Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lori O'Brien

@llobrienlab.bsky.social

980 followers 1.1K following 63 posts

Dev bio, cell bio, stem cells, regen med, all things kidney. Punk rock and whisky enthusiast. Personal account and opinions. #firstgen

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Nov 19

Inaugural post showcasing our imaging and interests in the kidney from development to disease! Looking forward to building a great science community and network here.

3 11 74

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Reto Fiolka @retof.bsky.social · 2d

We present multi-immersion Oblique Plane microscope (miOPM), a light-sheet platform that can be adapted to a wide range of applications, from sensitive live cell imaging to imaging organs and cleared tissues.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

5 43 110

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 4d

Sharing this excellent review now out from postdoc Sarah McLarnon! Lots of useful info on 3D imaging, quantification of imaging data, and how this has been applied to the kidney. And since it's #FluorescenceFriday, sharing a figure with our own imaging data!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Figure from our review paper showing various fluorescence microscopy images of cells and structures of the kidney

8 36

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Rachael Ott @rachaelott.bsky.social · 5d

For #FluorescenceFriday, RhoA (blue) and the actin cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown in a set of primary microglia 🔬 #Neuroscience #Microscopy

4 16 81

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Maik Bischoff @maikbischoff.bsky.social · 5d

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing
🔵 lifeact &
🔴 RFP-nls

Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨

🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

#NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

11 40 210

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 12d

And a zoomed view of the intricate collecting system.

Zoomed up image of the collecting ducts of an adult mouse kidney. The collecting ducts are labeled with an AQP2 antibody and are green. They look like long green squiggles.

1 7

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 12d

For this #FluorescenceFriday, a gorgeous image of an adult mouse kidney labeled with AQP2 and alpha SMA antibodies. AQP2 (green) marks the collecting duct and distal connecting segment while SMA marks the arterial tree. Courtesy of talented postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

Image of a fluorescently labeled adult mouse kidney showing AQP2 staining of collecting ducts and connecting segment in green and alpha SMA staining of the arterial tree in magenta. The collecting ducts look like squiggly branches.

5 32 110

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 12d

Rescued these two beauties today, one stuck in the parking garage stairwell and one from inside the house (and rescued from 3 very interested cats)

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 13d

Sensory neurons drive pancreatic cancer progression through glutamatergic neuron-cancer pseudo-synapses @cp-cancercell.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cancer-cell/...

7 15

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 14d

❤️ I have one too and love it!

1 3

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 28d

I am very sorry, how incredibly frustrating. From canceled and rescheduled study sections and council meetings, excellent scores being told they would be funded, only to end up here. It certainly has been exhausting.

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 28d

Thank you, am trying to cheer myself up by looking at hot off the press cool new data related to this renewal app. 😭

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 28d

Thank you and totally agree, too many of us here between canceled grants and new funding models just dropped on us. Hoping there’s a chance for change in FY26 so there’s not more of us in this situation.

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · 28d

This is me, one of those 211. My A1 R01 renewal would have been funded otherwise, and I was even initially told they planned to fund it. Now very unlikely. No more chances with this one. We had so many good things going-how do we keep moving forward? A question many of us will be asking.

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 29d

“This isn’t just about 211 missing R01 grants. This is about the 211 PIs (or multi-PI groups) that are not getting a new grant. This is about at least 422-844 non-PI level investigators who are not having their salaries covered.”

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 29d

Adding up the NIH R01s lost to Multi-Year Funding drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/09/09/a...

4 17 30

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Dagmar Iber & CoBi @iberd.bsky.social · Jul 30

How can cells self-organize rapidly into complex patterns during development?

Let’s explore a powerful and underappreciated mechanism: Directed Cell Migration (DCM).

Preprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1101/2025...

👇Thread 🧵(1/11)

3 18 51

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 30

In the same boat with my R01 competitive renewal. Feeling any hope is now gone.

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 29

They managed to perform somite transplants 😱

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 29

Intermediate mesoderm isn't the sole contributor to nephrons in zebrafish-new manuscript out showing somites are a source of nephron progenitors! Very cool, dogma challenging study led by Alan Davidson's group. Many fun discussions were had-grateful for the inclusion! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Somites are a source of nephron progenitors in zebrafish - Nature Communications

This study reveals that cells of the zebrafish kidney can originate from the somites, structures traditionally held as precursors to the skeletal muscle, challenging a century-old paradigm and prompti...

www.nature.com

1 3 8

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 29

@jeremymberg.bsky.social If they can stop or stall the multi year funding from moving forward in FY26, can this 50% multi year strategy still be enforced for the remainder of FY25? Currently have an R01 caught in this limbo for FY25 funding consideration.

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Jul 28

New, from an anonymous NIH insider: Trump is being pushed to spend more NIH money. The White House is ordering NIH to do multi-year budgets for awards. This budget trick means fewer awards, fewer labs funded, and lower paylines for researchers. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-...

Alert: The Trump administration is quietly slashing new NIH grant awards, and it's not via the budget

NIH’s sudden move to multiyear grant funding is forcing shocking cuts in the number of grants funded. This is an effective budget cut. It's bad, folks.

donmoynihan.substack.com

11 320 590

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

BWJones @bwjones.bsky.social · Jul 28

The NIH was healthiest when pay lines were in the 20th percentile range.

We are headed into an environment where pay lines are in the 5% range.

In my entire career, I’ve only had 3 grants that scored better than 5%. And my lab is considered a successful one.

This is going to destroy science.

15 80 240

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 24

Congrats!

Reposted by Lori O'Brien

Uri Manor @manorlaboratory.bsky.social · Jul 24

A beautiful tour through an AAV-PHP.B-GFP-transduced intact cochlea as visualized via lightsheet microscopy after tissue clearing. Magenta is a hair cell marker, yellow is a neuron marker, and green is AAV-GFP (relatively low hair cell transduction rate in this specific sample).

4 8 59

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 12

#FluorescenceFriday! Thanks BPoD!

Biomedical Picture of the Day BPoD @bpodaily.bsky.social · Jul 11

Comeback Kidney: Mapping the nerves in the developing kidney

📹 Pierre-Emmanuel Y. N’Guetta et al @llobrienlab.bsky.social lab, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in ‪
@cp-cellreports.bsky.social

➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2025... with John Ankers

2 13

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jul 2

Surprise catch while surf fishing! No baby sharks harmed, was safely released back into the ocean. 🦈

Baby Atlantic sharpnose shark after being reeled in and still on the hook

Close up picture of a juvenile sharpnose shark

Lori O'Brien @llobrienlab.bsky.social · Jun 27

Thanks and thanks for reposting! :)