Former MacDonald lab members move onwards and upwards!

The most impactful thing we can do is train and support people to progress their careers, and ultimate reach their career goals. Three former members of the lab have gone on to further their academic careers.

Dr. Manuela Lahne was a postdoc in the lab from 2022-2023. She will start this fall as a tenure-track Lecturer at Queen Mary University in the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences.

Dr. Natalia Jaroszynska was the first PhD student in the MacDonald lab at UCL. She has completed her degree and now moved on as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Caroline Hill at the Crick Institute. 

Ms. Aanandita Kothurkar joined as a Research technician after her MSc at UCL in 2022-2024. She has now started her PhD as part of the prestigious BBSRC WhiteRose PhD Programme at the University of Sheffield in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Lin. 

We're proud to have played a small part in their careers and can't wait to see all that they accomplish!

Tuschl Lab seeking a Research Assistant

The Tuschl Lab at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH), University College London are looking for an experienced Research Assistant to focus on a grant to determine whether mRNA therapy can rescue a rare disorder of childhood characterised by manganese overload in the brain causing a disabling movement disorder. This proof-of-concept study will utilise cell and mouse models that mirror the human phenotype. For more information on the role please contact Dr Karin Tuschl (k.tuschl@ucl.ac.uk; http://zebrafishucl.org/tuschl)

Circuit control of saccadic eye movements

Check out our preprint in which we describe the neural circuits that control two types of saccadic eye movement. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.12.607184

When they’re hunting, zebrafish generate a specialised type of saccadic eye movement which differs from those used during routine visual exploration. We discover that these saccades are controlled by topographically organised subsets of motoneurons that are in turn controlled by two parallel premotor pathways — one is a generalist pathway used for all types of saccade and second is an action-specific pathway dedicated to hunting.

Congratulations to first author Charlie Dowell on a fantastic paper.

Mini-golf and cake

To mark Monique’s last day in the lab, Lewis baked what is perhaps the most impressive cake ever seen on the FishFloor

And we played mini-golf..!

Steve Wilson awarded the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Award 2024

The Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Award is given for outstanding achievements in genetics research using zebrafish as a model system. It is fantastic to have Steve’s career-long contributions to the Zebrafish community and his research achievements recognised. Steve presented the award lecture at the International Zebrafish Society conference in Kyoto. You can read more about the award here.

Photos courtesy of Emre Yaksi and the European Zebrafish Society

Mirror-assisted light-sheet microscopy

The Bianco lab’s paper introducing mirror-assisted light-sheet microscopy (mLSM) is now published in Neurophotonics.

This is a simple and elegant solution that uses a tiny mirrored prism to illuminate the ~25% of the zebrafish brain that is normally inaccessible to a laterally directed light sheet.

Congratulations to Asaph on a great paper.

Government minister visits UCL to explore life sciences research

and stops to feed the fish!

Baroness Gillian Merron, the Health Minister responsible for life sciences and innovation, toured some of UCL’s life sciences facilities including the UCL Zebrafish Facility and the Fish Floor Labs to see first-hand how our research is helping to tackle some of the world’s biggest health challenges.

Read more about the visit here.

Welcome to summer students Kristen, Matias and Joshua!

It's that time of year again and we are lucky to welcome three students to the laboratory for the summer. We have Kristen, 2nd year UCL undergrad, that will be joining Xhuljana to work on glial development projects. Joshua, Cambridge undergrad, who received a bursary from Churchill College Camrbidge to work with Nicole on a Killifish retinal ageing project.  Matias, PhD student with Leo Valdivia in Chile, who will join us on a EMBO short-term fellowship to look at new genes involved in Muller glia development.  

Zebrafish and MacDonald lab highlighted in the 2024 Moorfields Eye Chairty Impact Report

Moorfields Eye Charity is the leading charity in the UK funding research into eye health and innovation and improvement in patient care to help patients at Moorfields and globally. The MacDonald lab in incredibly grateful for the support from the charity, which includes PhD studentships and Springboard awards, allowing them to expediate their exploration into glial mechanisms of health and disease. Importantly, the charity has also funded several equipment grants to build a dedicated aquatics suite in the Institute of Ophthalmology. Initially this was just zebrafish in 2019, however in 2024 the unit was expanded to house the emerging ageing model, Killifish. This gives the MacDonald lab, and several other research groups (Moosajee, Young, Futter), access to state of the art facilties to house their animals and conduct world leading eye research.   

https://moorfieldseyecharity.org.uk/downloads/Impact-report-2024-final-low-res.pdf

Sleep vs Asymmetry

Anya and Gareth contemplating their next scientific challenges following publication of their papers on consecutive days.

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We are so proud!

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.