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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy)

@aidan-reynolds.bsky.social
167 followers 218 following 103 posts

28 | B.S Biochemistry | PhD Candidate at Michigan State | Mass Spec Imaging | C. elegans | PFAS Researcher PhD progress bar: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨

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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
OH CRAP SORRY C. ELEGANS PEEPS I FINALLY GOT THIS PUBLISHED AND FORGOT TO POST ABOUT IT!! pubs.acs.org/ancham/artic...
pubs.acs.org
On-Slide Preparation of Caenorhabditis elegans toward Quantitative, High-Resolution LA-ICP-TOF Mass Spectrometry Imaging
Abstract. Metal homeostasis is essential for biological functions and has been implicated in many diseases. Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma time-
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Welp, it’s day 3 of MAPSS and I’m hungover as hell. That won’t stop me from enjoying Madison, the cool talks, and the new friends I’m making! Come to poster 262 tonight if you want to see how I’m enabling comprehensive metal analysis at the single-worm level. 🪱🪱
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Question for current faculty: I’m looking for jobs as I’m in my last year of my PhD. My PI continues to suggest postdoc positions but the market seems tight still. I’ve been offered a postdoc at my current uni in a different department doing totally different research, but my PI hates that idea…1/2
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Okay C. elegans people, for this last paper I went through several iterations of 3D-printed tools to enable my research with C. elegans, and I'd like to gauge interest in the community for affordable 3D-printed tools to help with your research. I'll be replying to this post with a survey link!
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Kind of weird that I need to start “advertising” myself at upcoming conferences. I’m finishing my 4th year of my PhD and I’d enjoy a postdoc working with C. elegans and/or mass spectrometry but I really need to give it more thought. Especially because my wife is 6mos-1 year behind me in her PhD.
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Kermit Murray @kkmurray.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
(ABioanChem) Combined metallomics and metabolomics reveal impact of metal homeostasis on biological pathways in C. elegans: Trace metals and metal homeostasis play an essential role in cell metabolism, and an imbalance in this careful balance leads to pathological changes. In… #MassSpecRSS
dlvr.it
Combined metallomics and metabolomics reveal impact of metal homeostasis on biological pathways in C. elegans
Trace metals and metal homeostasis play an essential role in cell metabolism, and an imbalance in this careful balance leads to pathological changes. In neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, trace metals and metal species are increasingly recognized as key factors in disease progression in mechanisms such as ferroptosis. In this study, we combined modern analytical techniques like Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) with metal-free high-pressure liquid chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) to analyze metabolomic and metallomic changes in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans under conditions of induced metal homeostasis imbalance. Our results identified zinc as a key player in the regulation of free metal species of iron and manganese. Furthermore, iron exposure resulted in distinct metabolomic patterns indicative of impaired energy metabolism, suggesting an exhaustion of cellular metabolic energy capacity. Graphical abstract
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
PREPRINT ALERT 🚨🚨 After 2 years of hard work the first chapter of this work is coming to an end. I hope that this work finds the right audience and provides a new tool to investigate C. elegans metal biology. We plan on following this work up by improving the accuracy of quantitation soon!
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Manuscript submitted to Analytical Chemistry. Doubt it will be accepted, but shoot for the moon I guess. Will fall back to Metallomics or Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry if rejected.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Holy shit the final revisions have been made. We’re submitting the LA-ICP-TOF metal imaging paper for C. elegans imaging later this evening. No preprint will be initially submitted. We’ll put out a preprint if we have major revisions from reviewers that take time to address.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I’ve been pretty quiet these past few months because I finally hit my rough patch during my PhD and I think I need to vent in a space where none of the co-authors occupy. I don’t care if they ever find it, most of them are aware of the full situation anyway. 1/X
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bioRxiv Pharmacology and Toxicology @biorxiv-pharma.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Isomer-specific distribution of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in hepatic zonation in mouse www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
WORM EMERGENCY!!! Our -80 compressor is failing and we’re not sure what will happen to our worm stocks at the current temp (-45C). They’ve been at this temp for 16 hours and we’re contemplating reviving all strains not currently in use to save them, or move them to a new -80. Anyone have advice??
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
That’s me! I’ll be highlighting some cool work with @brukercorporation.bsky.social’s Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry (TIMS) showing some neat isomer work during the workshop, and iprm-PASEF data at a poster (WP 266) so come see what myself and my lab are up to!
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Finally getting good fluorosmurf assay results since I cut my fluorescein percentage from 2.5% -> 1%. 🪱
