Luciana Moreira visits the Wilson lab

Luciana Moreira visited the Wilson lab this October, along with her colleague Francisca Coutinho. At the Alves lab in the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA), Porto, they study the lysosomal storage disease mucopolysaccharidosis. The lab has recently decided to begin using zebrafish (with no prior experience!) to model these diseases and approached the Wilson lab for help. Luciana and Francisca were given training by Hande and Stephen in generating CRISPR F0s (along with lots of general fish advice), with help from Francois, Declan, Elena and many other members of the fish floor. We had a great time hosting Luciana and Francisca and welcome them to the zebrafish community!

A Structural Atlas of the Developing Zebrafish Telencephalon

The Wilson Lab in collaboration with Monica Folgueira from the University of A Coruña have published a paper focussed on the development of the telencephalon. We had a lot of help from some other Wilson Lab alumni: Pedro, Leo Valdivia and Isaac Bianco.

This paper forms part of a Research topic for the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy: Teleostean Forebrain Organization and Evolution: Links to Behaviour and Ecological Niche

Application call for new Optical Biology PhD programme starting at UCL September 2020

UCL is now accepting applications for the Wellcome funded Optical Biology PhD programme.

The first cohort of 5 students will start in September 2020. Please go to the
Optical Biology website at https://opticalbiology.org/ for information on how to apply.

Adverts will appear on findaphd.com and in Nature from 30th October.
The deadline for applications is 13 December 2019.

Follow the program on twitter for more updates.
To study with us as part of this exciting new program see https://opticalbiology.org/'

We are hiring!

Are you a talented and enthusiastic post-doc looking to work on nervous system development and function in zebrafish?  If so, we are currently recruiting to our exciting and collaborative research team.

Our group uses zebrafish to investigate brain and eye development, from early morphogenesis to circuit formation and behaviour (http://zebrafishucl.org/wilson-lab#wilson-lab/about-us ).  One focus for our research is upon left-right asymmetry; the developmental and genetic mechanisms by which asymmetries are established and encoded in circuits and how such asymmetries impact behaviour.

The zebrafish community and UCL more widely offers a vibrant and very collaborative research environment, state-of-the art facilities and close proximity to many other research institutes of excellence.

Here is the link to the job description and application process:

https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?SID=amNvZGU9MTgxOTc4MSZ2dF90ZW1wbGF0ZT05NjUmb3duZXI9NTA0MTE3OCZvd25lcnR5cGU9ZmFpciZicmFuZF9pZD0wJnZhY194dHJhNTA0MTE3OC41MF81MDQxMTc4PTkyNzg2JnZhY3R5cGU9MTI3NiZsb2NhdGlvbl9jb2RlPTE1OTYxJnBvc3RpbmdfY29kZT0yMjQ=

We are also recruiting one or maybe two technical positions to our group.

Rodrigo Young's work on eye size published in Elife

Read the Elife Digest of Rodrigo’s paper, “Compensatory growth renders Tcf7l1a dispensable for eye formation despite its requirement in eye field specification” here:

https://elifesciences.org/digests/40093/eye-size-is-pre-programmed-in-zebrafish

or watch this great video for a simple explanation of Rod’s findings.

Anna Krasnow's work on myelination is published in Nature Neuroscience

Anna Krasnow, a PhD student on the Wellcome Trust Neuroscience program, has just published her study on myelination in Nature Neuroscience. Anna, who is predominently based in David Attwell's lab at UCL, collaborated with Leo Valdivia in Steve Wilson's group on this work. The resulting paper looks at the role that calcium transients in oligodendrocytes have on the developing myelin sheath. Anna found that neuronal activity raises calcium levels in developing oligodendrocytes and that myelin sheath elongation is promoted by high frequency calcium transients. 

Congratulations Anna et al on a beautiful study!

Click this link to read the accompanying News and Views piece on this study in Nature Neuroscience. 

Kate Turner's image selected as top 100 winning images for Nikon Small World Competition

The image of a mechano-sensory neuron covering the tail fin in a larval zebrafish has been selected as one of the top 100 winning images for the Nikon Small World Competition. The ranking of the selected images will be announced in October so cross your fingers for Kate!