Lori O'Brien
Dev bio, cell bio, stem cells, regen med, all things kidney. Punk rock and whisky enthusiast. Personal account and opinions. #firstgen
- Reposted by Lori O'BrienIn @elife.bsky.social: A high-resolution, easy-to-build light-sheet microscope for subcellular imaging doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
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- Pro tip: NEVER log into My NCBI with more than one 3rd party option. It creates a whole new account that can’t be deleted. I apparently did this once with the ORCiD login (as opposed to normal eRA login) and now I can’t link my ORCiD ID to my SciENcv. I have to ask the Help Desk to merge accounts. 🫠
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- It’s certainly been a year, but I’m incredibly grateful that earlier in 2025 I was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure! Huge thanks to you all for promoting our work here and on the other site, for talk invites, for writing letters of support, and to the lab for all their contributions. 🥂
- Reposted by Lori O'BrienUnfortunately the drop in ESI funding rates is not paired with changes in funding required to get tenure. It’s not just the next three years of our labs at risk, but the rest of our careers. We are also the cohort that started in the COVID pandemic- it’s been nothing but “unprecedented times”…
- New story in STAT with data about Early Stage Investigators www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/n... 1/4
- Reposted by Lori O'BrienMost transcriptomics studies sample ~0.001% of a mouse. Which region do we choose? Often: we guess. Meet DISCO-seq 🤗 flipping the order: RNA-preserving clearing → whole-organ/whole-body 3D imaging → pick ROIs in 3D → unbiased scRNA-seq. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Lori O'BrienIn a paper out this month in @jcb.org we present evidence implicating intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) as key to junctional assembly and function 2/n 🧪 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41099653/
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- Reposted by Lori O'BrienUNC's Center for Molecular Medicine has up to three open-rank positions for faculty conducting research with relevance to gene therapy, including: novel iPSC and animal models of disease and basic cell biology. Join us in beautiful Chapel Hill! Deadline 1/31/26: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/309...
- Flashback #FluorescenceFriday to some of the first light-sheet imaging we were doing. Video shows the collecting duct system of the developing kidney labeled with a pan-cytokeratin antibody. Courtesy of former talented technician Deanna Hardesty.
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- 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...
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- 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.
- 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)
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- 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.
- Reposted by Lori O'BrienHow 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)
- 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...
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- Reposted by Lori O'BrienThe 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.
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- #FluorescenceFriday! Thanks BPoD!
- Surprise catch while surf fishing! No baby sharks harmed, was safely released back into the ocean. 🦈
- For #FluorescenceFriday I'm sharing the fantastic work of postdoc Sarah McLarnon! A follow up to our '23 Development paper where we asked: Does precise vascular patterning matter for function and what happens after ischemic injury? The results were surprising! journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....
- Evening visitor to the feeder showing off the ruby throat 😍
- Check out the latest from Alan Davidson’s lab (of zf kidney regeneration fame) showing somites contribute to making nephrons in zebrafish. GESTALT, Cre lineage tracing, and zf somite transplants 😱. Love a good story that challenges dogma. Great discussions were had! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Reposted by Lori O'BrienA friend drove two hours today for her breast cancer chemotherapy only to learn it was canceled due to NIH cuts. Clinical trial ended midstream. No treatment, no restart, no plan, no information. Her bro-in-law's chemo was also canceled.
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- Reposted by Lori O'Brien🔬🎤 As pre-announced a few days ago... please let us proudly present to you: 𝑴𝒊𝒄𝒓𝒐𝕊𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒕 - your ticket to imaging more, imaging more gentle, and/or imaging more efficient. 🔬 doi.org/10.1101/2025... Like ❤️, repost 🔂, and most importantly... please send feedback ✉️ our way! 🙏
- Immagine you could image two cellular structures in the same fluorescent channel and still reliably get them separated afterwards… What would you do with this? Now… what would you do if that also worked with 4 structures at once? 👇 #MicroSplit #preview🧵
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- My annual Valentine’s post of this image that happens to land on #FluorescenceFriday this year! An axon approaching a kidney glomerulus doing its best to look like a rose.
