Nicole received prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship

Dr. Nicole Noel has been awarded the prestigious CIHR Banting Postdoctoral fellowship to continue her project on modelling age-related macular degeneration in the emerging rapidly ageing model the killifish. Nicole joined the lab in 2022 on a BrightFocus postdoctoral fellowship and has made several exciting discoveries around the molecular mechanisms underpinning age-related degenerations, including those that are similar to what happens in human disease. Some of these findings were published earlier in 2024 with Nicole as co-first author (https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.14192). We can't wait to see what Nicole finds in the news few years!

https://banting.fellowships-bourses.gc.ca/en/2023-2024-eng.html

A double-win for the fish floor!

Massive congratulations to Giulia and Anya who both won prizes at the UCL Neuroscience Symposium.

Giulia (Bianco lab) won a prize for her poster about neural control of hunting sequences and Anya (formerly Rihel lab) won the early career prize for her work on synaptic changes during sleep.

A fantastic achievement and we’re all incredibly proud of them.

Natalia gets the cover of the Journal of Neuroscience

We're excited that an image from our PhD student Natalia Jaroszynska was awarded the cover of the upcoming issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Natalia is first author on a paper characterising c9orf72 mutant zebrafish in a collaboration between the MacDonald and Keatinge labs (https://www.jneurosci.org/content/44/25/e2128232024.long). This paper identifies potential retinal degeneration phenotypes in the eye that may be relevant for patients with motor neuron disease.  

Also cited here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioo/news/2024/jun/confocal-image-one-our-labs-cover-journal-neuroscience

Left Side Story: Cachd1, Wnt Signalling and Asymmetry

Rorscharch Test by Ana Faro

The new Wilson Lab paper in Science provides new insights into the development of brain asymmetry and the Wnt signalling pathway.

You can read the paper (don’t forget to check out the supplementary material too!) or for an easy intro to this exciting story read the lay summary on the UCL website.

Thanks and congratulations to all authors on this very collaborative study!

Links:
Press release: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/news/2024/may/left-side-story-new-insights-genetics-brain-asymmetry

Open Access paper at UCL Discovery: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10191627/

Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6970

Sleep pressure modulates single-neuron synapse number in zebrafish

New Nature paper from the Rihel Lab based on the PhD work of Anya Suppermpool

Synaptic Nightlife by Anya Suppermpool

During sleep, the brain weakens the new connections between neurons that had been forged while awake – but only during the first half of a night’s sleep, according to a new study in fish by UCL scientists.

Read more about this exciting study in this UCL press release.

or read the whole study at Nature!

Manganese neurotoxicity in wild-type zebrafish

New study from the Tuschl Lab: Our manuscript on manganese neurotoxicity in wild-type zebrafish is out – affecting morphology, neurogranin expression and locomotor behaviour! Collaboration between UCL and Dr Monica Folgueira’s group at University of A Coruña, Spain. From Anabel’s work during her lab visit in spring 2022.  https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/9/4933

Mie Wong finalist for the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women In Science Rising Talent Awards.

The L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science partnership aims to help empower more women scientists to achieve scientific excellence and participate equally in solving the great challenges facing humanity.

Mie Wong has been highly commended for the For Women In Science Rising Talent Life Sciences Award. Congratulations, Mie!

MacDonald Lab welcomes 2 new PhD students

Gina is a BBSRC LiDO student and Marybelle is a UCL Excellence Scholar. If you would like to read more about thier projects and interests click on the images below.

Marybelle Cameron-Pack

Gina Gilpin

Golsana Haghdousti upgrade to PhD

Golsana Haghdousti is the first student in the Tuschl lab to successfully pass her upgrade from MPhil to PhD – massive congratulations!!! 

Lab Christmas 2023

This year the lab celebrated 2023 with Christmas lunch at an Italian restaurant before heading off to axe throwing. Everyone had a great time and managed to leave with all of their fingers. 

Ryan celebrates his birthday!

Ryan turned 40 this year. So the lab bought him very useful tools for his old age. Manuela also made him his favourite type of cake - a Muller glia cake. 

Welcome new PhD student Ola Krzywanska

Ola earned her Master's degree in Neurosciences from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and conducted research for her master's thesis at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. There, she focused on developing patient-specific stem cell models to assess the safety and efficacy of antisense oligonucleotide therapy for dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy (DRPLA).

Driven by a keen interest in retinal biology and in vivo disease modeling, she joined the MacDonald Lab as a PhD student in October 2023. Her project aims to introduce the African turquoise killifish as a model for understanding molecular and cellular dysfunctions underpinning vision loss with ageing.

Outside the lab, Ola enjoys hiking trips, exploring London and watching cinema classics.

Welcome Lewis!

Lewis has joined the Bianco lab as a Research Technician. Welcome!

Aanandita Kothurkar wins the prize for the best MSc GHD dissertation of the year 2021/22

Aanandita Kothurkar wins the prize for the best MSc GHD dissertation of the year 2021/22 – huge congratulations!

The Wilson & Tuschl Labs are hiring a new Research Technician!

The Tuschl Lab uses manganese transporter mutant zebrafish as models for manganese overload/deficiency in order to dissect how metal dyshomeostasis disrupts neurons, synapses and circuit function with the view to identifying new therapeutic targets. In addition, we are working to develop a novel, orally bioavailable Mn chelator to improve treatment for disorders associated with Mn neurotoxicity. 

This role will provide technical support and research related activities by assisting with experimental procedures and analysis of results within Zebrafish UCL (http://zebrafishucl.org/wilson-lab; http://zebrafishucl.org/tuschl). The successful applicant will assist the lab with maintenance of various zebrafish lines, working on a daily basis with adult fish. The post is available from 1 January 2024 until 31 December 2024 as a fixed term contract. For more information about the role, please contact Prof Steve Wilson (s.wilson@ucl.ac.uk) or Dr Karin Tuschl (k.tuschl@ucl.ac.uk).

Lab BBQ

Summer in London now seems to be well and truely over, but the lab did manage to get together for a lovely BBQ on the last sunny (and very hot) Saturday of the season.

Photo taken by Joanna (on a real, film camera).

Understanding brain asymmetry | Wellcome Trust Discovery Award

The Wellcome Trust sent a film crew to the zebrafish labs to find out more about the work the Wilson and Bianco labs are doing to understand more about brain asymmetry.

Celebration to thank the undergraduates

The MacDonald lab went out to thank the 3 Bachelor students, Huanlin, Hiba and Nicole, who had joined the lab over the summer.

Congratulations to Ryan MacDonald who was promoted to Associate Professor

Six members of the academic staff of the Institute of Ophthalmology were promoted this year, amongst them is our PI Ryan MacDonald you got promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations!

Click here to find out more.

MacDonald lab at the 12th European Zebrafish Meeting

Manuela Lahne, Ryan MacDonald and Gregory Patient went to the annual European Zebrafish Meeting. Gregory presented his work with Iterative Bleaching Extends Multiplexity (IBEX) which is a highly multiplexed immunohistochemistry technique which allows multiple rounds of immunohistochemistry to be performed on a single tissue sample. More information can be found here.