Ramón Piñol

Schrödinger's dumpster!

Red Alfa Romeo hood with the stylized white snake-eating-a-dude logo.

1. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to visit the Alfa Romeo museum in Milan. What a gorgeous museum of design.

Over the next few days I'll be posting a thread of pictures from my visit.

Here's a teaser.

Distinct sympathetic projections to brown fat regulate thermogenesis and glucose tolerance - Nature Metabolism Neri et al. develop elegant tools to understand how the sympathetic nervous system regulates intrascapular brown adipose tissue (iBAT) function. Using these tools, they find that sympathetic nerves ta...

Distinct neurons, distinct functions 🧠🟤 Our Nature Metabolism paper (now out!) shows that separate sympathetic projections to brown adipose tissue independently control thermogenesis and glucose tolerance. Congrats Daniele Neri and team 🥳

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Beautiful work, Lori and team! Congrats

Avian-origin influenza A viruses tolerate elevated pyrexic temperatures in mammals Host body temperature can define a virus’s replicative profile—influenza A viruses (IAVs) adapted to 40° to 42°C in birds are less temperature sensitive in vitro compared with human isolates adapted t...

How does fever work?

Our new Science paper shows how elevated body temperature can protect against severe influenza and that avian-origin viruses escape this defence.

This is likely one reason why bird flus and some pandemic influenzas can be so severe.🧵

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Left: picture of a kingfisher in the wild, from far away. Right: close up of Kingfisher beer

When you zoom in

Anxiety induced by systemic inflammation involves microglial engulfing of nucleus accumbens inputs and diminished excitability of dopamine D1 receptor neurons The neuroimmune corollaries of systemic inflammation can generate anxiodepressive behaviors and psychomotor slowing. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a …

Really nice work from our neighbours Stephanie Fulton and team investigating links between inflammation, anxiety, and microglia!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Biological Mechanisms Balancing Torpor and Reproduction in Mammals Abstract. Selective pressures have led to the development of innumerable unique strategies to maximize fitness—an organism's ability to survive and reprodu

My first first-author paper is published! At the intersection of metabolism and reproduction, we wrote this review with a broad audience in mind, and hope that there is something for everyone. Excited for the future of the field and honored to be a part of it!

academic.oup.com/endo/article...

Woo hoo @paulvander24.bsky.social !

Mars was the Roman god of war.
That’s why we say ‘martial arts,' ‘martial law,' and 'court martial.'

Marshall was the Roman god of designer fashion at discount prices.
That’s why we have Marshall’s.

We are looking for a postdoc fellow to join the group. Focus on studying feeding-relevant slow dynamics in the brain using invivo microscopy approaches. Please share with anyone interested. Thank you. www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-inf...

Proud to announce the publication of our new paper describing the design, chemical synthesis and testing of a novel class of Complement 3a Receptor (C3aR) agonists and antagonists derived from the TLQP-21 peptide

@pubs.acs.org Journal of Medicinal Chemistry

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

We are proud of Omprakash Singh's new study just out in Cell Reports. Supported by Sepideh Sheybani-Deloui et al, Om's work identifies GHSR expressing SCN neurons as regulating food intake + feed efficiency at a single time of day, accounting for at least 7% of a mouse's BW

doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Semaglutide drives weight loss through cAMP-dependent mechanisms in GLP1R-expressing hindbrain neurons Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP1R) agonists like semaglutide drive weight loss through the brain, but insights into their intracellular signaling mechanisms are lacking. Although canonically GLP...

Rigorous dissection of the signaling mechanisms and circuits underlying GLP1R agonist weight loss effects mice. Huge achievement by Claire Gao and team @mikekrashes.bsky.social. Potential avenues for harnessing complexity of signaling to create novel treatments. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Amid lots of uncertainty, anger, and exhaustion I am excited to share this work from my incredibly talented MSTP and @nuincomm.bsky.social student Haley Province. In it we explore the fascinating and powerful anti-aversive properties of GIPR agonists

Genomic convergence in hibernating mammals elucidates the genetics of metabolic regulation in the hypothalamus Extreme metabolic adaptations can elucidate genetic programs that govern mammalian metabolism. Here, we used convergent evolutionary changes in hibernating lineages to define conserved cis-regulatory ...

Genomic convergence in hibernating mammals elucidates the genetics of metabolic regulation in the hypothalamus | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations, Ivan!

Huge congratulations to Ivan and the rest of the @mikekrashes.bsky.social lab—formidable job!

Grateful to have contributed a tiny piece to this.

Picture of a naked mole-rat in a fleece bed

🧵1/15 Delighted to share our study on the naked mole-rat (NMR): a mammal with bizarre thermal biology, notorious longevity, and cancer resistance. But how do NMRs maintain (or fail to maintain) their body temperature? Our latest work digs deep! #ThermalBiology #Thermogenesis

big if true

GABAAR-δ-subunit mediates increased GABAergic inhibition in cardiac DMV neurons after high-fat diet Natural sciences; Biological sciences; Physiology; Neuroscience

New Pub 🚨: Read how we’re tying a specific GABA A receptor subtype to the impact of HFD on central cardiac vagal motor neurons.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

This is brilliant!
And not by Charles Dar-wine 😂

An example of what we in the NIH Intramural program can accomplish. Excited to share our latest paper in close collaboration with Nick Ryba's group. We examined how inflammation transforms representation in somatosensory neurons to cause pain. Lots of surprises here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Headline that says mushrooms may talk to one another with up to 50 words

so they're mycoblogging

Three miles of wiring inside a speck of brain tissue. Here is my story on a milestone in neuroscience. Gift link: nyti.ms/42BWWR7 (Video courtesy Forrest Collman)

For >20 years obesity was thought to be associated with reduced dopamine receptors in brain reward regions. Now, a big study by @vdarcey.bsky.social shows that this may be have been an artifact (top figure panel) due to brain dopamine tone being positively associated with body fat (bottom).

🙌

eredivisiestand:

Cool! I’ll come yes!
I gave a talk at the GWU bio department yesterday