym, an open-source AI platform for analyzing C. elegans behavior.🪱 LabGym makes worm behavior analysis accurate, customizable, and accessible, no coding or costly setup required.

bioRxiv Animal Behavior and Cognition@biorxiv-behav.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Automated analysis of C. elegans behavior by LabGym: an open-source, AI-powered platform https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.28.672961v1

LabGym has been used in reseach across many labs. The latest example is this excellent study from @jjemrick.bsky.social lab. cell.com/cell-reports... @cp-cellreports.bsky.social @elizabithian.bsky.social

Intradental mechano-nociceptors serve as sentinels that prevent tooth damage

Ronan et al. explore the function of trigeminal sensory neurons innervating the inner tooth—herein, intradental neurons. They determine these specialized cells respond to damage of the enamel and init...

cell.com

Register to attend the virtual 2025 LabGym Symposium! LabGym is a powerful and customizable AI-based tool enabling automated quantification of behavior (+ more!)

Bing Ye@byneuron.bsky.social · last yr.

🧵 I’m excited to announce that the 2025 LabGym Symposium & Tutorial will be held online via Zoom on Friday, August 22, 2025. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about cutting-edge AI-based behavioral analysis! www.lsi.umich.edu/events/2025-... 1/

Really interesting (ha ha i can't stand this roller coaster) back and forth on NIH funding. 9 Senate Republicans sent a letter warning Vought not to hold NIH funds. Vought tries to hold NIH funds. He loses. [though still lots of budget shenanigans] www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding

The administration halted and then restarted billions in new research grants flowing from the National Institutes of Health.

wsj.com

This “administration” acts like it’s playing musical chairs with people’s lives.

Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science! Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · last yr.

A lateralized sensory signaling pathway mediates context-dependent olfactory plasticity in C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.25.666858v1

This is a catastrophe. There is nothing else to be said.

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding

The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

wsj.com

Check out our first research article from the Emrick lab, published in Cell Reports! We define the sensory neurons in the tooth as sentinels: tuned to detect tooth damage and trigger a protective jaw opening reflex. 🦷🔨 I’m officially a mammalian somatosensory biologist (but I still 🩷 worms 🪱)

Cell Reports@cp-cellreports.bsky.social · last yr.

Intradental mechano-nociceptors serve as sentinels that prevent tooth damage

Official paper thread coming soon… this work represents a major career milestone for many of the authors 🥹 I couldn’t be prouder to work with such an inspiring team to bring this project to the finish line! 💙💛

U-M Life Sciences Institute@umlifesciences.bsky.social · last yr.

LSI faculty members @byneuron.bsky.social and Peng Li teamed up with colleagues in the U-M School of Dentistry (including LSI alum @elizabithian.bsky.social) to uncover how neurons inside teeth do more than just sense pain: news.umich.edu/ouch-tooth-n...

C. elegans, ba ba ba. #Worm25

A laureate and a trend setter #worm25

NPR@npr.org · last yr.

Mustaches are having a moment.

C elegans can sense sound AND serve as a genetic model for an understudied form of human hearing loss! As the moderator mentioned- what CAN’T worms do?? 🤩 🪱 #worm25

Worm meeting bucketlist: ✅ Photo with Nobel laureate (and @manduh21.bsky.social) Thank you Dr. Ambros, for spending time with early stage scientists! I love this community 🪱 #Worm25

Day 4 of #Worm25: 15k+ steps/daily, sweating through 95°F+ Cali heat, followed by shivering in AC, all while being immersed in the latest C. elegans research. Is this a genetics conference or a worm-themed detox?

“Do you have any advice for aspiring young scientists?” “Do genetics.” *mic drop* #worm25

Baris Tursun@baristursun.bsky.social · last yr.

Fantastic Nobel Moment at #worm25 with Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun.

Go worms! #worm25

“The idea that taking walks, reading things unrelated to your research, and hanging out with strangers in a campus pub should be considered part of the serious process of thinking, but might well meet with skepticism in practice.” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The forgotten half of scientific thinking | PNAS

The forgotten half of scientific thinking

pnas.org

As it’s my first time joining Worm Meeting, I was excited to participate in Worm Art show as well. This year’s topic is resilience. In times of scarcity, worms gather holding one another to reach new grounds. Alone - they are fragile, together - they rise. Even the sky yields in unity. #worm25

".....but a key feature of this community became abundantly clear: Worm people tend to help one other. They readily share insights, lab processes, even worms themselves." So true. The worm community is the best.

Max Heiman@heiman.bsky.social · last yr.

Delighted to share this timely article in Boston magazine on our local C. elegans community and the effects of NIH freezes. "There might be no group more enthusiastic, self-aware, or life-affirming than the worm people." www.bostonmagazine.com/news/c-elega...

The fast approaching June K99 deadline is getting to me but flowers and NA rose from my husband are helping with the final push 🥹 🌺 💪

The brain drain will be when scientists are forced into other careers/jobs so that they can keep paying the bills. They will never return. There aren't enough science jobs in other countries to absorb even a fraction of those laid off.

Edward Nirenberg@enirenberg.bsky.social · last yr.

On a basic level- you can't expect US talent to sit on their hands and wait until maybe, hopefully there's a job for them. A handful might be able to do that, but the majority are going to leave. Countries are actively seeking to take advantage of US brain drain.

Great News, Michigan! Lansing #StandUpForScience2025 is happening. Friday, March 7, 12-4pm, East steps of the Capitol Bldg. Tell 3 friends! Make a carpool plan! Have a sign-making party! Share with your networks! #ScienceIsForEveryone @standupforscience.bsky.social

THIS FRIDAY in Lansing, MI, 12-4pm #StandUpForScience with featured speaker: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed! Dr. El-Sayed is a physician, epidemiologist, educator, author, and public servant. @michigan4science.bsky.social @michigannoah.bsky.social @mallorymcmorrow.bsky.social @leahlitman.bsky.social

PubMed has gone dark A database I've used for over 30 years I hope and pray it comes back soon!