Kristy Townsend, PhD
@neuroadipo.bsky.social
ktownsendlab.com Neuroscience 🧠 PhD; PI- Neurobiology & Energy Balance Lab ⚖️ & Professor at Ohio State Dept Neurosurgery, formerly faculty UMaine & Joslin Diabetes; @neuroadipo all platforms ; opinions own
Save the date! Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathy is hosting a neuropathy symposium open to scientists, clinicians, trainees, industry and non-profit, sponsors and patients. New Orleans, Oct 5-6 2027. Sign up for updates here: tinyurl.com/8ycc2up2 #neuropathy
Fourth journal cover by Jake Willows (& second where he was first author of the accompanying paper). Such complexity in #ADIPOSE #CellReportsMethods 🧪🧪
Studying up for my son’s fifth grade science test. Hard agree w the “important characteristics of a scientist” 😂🤩 🧪🧪
New paper from the lab - a deeper dive into what happens in subcutaneous white adipose with sympathetic denervation, including multi-omics data. Plot twist: sensory goes UP! ⬆️ 🧪 dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Inspired by seaweed and seagrass, researchers designed microplastics cleaners in the form of biodegradable meshes that capture tiny particles by physically binding them to the “fluffy” surface. Learn more in this week’s issue of #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/3RLgvUH
Interested in targeting PNS nerves w AAV tools? Not so simple; adipose PNS tropism is trickier than brain. Our team led by Jake Willows and our collaborators at CLOVER and CPP optimized a system & tested DREADD, tetbow and shRNA. Out now @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social 🧪https://tinyurl.com/5pd5xwmd 🧪
Interested in learning more about neuromodulation as therapy for peripheral neuropathy? In this review, Larson, Dalm, and I cover the modalities, the data already in the literature and the need for more research beyond pain mitigation. 🧪 www.frontiersin.org/journals/neu...
Frontiers | Neuromodulation therapies for diabetic neuropathy: mechanisms, efficacy, and impacts on nerve health: a narrative review
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a highly prevalent complication characterized by progressive nerve degeneration and often refractory neuropathic pain...
frontiersin.org
Memory lane while organizing my office! This was summer 2001, with a formative mentor, the late Dr David Towle, dissecting the green crab endocrine organ for genetic analysis as an undergrad. 🧪Great memories of my time @mdibl.org and how important UG research is!
The Bark app is now on my teen’s new iPhone. (We did the “wait ‘til 8” - 8th grade). It prompted us to take a quiz on the euphemisms for drugs the “kiddos” might use. Disturbed to find that the 🧪🧪 symbol we all use here @bsky.app for science posts is apparently meth?? Sigh.
Science is international and that’s one of its best things 💚 (seen in my building last week) 🧪🧪
International timekeeping authorities are preparing to vote on a proposal to make the leap second—an extra second that is occasionally added to the year to keep UTC in tune with Earth’s rotation—into a leap hour by 2027. www.scientificamerican.com/article/inte...
Exclusive: International timekeepers to vote on changing the leap second to a leap hour
To align Coordinated Universal Time with Earth’s rotation, a second occasionally gets added to the year. That may change in 2027
scientificamerican.com
HHMI released the official 2027 Gilliam Fellowship details, and a lot changed. Deadline's earlier this cycle: Oct 27. Int'l & MD-PhD students now eligible. Stipend up to 50K. New postdoc pathway adds up to 7 yrs of support. No Journal names!!!! www.yaelcourtney.com/resources-an...
2027 HHMI Gilliam Fellowship: New Deadline, Eligibility, and Award Changes — Ya'el Courtney
HHMI's 2027 Gilliam Fellowship guide is out. What changed: an earlier October 27 deadline, expanded eligibility, a higher stipend, and a new postdoc pathway.
yaelcourtney.com
Great Medscape piece on recent mouse imaging approaches that reveal again that obesity promotes broad neuropathy across the body, with potential clinical implications that warrant more research. Quotes from me included. #adipose #neuropathy www.medscape.com/viewarticle/... 🧪🧪
New AI Imaging Detects ‘Striking’ Obesity-Related Neuropathy
Fascinating nervous system imaging reveals previously unseen obesity-related nerve damage in mice and humans — and some of it may be linked to GLP-1 use.
medscape.com
Science peeps, particularly trainees: When reviewing grants, it really, really helps if you have a Google Scholar page, an ORCID account, or a website that makes getting information about you, easy. Some sort of web presence. I'm begging you. Make it easier for study sections to give you money.
