What a difference a year makes! I’ve grown so much thanks to my post-bacc opportunity and I can’t wait to see what’s to come in my graduate studies.

@lsuresearch.bsky.social Discover Day 2026: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my research with the community!

Now in press @pnas.org! Thread below with some of this story's highlights and contributions. Excited to dig into all the cool questions this project generated about how the wound epidermis works during limb regeneration.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Amazing photography by my co-mentor Dr. Emily Kane, a professor at University of Louisiana Lafayette.✨Reach out to her if you’re interested in getting professional photos of your model organisms for publications or just for fun.
-Just Add Water photography
justaddwater.picfair.com

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Louisiana Sea Grant Oyster Research Lab in Grande Isle, LA with my LAGNiAppE cohort. Hanging out on the beach was a nice touch.

www.laseagrant.org/outreach/aqu...

Preprint out!
Salamanders harbor a hypersensitive mTOR, thought to enable their remarkable limb regeneration. But do you need a special mTOR to regrow appendages?
In Polypterus, we find that a canonical mTOR pathway supports full appendage regeneration.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A photo of an elongated, matte-brown, prehistoric-looking Australian lungfish named Methuselah, resting on the sandy bottom of her tank at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. She has yellow patches near her small eyes. Several other much smaller Australian rainbow fish are also in the tank. She is probably in her 90s and has been at the aquarium since 1938.

This is Methuselah, an Australian lungfish whom I first met at the Steinhart Aquarium in 1976. She is probably in her 90s, and has been at the Steinhart since 1938. I love her.
🐟👵

Enhancer-directed gene delivery for digit regeneration based on conserved epidermal factors Limb loss remains a significant clinical challenge, but regenerative medicine approaches such as gene therapy offer a promising strategy to trigger endogenous regeneration programs. Optimal vector con...

🚨 Preprint Friday! 🚨

Thrilled to highlight this collab with David Brown at Duke @cutitoutdave.bsky.social and Ken Poss at UW Madison/Morgridge @kenposs.bsky.social. By comparing 3(!!) regenerating models we identify a conserved role for Sp-family TFs in appendage regeneration (and more).....🧵

DEADLINE APPROACHING!

Apply to Zebrafish Development and Genetics by March 2. This two-week course is designed advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and independent investigators.

Financial aid is available.

🔗More info here: go.mbl.edu/zebrafish

Breaking: Regeneration of fins and limbs relies on a shared cellular playbook! Covered in @sciencenews.bsky.social by the amazing Elizabeth Pennisi

Fav quote: "The red blood cell thing blew my mind."
@lsu.bsky.social @lsuscience.bsky.social @ischneider.bsky.social

Regeneration of fins and limbs relies on a shared cellular playbook The findings strengthen the case that regeneration is an old trait, offering insights into how complex tissues rebuild themselves.

www.sciencenews.org/article/rege... @josanesousa.bsky.social @gabrielalima19.bsky.social @perezlouise.bsky.social @patyschneider22.bsky.social

Deep-sea fish reveal an alternative developmental trajectory for vertebrate vision Hybrid photoreceptors in larval deep-sea fish reveal evolution of an alternative developmental trajectory for vertebrate vision.

#Fish #vision #deepsea

"The current dogma is that vertebrates develop cone-dominated retinas first, adding rods later. Here we show that larval deep-sea fishes have “hybrid” photoreceptors, expressing cone-specific genes in rod-like cells."

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Have you ever seen a Wild Type axolotl?

Ambystoma mexicanum is the natural, dark-colored version of the salamander, usually in shades of brown, green or black with spots. The dark color camouflages them in the muddy, shallow lakes of Mexico, to hide from predators. 🧪

📸 Murawala Lab at MDI Bio Lab

A #fluorescencefriday — just in time for Valentine's Day! ❤️

The Godwin Lab at MDI Bio Lab perfects a new method of illuminating the #axolotl heart with a red #fluorescentprotein to simplify the identification of animals with gene deletions during embryonic development.

