Daily reminder that life's a rollercoaster 🎢 #celegans #dadjokes and coaster by @mehershadw.bsky.social

Tickets 👇
pintofscience.com.au/events/brisb...

I'll be MCing the wonderful Pint of Science festival featuring some outstanding scientists!

📍 Easy Times Brewing Co, Brisbane
🗓️ 19th to 21st May!

Come along for an evening full of amazing science brewing right here in Brisbane!

👏👏👏

Do not miss out on this amazing meeting! The deadline for abstract submission and registration is March 1st.

Check out the program and apply now:
meetings.embo.org/event/25-cel...

#EMBOcellBioComm @embo.org

If it helps with your anxiety at all, four fifths of all animals are nematodes.

Our paper is now featured in the Editors' highlights at @naturecomms.bsky.social 👇

www.nature.com/collections/...

Very happy and proud about this week's success. Very grateful to all my colleagues and my lab for their hard work and support getting this over the line 🍾🙏🥳

Nice way to start the year. An enormous effort on this one from Alessandra. Congratulations! 🎉

OSP-1 could potentially become a target for future treatments protecting neurons from oxidative insults & these findings could help treat conditions such as stroke.

Massive congratulations again to Alessandra, Massimo and fellow authors for their amazing and inspiring work🙌👇
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

As the ER interacts with lysosomes, we show that OSP-1 mutants have altered lysosome clustering within neurons, which is known to affect autophagy.

We show that autophagy inhibition conferred similar protection & propose that OSP-1 functions as a negative regulator of autophagy.

To understand how exactly OSP-1 protects C. elegans neurons, we tried to visualise where the molecule functions. We found that OSP-1 localised to the ER membrane and caused rearrangement of the ER.

(Mutated OSP-1 reduced ER branching in the proximal axonal segment)👇

Neurons were on a 'break':
Using targeted ROS generation, we saw that C. elegans worms with a mutated OSP-1 (vd60) had higher neuronal damage & reduced lifespan.

Interestingly, providing OSP-1 to rodent & human cultures protected these mammalian cells against oxidative insults!

NEW Paper:
If you're a fan of Rachel from 'Friends', you would love OSP-1, as it is also protective of ROS

Donato et al. found a novel gene OSP-1 (oxidative stress protective 1) that protects neurons from damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS), by modulating autophagy.👇

Leveraging the genetic power of the nematode C. elegans and the optogenetic tool KillerRed, the Hilliard Lab discovered osp-1, a novel gene that protects neurons from oxidative damage via cell-autonomous mechanisms 🧠 doi.org/10.1038/s414...