Chen Ran
Neuroscientist. Assistant Professor at Scripps Research.
https://www.ran-lab.org
- Reposted by Chen RanExcited to co-host this conference with @marissascavuzzo.bsky.social and Steve Liberles focused on the peripheral nervous system -- No Brainer! Check out the amazing list of speakers and apply for one of the spots for this small, interactive meeting on the beautiful Janelia Campus at HHMI.
- 📢 Apply by May 14 to explore peripheral nervous system function across somatic + autonomic + enteric divisions, with a focus on new methods + emerging technologies. 🛏️ Meals & lodging covered; no registration fee Apply ➡️ janelia.news/PNS26 @ardemp.bskyverified.social @marissascavuzzo.bsky.social
- www.nature.com/articles/s41... beautiful work from Stephen Liberles’ lab on neural mechanisms of sensing blood volume.
- A very nice spinal spatial transcriptomics paper here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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- Reposted by Chen Ran🧠⚡️💊New @nature.com publication ! Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with a synthetic opioid gene therapy nature.com/articles/s41... @pennmedicine.bsky.social
- Researchers identify the neurons involved in the emotional distress associated with pain go.nature.com/4qIKkB8
- Beautiful paper! Somebody should do it in then viscerosensory brainstem.
- Excited to share @rbrianroome.bsky.social ‘s beautiful paper on development of the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord @science.org This is how the anatomical organization and cell types that process pain, touch, body position and more are laid down. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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- Reposted by Chen RanSome news. Exciting new challenges and opportunities ahead.
- Reposted by Chen RanThrilled this is out, led by former PD Cameron Ogg (now with her own lab at @rhodescollege.bsky.social!). It was a driven by a desire to see, in real-time, how LC activity/NE release influences downstream targets in behaving animals. SO hard to do, but Cameron did it! www.cell.com/cell-reports...
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- A beautiful paper on the role of Piezos in uterine biology. I have known first author Yunxiao Zhang since 2012. Yunxiao is rare talent (and a wonderfully kind human being) now on the job market!
- And here is the story after peer review. This work highlights our current approach, which is to use Piezo channels to uncover new areas of biology that are shaped by mechanical forces: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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- Reposted by Chen RanActively hiring! Video made by Sora-2 but the job post is 100% real. Apply here: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
- 1.5 years in the making, only two weeks to go! Can’t wait to see everyone here at Scripps!
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- Scripps is a wonderful place to do science. Hard to imagine better colleagues and students…
- During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost! apply.interfolio.com/174756
- Reposted by Chen RanFinally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain. A brief rundown... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Chen RanWe’re hiring! My new Gut–Brain Axis Lab at Northwestern is looking for a Research Technologist 2 to help build the lab and explore how the nervous system shapes gut health and disease. 🔬 Apply here: myhr.northwestern.edu/psp/hrnu/EMP...
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- Very interesting paper—>must read- and the first author will be looking for a job soon: one of the strongest scientists I could imagine. I learned so much from Yunxiao since my graduate school days.
- New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Chen RanNew preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Lots of interesting data there!
- Reposted by Chen RanThanks Misha for the shout-out! It has been a truly mind-opening journey. WHOLISTIC is one step towards whole-organism neuroscience and a true physiological observatory - with extensions on the way! I am continually amazed by what the data reveals - so much remains to be discovered and mined.
- Preprint - Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Reposted by Chen RanI wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it! Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Reposted by Chen RanExcited to share the first 2(!) preprints from the Kebschull Lab. The amazing @hyopilkim.bsky.social developed MAPseq2 & POINTseq and used them to map the dopaminergic cells of VTA and SNc. tl;dr MAPseq2=10x cheaper, 4x better; POINTseq=easy cell type specific barcoding; DA neurons=very cool.
- Reposted by Chen RanOur new paper is out in Science. We identified a subgroup of cholinergic neurons that mediate sensory modality-specific attention. They change their funcitonal properties within secs of behavioral context change. Congrats to Bin for the great thesis, and the team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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- Reposted by Chen RanI spoke with Jade Hindmon, host of @kpbssandiego.bsky.social Midday Edition, about the consequences of the current administration’s cuts to science funding. Please share to help spread the word and raise awareness. www.kpbs.org/podcasts/kpb...
- Reposted by Chen RanTalked to @KateZernike at @nytimes about my journey and the current moment for scientists in the U.S. “Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.” Read the article here. No subscription required: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...
- Reposted by Chen RanWild! Stephen, Praneel and their team use fluorescence lifetime imaging and various manipulations to show that, in male mice, both mating drive and hypothalamic tonic dopamine release drop after a successful mating and gradually recover over the next week, paralleling the recovery in sperm count.
- I am excited to share our preprint on how hypothalamic dopamine neurons govern slow changes in motivation over days! Below are our findings: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Chen RanWe previously showed that specific hypothalamic neurons get more and more activated by each bite of food until they put a brake on homeostatic feeding. Here, we find that this brake is already on at the start of a meal in obese mice on a high-fat diet. Congrats to Marta, Stephen and the whole team!
- 🚨 Paper alert! 📣 We found abnormal feeding-related neural responses in satiety-promoting, MC4R-expressing neurons in the mouse paraventricular hypothalamus (PVH-MC4R) following diet-induced obesity. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... #obesity #feedingbehaviour #obesityresearch #neuroscience
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- Reposted by Chen RanShared by Carlos Brody at SCGB: publicusaresearchbenefits.com - a crowdsourced effort to tell folks about the products of US research funding. Please share, and submit!
- Reposted by Chen RanA drop of milkshake takes a wild ride as it passes through the body. Rachel and Kiersten and the team came up with cool strategies for visualizing food passing through the mouse GI tract and mapping the activity of the same 100s of brainstem neurons across weeks during feeding and other behaviors.
- I’m so excited to share our preprint on how brainstem neurons sense and integrate multiple body signals during food consumption. We imaged 1000s of neurons across the lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPBN) in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Chen Ranco-author @dimacd.bsky.social pointed out that the link was truncated in my post. Hope this works: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Turns out, two of pain’s most famous messengers — Substance P and CGRPα — might not be so essential after all. Mice missing both still felt pain just fine, challenging decades of assumptions about how pain signals travel. buff.ly/ypISrtx
