Luikart Lab

@DMSabatini We've never had a Raptor or Rictor antibody that didn't stain the respective KO just as well as a WT. I'd love a believable immunostain to differentiate C1 and C2.

Someone having fun with mTOR antibody labelling

Mutations in PTEN cause neuronal hypertrophy & excess synaptogenesis linked to epilepsy. Prina et al. show that deleting Akt1 and Akt3 in Pten-conditional ko mice rescues these abnormalities and prevents seizures, identifying AKT as a therapeutic target. shorturl.at/pNXVI

@DrJKhokhar Thank you so much Jibran. I haven't even tweeted it yet!

Congrats @luikartlab!!

@zenbrainest @Addgene @rothlab Do you get any kickback on that? I just made a pretty cool rAAV-Halo7-Gria2-T2A-Cre. I'd love a system where I at least get free packaging of my own virus.

Last year @Addgene shipped 2,977 orders of @rothlab #chemogenetic viruses.

New agile release of NeuroMorpho.org available, v8.6.107, including 48 novel reconstructions in the Luikart archive. neuromorpho.org/WIN.jsp

@TakeshiImaiLab @DrJKhokhar @ScienceAdvances That fits with my view from work on dentate granule neurons. I dont doubt that the process is synapse specific, but I do think the idea of overproliferation and pruning is too often thought of as the default for "your favorite synapse".

@luikartlab @DrJKhokhar @ScienceAdvances I totally agree, as discussed on page 6. The increase in spine density suggests more formation than elimination, but we didn't directly examine the turnover. We didn't observe a reduction in 2-year-old mice.

Our new paper is out in @ScienceAdvances! We found that dendritic compartment-specific spine “formation” during adolescence is critical for cortical development. We also found that schizophrenia-related genes are important in this process. (1/6) science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

The field of neuroscience moves quickly, but you don’t have to. In this new Neuronline article, Morgan Edwards wants to remind you to trust the process and that slow science often leads to strong science. Read the full article here: vist.ly/4mi8s

Today is #WorldAIDSDay. It’s time to get back on track to end AIDS as a public health threat once and for all. Working together, we must deliver results at scale and prioritize communities at highest risk for HIV infection and with the least access to services. theglobalfund.org/en/events/worl…

Happening this Mon 1 December UNAIDS is co-hosting the #WorldAIDSDay2025 event with @WHO & @GlobalFund in Geneva Leaders, experts & communities will share how funding cuts are disrupting the HIV response and how they’re addressing this crisis Watch LIVE: UNAIDS X @ 3:30pm CET

Jeremy Barry and I will be at poster LBP027 tomorrow from 1-5pm. Looking forward to sharing a clinically relevant story for ASD and the science of memory. PTEN Knockout Regulates Neuronal Growth Through mTORC1 and Alters Action Potential Firing Through mTORC2 Signaling #Sfn2025

This is PTEN-Halo9 in vivo in dentate granule neurons. IV injected JFX647-halotag (cyan) and chased with JF552 (magenta) 8 hours later. This is a 10um thick Z-projection using 850nm excitation on the 2p. Happy #fluorescencefriday. Thanks @boazmohar and Lavislab.

#FluorescenceFriday Im not sure I've ever posted to fluorescence friday, but this is a happy little baby neuron playing with some mossy cell axons. youtube.com/shorts/eINlU_c…

@stetson_thacker Thanks for clarification!

@luikartlab He successfully edited CCR5 in the twins, but my understanding is that the edit did not result in the precise 32 basepair deletion. The ultimate effect of the edit is this unknown.

Context: CCR5-∆32, known for the HIV resistance it confers on homozygotes, has a hotly debated evolutionary history. It's the variant that He Jiankui tried to introduce in the first editing of the human germline with CRISPR/Cas.

@AllenInstitute @abhi_aggarwal1 @PodgorskiLab I cannot believe we are more concerned with what Holliday this represents than what the indicator is, what the neuronal prep is, and how the indicator was delivered to the neuronal prep. Happy shitty Twitter science, July.

The fireworks in your mind. 🧠✨ This sparkling video shows the neurotransmitter glutamate being released into synapses, made possible by an indicator developed by @abhi_aggarwal1, @PodgorskiLab, and team. #HappyNewYear #NYE

@JasonSynaptic Sorry to hear about this. It's going to be very difficult for careers to survive if we all have to hit under the 10th percentile.

Just got told by my NIA PO that I should probably resubmit my R01 (by July 5 lol), even though it scored a 10% and is on Alzheimer’s disease. Last year’s NIA paylines were 13% for regular R01s and 16% for AD grants..so WTF?! 😭🫠

I am deeply honored by this recognition but must thank the many postdoctoral fellows and PhD and MD-PhD students in my lab over the years whose creativity and hard work made this possible.

@zenbrainest And I have colleagues who don't think we will ever use DREADDS or opsins clinically. It's just a matter of time.

WOW!! A humanized Gs-coupled DREADD for circuit and behavior modulation frontiersin.org/journals/cellu…

@Chthonic_One @MiriamMerad This is an n of one for reasonable conversation on Twitter!

@luikartlab @MiriamMerad Agree 💯. Just an example, and definitely not scientific. I know a couple of PhDs who are quite brilliant. (Just not the ones my employer decided to hire. 😂)

Very sad to hear that UMass is rescinding all PhD admissions for Fall 2025. This means there will be no new PhD cohort, and UMass will not have a graduating class that year. This is just unprecedented and I am so very sorry for all the affected students.