Jepson Lab, UCL
@jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
420 followers 1.2K following 17 posts
Drosophila laboratory at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, UK. Our work focuses on identifying patho-mechanisms and treatments for involuntary movement disorders (such as dystonia and dyskinesia) and neurodevelopmental disorders.
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Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
marcsdionne.bsky.social
My lab studies bacterial infections. We spend a lot of time looking at (or for) species-specific genetic and genomic databases for hosts and microbes. FlyBase is the best of all—there is literally no comparison. Its existence is under threat. Please donate.
www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...
Drosophila Genetic Database
The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...
www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk
Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
abigaildwilson.bsky.social
The Inaugural UCL Dystonia Day Symposium was held this week! An amazing line up of speakers, posters and panel discussion. It was fantastic (and important) to be joined by @dystoniauk.bsky.social. A big shout out to @jepsonlabucl.bsky.social for organising. We hope to make this a regular occurrence!
Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
britishneuro.bsky.social
🎉We are delighted to congratulate the winner of the 2025 BNA Credibility in Neuroscience Prize: Rob Wykes, @uniofmanchester.bsky.social @epilepsyinst.bsky.social

www.bna.org.uk/mediacentre/...
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Very excited by the spectacular range of talks and posters we have planned for the UCL Dystonia Day Symposium on May 14th! Anyone in the neighbourhood who is interested in dystonia, please join us by registering through the link below:

www.ucl.ac.uk/ion/events/2...
Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
We are particularly interested in showcasing the work of early career researchers performing fundamental investigations into dystonia mechanisms and treatments. Check out the website above to register, and please send potential talk/poster abstracts to the organiser (😉).
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Watch out for Abi's work soon, with more exciting investigations of #dystonia to come from her recent @wellcometrust.bsky.social Early Career Fellowship.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Abi's talk highlighted work from the lab that she has led - as part of a great collaboration with the Brownstone and Kullmann groups at UCL - in identifying a new potential drug treatment for dystonia/dyskinesia using a Drosophila model 🪰.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Really proud that @abigaildwilson.bsky.social was awarded the best talk prize at the Crick Rare Disease Conference today 👍.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Please register on the website above and send abstracts for potential talks/posters to the contact lead. For the Symposium's talks, we are focusing on giving early career researchers an exciting opportunity to present their work. We look forward to seeing you there!
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
We will also have an introductory talk from Victoria Wareham (Dystonia UK), a Panel discussion with established leaders on how to advance the field, and an exciting plenary talk from Prof. Manju Kurian (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health).
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
FYI: we will be hosting the inaugural UCL Dystonia Day, on May 14th!

This Symposium will showcase the latest research into defining dystonia patho-mechanisms and identifying novel treatments for this debilitating disease.

www.ucl.ac.uk/ion/events/2...
Inaugural UCL Dystonia Day symposium
www.ucl.ac.uk
Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
reza-maroofian.bsky.social
We report 35 patients with biallelic RBL2 loss-of-function variants presenting with developmental delay/intellectual disability, hypotonia, seizures, microcephaly & brain abnormalities. Drosophila models recapitulate key features & suggest RBL2 re-expression may help rescue neurological symptoms.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
What's a cell-cycle regulator doing in post-mitotic neurons?? Stay tuned - @gabrielaughey.bsky.social has exciting new data on this that we hope to present fully soon 🙂.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
Intriguingly, we identify a novel role for Rbf in mature neurons (after cell cycle exit), and show that Rbf knockdown in adult neurons is sufficient to disrupt movement in flies. Unexpected!
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
@gabrielaughey.bsky.social from @jepsonlabucl.bsky.social, and Elisa Cali provided supporting Drosophila studies, showing that mutants in the fly orthologue Rbf present with strikingly similar phenotypes to RBL2 patients, including developmental delay and movement/sleep defects.
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
RBL2/Rbf inhibit G>S transition during the cell cycle. Prior work has identified small numbers of patients with RBL2 mutations, leading to a neurodevelopmental disorder. This paper presents the largest cohort of RBL2 patients to date, revealing novel mutations and expanding the clinical spectrum.
Reposted by Jepson Lab, UCL
moitalab.bsky.social
Thrilled to present our latest BioRXiv on brain/body interactions during defensive freezing behaviour! (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). You might think that a frozen animal has, well, frozen muscle activity, right? Wrong! Underneath the still surface of a fly, something in the legs is beating… 🧵
jepsonlabucl.bsky.social
First post on BlueSky! Stellar post-doc from the lab @gabrielaughey.bsky.social will be giving a Development Node webinar next week 🙂, describing his work using Drosophila to probe cell-cycle dysregulation in neurodevelopmental disease. Please tune in!

thenode.biologists.com/development-...
Development presents... December webinar on gene regulation - the Node
Hear from two early-career researchers studying gene regulation.
thenode.biologists.com