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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · 1d

Very grateful to @byneuron.bsky.social for his unwavering support and mentorship with many project ideas over the years (beginning as a rotation student in my first year of grad school!) 🥹

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · 1d

Beautiful new work by @manduh21.bsky.social and our team! Clumsy, a kainate-type glutamate receptor, mediates noxious cold sensation and cold behavioral avoidance in fruit flies. This expands our prior work demonstrating this class of receptors also functions as a cold receptor in worms and mammals.

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2d

Cold sensing by a glutamate receptor drives avoidance behavior in Drosophila larvae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.05.680544v1

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Nicolas Mathevon @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social · 25d

Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice. 👇 New paper by the ENES Bioacoustics Research Team in @currentbiology.bsky.social

authors.elsevier.com/a/1llMH3QW8S...

authors.elsevier.com

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Sep 4

Proud to share this work, which we spearheaded as a team with several early-career scientists (including myself and the brilliant @manduh21.bsky.social )🌱

Grateful to @byneuron.bsky.social for continued mentoring & encouraging us to harness LabGym’s abilities across model organisms!

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Sep 4

We developed LabGym models capable of automatic quantification of key worm behaviors:

🪱 Forward vs. reverse locomotion
🪱 Omega bends & overlapping postures
🪱 Multi-worm tracking
🪱 Quantifying behavior across lifespan

Our approach can be customized by users to include other behaviors of interest.

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Sep 4

New preprint with @manduh21.bsky.social ! 🎉 We introduce LabGym, an open-source AI platform for analyzing C. elegans behavior.🪱

LabGym makes worm behavior analysis accurate, customizable, and accessible, no coding or costly setup required.

bioRxiv Animal Behavior and Cognition @biorxiv-behav.bsky.social · Sep 4

Automated analysis of C. elegans behavior by LabGym: an open-source, AI-powered platform https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.28.672961v1

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Aug 1

Can you add me? Thanks!

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Bing Ye @byneuron.bsky.social · Jul 31

LabGym has been used in reseach across many labs. The latest example is this excellent study from
@jjemrick.bsky.social lab. cell.com/cell-reports...
@cp-cellreports.bsky.social @elizabithian.bsky.social

Intradental mechano-nociceptors serve as sentinels that prevent tooth damage

Ronan et al. explore the function of trigeminal sensory neurons innervating the inner tooth—herein, intradental neurons. They determine these specialized cells respond to damage of the enamel and init...

cell.com

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Aug 1

Register to attend the virtual 2025 LabGym Symposium! LabGym is a powerful and customizable AI-based tool enabling automated quantification of behavior (+ more!)

Bing Ye @byneuron.bsky.social · Jul 31

🧵 I’m excited to announce that the 2025 LabGym Symposium & Tutorial will be held online via Zoom on Friday, August 22, 2025. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about cutting-edge AI-based behavioral analysis! www.lsi.umich.edu/events/2025-...
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LabGym Symposium

LabGym is a free software suite for automated video analysis and quantification of animal behavior. LabGym has now been downloaded over 55,000 times from GitHub in just about two years. The 2024 LabGy...

www.lsi.umich.edu

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · Jul 30

Really interesting (ha ha i can't stand this roller coaster) back and forth on NIH funding. 9 Senate Republicans sent a letter warning Vought not to hold NIH funds. Vought tries to hold NIH funds. He loses. [though still lots of budget shenanigans] www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding

The administration halted and then restarted billions in new research grants flowing from the National Institutes of Health.

www.wsj.com

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett.bsky.social · Jul 30

This “administration” acts like it’s playing musical chairs with people’s lives.

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Piali Sengupta @senguptalab.bsky.social · Jul 30

Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science!

Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · Jul 29

A lateralized sensory signaling pathway mediates context-dependent olfactory plasticity in C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.25.666858v1

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Jul 30

This is a catastrophe. There is nothing else to be said.

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding

The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

www.wsj.com

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 29

Check out our first research article from the Emrick lab, published in Cell Reports! We define the sensory neurons in the tooth as sentinels: tuned to detect tooth damage and trigger a protective jaw opening reflex. 🦷🔨

I’m officially a mammalian somatosensory biologist (but I still 🩷 worms 🪱)

Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social · Jul 26

Intradental mechano-nociceptors serve as sentinels that prevent tooth damage

Ronan et al. explore the function of trigeminal sensory neurons innervating the inner tooth—herein, intradental neurons. They determine these specialized cells respond to damage of the enamel and initiate both pain and a jaw-opening reflex. Their work shifts our perspective of tooth innervation from pain producing to protective.

dlvr.it

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 29

Official paper thread coming soon… this work represents a major career milestone for many of the authors 🥹

I couldn’t be prouder to work with such an inspiring team to bring this project to the finish line! 💙💛

U-M Life Sciences Institute @umlifesciences.bsky.social · Jul 29

LSI faculty members @byneuron.bsky.social and Peng Li teamed up with colleagues in the U-M School of Dentistry (including LSI alum @elizabithian.bsky.social) to uncover how neurons inside teeth do more than just sense pain:
news.umich.edu/ouch-tooth-n...

Ouch! Tooth nerves that serve as pain detectors have another purpose: Tooth protectors

Until now the sensory neurons inside the tooth were primarily thought to send pain signals to the brain, but a new study shows those neurons are multitaskers that also trigger a jaw-opening reflex tha...

news.umich.edu

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

🫶 didn’t expect it to feel so healing. very grateful to be a part of it.

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Reposted by Liz Ronan, PhD

Dustin Updike @dustinupdike.bsky.social · Jul 2

C. elegans, ba ba ba. #Worm25

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

Humming this as I sadly pack my luggage to leave 🥲

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

A laureate and a trend setter #worm25

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

We’ve tried to look into the sound frequencies of rustling leaves etc to see if worm crawling could elicit detectable frequencies🤔

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

Proud moment witnessing our very own talented graduate student Xu Bai present the lab’s most recent work in C elegans auditory sensation!

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

C elegans can sense sound AND serve as a genetic model for an understudied form of human hearing loss! As the moderator mentioned- what CAN’T worms do?? 🤩 🪱 #worm25

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 2

Worm meeting bucketlist:
✅ Photo with Nobel laureate (and @manduh21.bsky.social)

Thank you Dr. Ambros, for spending time with early stage scientists!

I love this community 🪱 #Worm25

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jul 1

Day 4 of #Worm25: 15k+ steps/daily, sweating through 95°F+ Cali heat, followed by shivering in AC, all while being immersed in the latest C. elegans research.

Is this a genetics conference or a worm-themed detox?

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Liz Ronan, PhD @elizabithian.bsky.social · Jun 30

“Do you have any advice for aspiring young scientists?”

“Do genetics.” *mic drop*

#worm25

Baris Tursun @baristursun.bsky.social · Jun 30

Fantastic Nobel Moment at #worm25 with Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun.

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