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Lab news

June 2024:

      • Our long-term, highly collaborative, mouse ageing study is now ‘officially’ out in Aging Cell (link)! We studied cytoplasmic viscosity and various aspects of mitochondrial homeostasis in models of murine neuronal ageing. Have a look at this substantial piece of work in which we provide fundamental new insight on the ageing process of neurons in these models.

May 2024:

      • The 2nd MIA Ageing Spring School in Coimbra (Portugal) has been an absolute blast (link)! Great speakers, fresh programme and very friendly atmosphere. Plus our own Emily has bagged yet another prize – best talk this time! (link)

April 2024:

      • Welcome to Joel and Marta (MSc Clinical Neuroscience), and Cameron (MSc Neuroscience) who are starting very cool projects in the lab studying neuronal cargo movement in flies by live cell imaging.

March 2024:

      • Huge congrats to Kristal and Emily, two newly minted ‘COVID generation’ Dr of Neuroscience! Incredibly proud of their journey and their vast contribution to the lab. Our group is a better place to work thanks to them. Many thanks to the examiners Isabel Palacios, Nazif Alic, Mike Devine, and Brent Ryan.

February 2024:

      • It was nice to see this work on mitochondria-lysosome contact sites published (link), a further output of our collaborative effort with the group of Tito Calì at the University of Padova. Very well done to everyone involved, and a particular thank you to Lucia who gave an important scientific and personal contribution to our lab!

January 2024:

      • Auf Wiedersehen Mainz! Nice and productive (although too short!) visit to talk about lab progress and learn from an impressive scientific community. I wish I could have stayed longer to indulge the lovely winter weather!

 

Thanks Axel, Carlotta, Carsten, Eva-Maria, Marion, Martin, Nard, and the many others at the iDN/IMB/JGU departments for the stimulating questions and discussions.

 

 

December 2023:

      • Have a good break everyone – see you in 2024!
        PS: Thanks Nunu for booking the venue and reminding me it would be good to finally have a group picture!!

      • Alessio is presenting at the 3rd RESETageing Training School, part of the RESETageing initiative (link). Thanks to the organisers for the opportunity and the awesome meeting and hospitality!

October 2023:

      • Alessio is presenting at the EDRC in Lyon in the Ageing workshop organised by Helena Cochemé and Gilles Storelli (link). It was so good to catch up with many old friends and colleagues and hear about great new science!
      • Tia is starting as a PhD student in the lab! Looking forward to even more exciting live imaging!

September 2023:

      • New preprint from the lab (link) in collaboration with the Schiavo and Sleigh groups (UCL IoN) and the Suhling lab at the KCL Strand campus. This highly collaborative and long-term study focuses on important aspects of mitochondrial homeostasis in models of mouse PNS ageing and explores the viscosity and diffusiveness of the neuronal cytoplasm in this context.
      • Alessio is participating in the Groningen-Jena Aging Meeting (G-JAM) jointly organised by the European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA) and Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI)(link). An excellent opportunity to learn new science and meet new colleagues in the ageing field.
      • Alessio is going to the new NeuroBioUK meeting in York (link) which aims to bring together the neuronal and glial cell biology community in the UK. Exciting to be chairing the first session of this much-needed community space!
      • The BSRA annual scientific meeting is on at the University of Westminster (link). Always good to bask in the familiar atmosphere of a BSRA meeting!

August 2023:

      • Our Split-Miro paper has been accepted in PLOS Biology (link)! Many congrats to all the people involved to bring the work to completion.

June 2023:

      • The whole lab is at the Francis Crick Institute to participate in the Gene to Cells (G2C) symposium. We have posters and Nunu is giving a talk. Very nice atmosphere (and pizza and beers).

April 2023:

      • The whole lab is in Nottingham for the Biochemical Society scientific meeting on Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Neurodegeneration. We have posters and Alessio is giving a talk on mouse ageing (what??). This has capped a busy tour of Albion during the past months, going from Exeter to Newcastle, from Manchester to Liverpool. No, it wasn’t about football.
      • Emily has won a poster prize at the Biochemical Society meeting! This goes with her winning a talk prize at the KCL Neuroscience PhD Symposium – it keeps on coming!

March 2023:

      • Lucia is sadly leaving for a second time. We will all miss her to bits…but we have not done yet! At the same time, we welcome Nunu who is joining us after recently being granted leave to supplicate from Oxford, as they say there…

February 2023:

      • Lucia gave a very nice talk at the London Fly Meeting and generated good discussion. Lucia, you became a fly specialist in no time!

October 2022:

      • We have submitted a preprint describing Francesca’s Split-Miro work. Huge congrats to Fran for this achievement and to Evie for her great support. I am very pleased with the outcome.

September 2022:

      • Kristal gave a nice talk at NeuroFly in St. Malo about her new tools for live imaging in fly neurons. Alessio took a poster like in the old good times. St. Malo – what a place, and what a nice conference! Over to you Birmingham.