Congrats Jake Willows on winning the Peripheral Nerve Society cover image competition! 2yrs of membership awarded and a full year on the Journal of PNS cover. We accepted the award for him today at the annual mtg. 🎉🎉 #dorsalrootganglia #peripheralnerves 🧪🧪
Cloth posters are the BEST invention for international conferences. No wrinkles, high resolution even for fluorescent images, and lightweight in a carry on. 🎉 looking forward to re-connecting with this great PNS community 🎉 #PNSociety #PNS2026 🧪🧪
🧪 Inspiring first annual Women’s Health Summit yesterday - women’s health talks and discussions among industry, investors, patients, scientists and clinicians - organized by Pillar in Boston. Energizing optimism in the room all day! #womenshealth
For a clear description of what is in the new OMB grant-making regulations, see elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of... 1/2
Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science
elizabethginexi.substack.com
Huge congrats to newly minted Dr Jake Willows (yesterday) & Dr Tianyi Tao (today)!! Fantastic job! As tough as things are in science right now, it’s the PEOPLE who make it all worth it. 🎉🎉 🧪🧪
More on the destruction of US science. www.chronicle.com/article/they...
They Got the Best NIH Scores of Their Careers. A Year Later, They Still Don’t Have Funding.
The NIH’s spending on new medical research is significantly slower than in previous years, leaving confused scientists in the lurch.
chronicle.com
🧪 Sometimes you just need to knock-out a gene in adipose tissue. Not whole body, not a certain cell type driven by a cre-line. We share our novel approach employing light-inducible cre to target gene knockout to inguinal sc adipose www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
A non-invasive method for light-inducible knockout across all cell types in mouse subcutaneous adipose tissue
Cre recombination is a widely used technique for mechanistic insights in physiology and disease. However, available constitutive and inducible Cre systems present challenges that can be prohibitive...
tandfonline.com
🧪Sharing negative data & technical challenges w the research community is hugely important. Issues w Rax-Cre in adult KO were shared at conferences, but we show our findings here in print. Thank you @faseborg.bsky.social for a journal outlet for this type of finding! tinyurl.com/2t5htaz5
Methodological Challenges for Ablation of BMPR1A in Hypothalamic Tanycytes—A Cautionary Tale
The hypothalamus coordinates energy‐balance regulation and is also a neurogenic/plastic region in the adult brain. Tanycytes, a specialized population of radial glial‐like cells lining the third ventr...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Do brain circuits really sit in a 'soup' of neuromodulators? Are neurons like soggy bits of bread soaked in signaling factors? Is the whole brain just squelching around in one big pool of warm modulators?
In the last couple weeks, we've seen a remarkable number of food recalls due to salmonella contamination. So many, in fact, that it's worth our time to take a deeper look at some of the reasons why. 1/10
Dozens of popular snacks recalled due to salmonella contamination. See the growing list
The salmonella concerns have led to a number of popular products pulled from grocery store shelves, including popcorn, chips, nuts and more.
nbcchicago.com
In this Review, the authors discuss the current understanding of adipose progenitor subtypes, the plasticity of these cell types and their roles in metabolic health and disease (£) bit.ly/4ugB09p #EndoSky #MedSky
Always been a fan of lifelong learning and adult learner programs at universities. Just learned about the national OLLI program when I gave a talk for OLLI Denver last week. Wow!! More here and see if one is near you: 🧪🧪https://www.osherfoundation.org/olli.html
The somatic signals impacting consciousness…entering the mainstream with @michaelpollan.bsky.social 🧪 🧠 youtu.be/hYrgLn7pWp8?...
The More You Study Consciousness, the Weirder It Gets | The Ezra Klein Show
YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show
youtu.be
