Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Ahead of #WorldParkinsonsDay 🧠, we’re highlighting the work of Dr. Avi Samelson, who seeks to uncover the mechanisms that drive protein aggregation — a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. Learn more about his research: stemcell.ucla.edu/member-directory/avi-sam...

Artemis II Astronaut Decapitated By Telephone Pole After Sticking Head Out Window

Artemis II Astronaut Decapitated By Telephone Pole After Sticking Head Out Window

Colorful shower curtain hanging up in front of a bath tub next to a stool and towels.

🚨 New lab website is now live 🚨

mfwellslab.com

Stop by to take a look at our ongoing projects, learn about the amazing people on the team, and browse official lab merch including Wells Lab shower curtains (I am not joking).

@cirmnews.bsky.social

This grant is the reason I drink coffee.

We started writing in 2023 for the CIRM ReMIND-L initiative. The late night sessions forced me into the coffee world for the first time in my life at 38.

Thanks CIRM for supporting our UCLA team and cell village experiments to study ASD and schizophrenia.

Beyond the baseline: mapping the context-specific regulatory landscape of disease Genome-wide association studies have identified thousands of intergenic variants associated with disease, most of which are presumed to act by affecti…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Laboratory Assistant II - Human Genetics - UCLA Health Careers - Job #29031 - Los Angeles, CA Take a look at a great career opportunity where you can make a real difference at UCLA Health

We're hiring villagers!

We are looking for a lab technician to help us discover how gene-by-environment interactions shape the developing brain via in vitro cell villages. Please DM me or visit our website at mfwellslab dot com for more info.

Deadline to apply is March 11th: tinyurl.com/34seyjaj

Happy to see this work out now in Genome Biology! Check out the final version here for your FACS DMS needs: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Welcome to hell my friend

Before I turn 40 tomorrow, I want to share some advice: Beware bragging about your kids.

Last month, I was proudly telling everyone that my 3-yr-old son loved mature artists like Childish Gambino, Radiohead, & Gorillaz.

Today, he made me play "Taco Farts" by Mr. Farts 7 times en route to daycare.

I just wasted half my day on this. I keep getting a "try again later" error when I try to link my ORCID and can't figure out who to email for technical support.

Stress-induced loss of CTCF reveals an alternative, promoter-based mode of cohesin looping Cells continually encounter environmental stressors that challenge homeostasis. How three-dimensional (3D) chromatin structure contributes to these stress responses, particularly under hyperosmotic co...

Excited to finally share what I’ve been working on during my PhD 😊 Best holiday gift EVER!

We just posted a new preprint from the @dphansti.bsky.social 👇

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵

NIH funding rates for early-career researchers plunged in 2025, new data show A Trump administration change to how NIH awards grants has sharply reduced early-stage investigators’ odds of securing funding.

New story in STAT with data about Early Stage Investigators

www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/n...

1/4

Generating 3D mouse organoids for cortex development and evo-devo How do cis-regulatory differences, across mouse subspecies over timescales, shape cell-type specification and maturation during corticogenesis? In this issue of Developmental Cell, Medina-Cano et al. ...

Nice preview of our paper by Hanwen Yu and Yan Liu.

Generating 3D mouse organoids for cortex development and evo-devo: Developmental Cell www.cell.com/developmenta...

another must-read from @sashagusevposts.bsky.social

NEXT TUE: DDD seminar, Dec. 16, 2025 @ 1PM Eastern US:
Dr. Tommy Vierbuchen @tvierbuchen.bsky.social will share his recent work on on cell villages using outbred mice: "A pluripotent stem cell platform for in vitro systems genetics studies of mouse brain development". carlocolantuoni.org/seminar

Are you a senior grad student or new post-doc in genetics/genomics?

Apply now for the 2026 Emerging Genomic Scientist Symposium hosted by the UCLA Human Genetics department.

To apply: medschool.ucla.edu/about/depart...

DM me if you have any questions and please spread the word

We used rabies virus 👾 to map how #psilocybin modifies long-range circuits 🧠, revealing network-specific reorganization that we didn’t expect.

The full study is now online at Cell. @cp-cell.bsky.social

Paper 👉 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Thread for a synopsis 👉
bsky.app/profile/alex...

Someone get me (genetic epidemiologist) & my husband (school psychologist) on a podcast bc our rants on these people are...fiery. We spent 5y in the bay around these folks and oh boy.

I'm also so sick of these puff pieces that avoid saying plainly what this actually is. Shoddy science for eugenics.

Not to brag, but Steve gives a shout out to my 3-year-old son in the intro of this book.

(I lied, this is a brag)

(Also, go buy this book, it is great)

Applications are open for the Postdoctoral Enrichment Program (PDEP)—supporting postdocs as they advance cutting-edge research and build thriving scientific careers.
Learn more & apply: bwfund.org/pdep #bwfpdep

Soooooo cool

Bart De Strooper's lab used microglia villages to show that Alzheimer’s polygenic risk translates into a stronger immune response to amyloid

assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-779...

NEXT TUE: DDD seminar, Nov. 18, 2025 @ 1PM Eastern US: Continuing our focus on approaches to the study of many pluripotent stem cell lines, Dr. Michael Wells @mfwells.bsky.social will share his recent work on "cell villages". seminar info: carlocolantuoni.org/seminar [repost to spread the word]

The first (of hopefully many) reports to come from our collaboration with @hjp.bsky.social

We present a new type of cell fitness assay that allows you to both quantify and explain differences across human donors in cell proliferation and sensitivity to environmental toxicants.

Super excited to get this out. This collab started a few years ago and is the first paper from it. Here, with experimental and computational approaches we:

1. establish that cell villages can be just as accurate (one might argue more accurate!) than arrayed-based designs

bsky.app/profile/bior...

The Neuronal Primary Cilium is a Key Regulator of Homeostatic Plasticity The capacity of neurons to maintain stable activity levels through homeostatic plasticity is essential for proper brain function. Primary cilia, which are non-motile, antenna-like organelles projectin...

New #cilia preprint alert

Our latest manuscript is now live on bioRxiv:
"The Neuronal Primary Cilium is a Key Regulator of Homeostatic Plasticity"

We hope you enjoy reading it!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CRISPR activation for SCN2A-related neurodevelopmental disorders - Nature Using SCN2A haploinsufficiency as a proof-of-concept, upregulation of the existing functional gene copy through CRISPR activation was able to rescue neurological-associated phenotypes in Scn2a haploin...

CRISPR activation restores expression of a haploinsufficient neuronal sodium channel, rescuing neuronal deficits associated with multiple neurodevelopmental disorders. #NBThighlight www.nature.com/articles/s41...

$29.95?? IN THIS ECONOMY????

How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past Buy How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

Good morning everyone!
So, I wrote a book (!!) and it’s coming out November 4th in physical and audiobook form. It’s called *How to Change a Memory*

www.amazon.com/How-Change-M...