July 2022:

      • Very pleased we have been awarded a research project grant from the Leverhulme Trust to develop our work on mitochondrial dynamics combined with optogenetics. We will be looking to recruit a postdoctoral researcher soon.
      • Our collaborative work describing the Drosophila ortholog of mammalian Pdzd8 and the consequences of reducing pdzd8-mediated MERCS in Drosophila neurons is published in Life Science Alliance (link). Congrats to all involved!

June 2022:

      • Congratulations to Emily who won the BCN best talk prize at the KCL Neuroscience PhD Symposium! Smashed it!
      • Visa nightmare is over – Lucia has come back as a postdoctoral research assistant to pick up where she had left last year and continue her work on mitochondrial contact sites in neurons.

March 2022:

      • Francesca had her PhD VIVA and successfully defended her thesis. First PhD student from the lab and she passed with flying colours. Impressive job. Very well done!

October 2021:

      • Alessio is talking at the Axonal Degeneration and Regeneration Workshop at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (Japan) (link). Nice focused meeting – just a pity we couldn’t get to visit the beautiful Okinawa!
      • Francesca will kick off the new season of the London Fly Meeting. Very nice to be able to meet people in person again (and to finally have a lab outing afterwards!).

September 2021:

      • Evie is starting a PhD with us after a lab rotation through the MRC-DTP scheme. She will co-supervised by Deepak Srivastava (BCN, MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders) and will work on the interplay between intracellular trafficking and neuronal health during ageing and neurodegeneration.

August 2021:

      • Lucia is coming over for a few months from the University of Padova, Italy (Calí group). She will do live imaging of the contact sites between the mitochondria and other cellular organelles in flies.

June 2021:

      • Congratulations to Kristal who won the BCN PhD poster prize at the KCL Neuroscience PhD Symposium! Well deserved Kris!

May 2021:

      • Two new preprints from the lab posted in Research Square. Both are step-by-step methods for studying the dynamics of neuronal mitochondria, one in Drosophila in vivo (bit.ly/3vicuGT) and another in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells (bit.ly/3wtxKcK). The preprints include super-resolution imaging of mitochondrial transport in adult Drosophila and the generation of new transgenic Drosophila lines for CALI experiments (bit.ly/3vicuGT), and super-resolution imaging of mitochondrial and mtDNA dynamics in the neurites of cultured neuronal-like cells (bit.ly/3wtxKcK).
      • Alessio is giving a (remote) talk at the Oxford University Chemistry and Biochemistry (OUCB) Society. The talk will be centred around intracellular trafficking, neurodegeneration and neuronal ageing.

March 2021:

      • Francesca will be giving a talk at the Dynamic Cell IV conference. She will be showing some of her PhD work which includes our own foray into optogenetics.

November 2020:

      • We contributed to this collaborative study spearheaded by Victoria Hewitt from the Whitworth and Polleux labs (MRC-MBU and Columbia University). The study describes the Drosophila ortholog of mammalian Pdzd8 and the consequences of reducing pdzd8-mediated MERCS in Drosophila neurons.
      • Great to participate in the Biological Sciences virtual seminar series of the University of Buffalo. Very good discussion and insightful comments about previous and current work of the lab. It was nice to see many curious students asking such good questions!

July 2020:

      • István is (remotely) with us for two months thanks to a summer studentship from the British Society for Cell Biology. He will work on an in silico project which aims to characterise the intracellular trafficking and functionality of mitochondria in the neurons of mouse dorsal root ganglia.
      • After just over three months of closure due to lockdown, the lab reopened (and we are quite happy about it). Yes, we are working at very reduced capacity but we take it!

March 2020:

      • Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, as of 20th March we are temporary suspending all research activities. The lab is transitioning onto a remote-working routine.

January 2020:

      • Alessio starts the year by giving a talk at the 28th Israel Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in the session ‘Mitochondria in the CNS in health and disease’. He will then give a talk at Tel Aviv University to further discuss some of the new work from the lab.

December 2019:

      • We are going to participate to the UK Trafficking meeting that will take place on 16th December in the Cruciform Building at UCL, with a reception at the LMCB after.
      • Our collaborative work with the Miller lab (King’s College London) shows that phosphorylation of kinesin light chain on a specific residue is important to modulate APP trafficking and metabolism in neurons of rats and fruit flies and in HEK293 cells (link)
      • Sandy joins the lab as a postdoctoral research assistant to work on the cell biology of mouse dorsal root ganglion neurons (DRGs) during ageing.

November 2019:

      • Alessio will return to Cambridge to present new results from the group at the Cambridge Fly Club (Gurdon Institute).

October 2019:

      • Kristal joins the lab as PhD candidate to work on the link between mitochondrial dysfunction and intracellular trafficking in Drosophila and mammalian cells.

September 2019:

      • Emily starts her PhD with us to study how intracellular trafficking is governed in a model of human neuronal ageing.

August 2019:

    • Our Mini Review on axonal transport during ageing has been published in Frontiers Cellular Neuroscience (link)! Our article is part of the research topic “The Fast and the Furious: Axonal Transport Defects in Sickness, Injury and Aging”.