🧪 🧬 #microscopy

Scientists at MDI Bio Lab developed a transgenic #zebrafish that mimics human muscle aging in just weeks — a leap forward for #sarcopenia research. Read how this model could speed discovery of therapies to keep muscles strong as we age. 🧪 🐟🎸 👩‍🔬 🧬

mdibl.org/mdi-bio-lab-...

Thank you for the opportunity to visit. I had such a great time!

We welcomed new #GSBSE hopefuls to MDI Bio Lab for tours, conversations, and a BTS look at our science in action. The Graduate School of #BiomedicalScience & #Engineering connects PhD students with researchers across Maine’s leading institutions through a powerful, collaborative network. 🧬 🧪 #PhDSky

📘 New paper in Maine Policy Review from the University of Maine, "Public Health Concerns at the Intersection of Drinking Water Contamination and Low Healthcare Access in Maine" with Alexis Garretson (she/her), Richard Hilliard, Jane Disney & team.

🦤 #conservation 🧪 🍎 👩‍🔬 🌎

It’s National Day of the Mexican Axolotl! @ischneider.bsky.social @josanesousa.bsky.social @perezlouise.bsky.social @lsuresearch.bsky.social @lsu.bsky.social @lsuscience.bsky.social #axolotl

New in @dev-journal.bsky.social, “Reciprocal inhibition of Wnt signaling pathways pattern the interconnection of epithelial tubules in the regenerating zebrafish kidney” with Caramai Kamei, Iain Drummond & team.

🧪 🐟🎸 #ScientificResearchPublishing

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

UMAP of single nucleus RNAseq dataset of Polypterus fin regeneration

Hey Regen folks 👋 Excited to share that our single-nucleus RNA-seq dataset for Polypterus fin regeneration is now live at the Broad Institute portal! Dive in here: tinyurl.com/5bck22jx
Big thanks to the team for making this happen—looking forward to seeing what you all discover!

A bit late but a paper from our lab has been published!
Human fingertip regeneration is a fact, it happens in children and adults (not only in children as it has been long believed). We describe here the regenerative phases and analyse the proteome of wound exudates.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s out! 🐟 We compared three regeneration superstars—axolotl, zebrafish, and Polypterus—to ask how animals regrow limbs and fins. We find shared core processes, and other programs fine-tuned by evolution in surprising, lineage-specific ways. tinyurl.com/mpftkn7y

Our regeneration superstar showing off its beautiful fins #polypterussenegalus

Just here to share pretty colors: HCR- fish image, regenerating fin section, African lungfish. Lungfish have 8 myoglobin gene copies and you are seeing the two most highly expressed copies in green and red. Interesting how these gene duplicates are expressed in either the muscle or the skin.

MDI Bio Lab had a great week with Southern Maine Community College at a week-long #MaineINBRE course, Stem Cells and Regeneration in Planarians. Students studied stem cells and regeneration in planarian flatworms!

Post-application Graduate School Interviews Are a Two-Way Conversation: How to Prepare and What to Ask After completing your undergraduate degree and securing a graduate school interview invitation, prepare to showcase your research interests and goals. Tailor your responses to common questions and …

It's that time of year after graduate school applications are submitted to start preparing for zoom and in-person interviews. I hope this blog post is helpful to those in the same boat.
madisonadamsbio.com/2025/12/21/p...

Axolotl regeneration stickers made by my friend Isabella Carollo for the Igor Schneider lab outreach! If you would like to check out more of Isabella’s art, her artstation account is linked here: belladonna9632.artstation.com

Great opportunity for undergrads to experience the magic of MBL and have an immersive research experience.

ReBilD: Emerging Leaders in Regenerative Biology and Development 2026

Applications are open for the Emerging Leaders on Regenerative Biology and Development (ReBilD) course @mdibl.org Here’s an opportunity for researchers at any level to get hands-on lab experience with a variety of regeneration models and network with leading faculty.

mdibl.org/course/rebil...