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Weird question and I fully expect to not get a good answer, but when does the conference date for MAPSS usually get announced? My family wants to visit in late June/July and they go to campgrounds during their stays and they want to book early. I don’t want to tell them a date MAPSS might be on. 😅
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Sketching Science @sketchingscience.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Any C. elegans fan?
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Super excited to see someone else try my method for analyzing PFAS using MALDI-TOF with TIMS! I’ve been having great results behind the scenes imaging sulfonates in mouse tissues and it’s awesome to see plant imaging done as well. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Visualization and spatial mapping of PFAS in the edible storage root of radish
Plants, as key components of trophic networks, play a critical role in the bioaccumulation of PFAS and their transfer to higher trophic levels. This s…
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Nothing could have prepared me for how tiny microchannel plates are! Got to replace them in an icpTOF S2 and it was awesome. #teammassspec
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Nick Burton @nickburton.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
#Celegans #Worms - I'm guessing sending whole labs to big conferences might be too expensive for many labs this year. I want to highlight this meeting will be FREE. VAI will cover all costs and lunch and if people still want night networking I will set something up if enough are interested.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Collaborators didn’t like the manuscript. Redoing a million experiments now. Delayed until March. Feels like the last few months of rushing this paper for grants and fellowship deadlines out were for nothing.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
This is from my lab! I’m hoping my preprint will be out later this week or Monday! Seems like with grant submissions out of the way we’re finally submitting these papers. 🤣
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Taking a break from designing lego mass spectrometers and made my stepdad (an electrical engineer who worked in renewable energy) a solar farm. Needed a mental break from submitting a P41 and editing this manuscript. Thank god both of those are done next week.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Unfortunately I can’t go to #Worm2025. I’ll instead be sticking to my midwest roots and going to MAPSS and a midwest C. elegans conference at Van Andel institutute in Grand Rapids, MI.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Updating 2 more supplemental figures tomorrow morning and finishing the abstract and conclusion before revising for the next week… so close to being done with this paper 🙏
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
Pairing microscopy images with my mass spec images… whoof this is tedious when I have 80 images of worms. Going to be a long Sunday for me 🤣
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
I need some #Celegans help part people. I have synchronized populations reaching day 1 gravid adulthood and I see differences in length by up to ~100um. Does C. elegans grow a little more once becoming gravid to reach its ~1mm length or… 1/2
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Folks I may have just found the Lego parts to make a moveable C. elegans. Stay tuned for a potential build in the coming few days.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Ordering a new MCP for the Tofwerk S2 and I’m super excited to get the chance to crack it open and install it with a colleague in the coming weeks. Been awhile since and instrument vendor was chill enough to just send us the SOP and install it ourselves instead of bringing someone out to do it.
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Adelita D. Mendoza @adelitadmendoza.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
www.colorado.edu/biochemistry...
colorado.edu
Welcome to Assistant Professor Adelita Mendoza, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor Adelita Mendoza, Ph.D. The CU Boulder Department of Biochemistry is welcoming Assistant Professor Adelita Mendoza, Ph.D. on January 6, 2025.
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Miriam B. Goodman, PhD @wormsense.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
How hard do bacteria-eating nematodes bite in order to break the bacterial cell wall? Check out our new paper, led by Jason Casar & collab with Jen Dionne, using pressure sensing beads that change color upon compression (bluetorial coming soon) rdcu.be/d5n7v
rdcu.be
Upconverting microgauges reveal intraluminal force dynamics in vivo
Nature - Nanoparticle-based ‘microgauges’ are developed for in vivo force sensing and deployed in C. elegans to investigate how mechanical force correlates with electrical signalling in...
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
2/5 main text figures done (currently doing fig 3), 4/6 supplemental figures done… we’re getting close people!
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
I really want to explore career options beyond the USA after I finish my PhD… Canada, Sweden or Australia/New Zealand sound cool. I’m just sick of life here and want to have a comfortable life with my wife doing research.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
I really need to stop publishing around the holidays 🤣
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Joachim Frank @joachim123.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
yep. has happened to me.
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Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
"You will be visited by three spirits". The three spirits:
C elegans, zebra fish, drosophila melanogaster
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Reposted by Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy)
bioRxiv Developmental Biology @biorxiv-devbio.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Enterobactin carries iron into C. elegans and mammalian intestinal cells by a mechanism independent of divalent metal transporter DMT1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Taking a week off for the holidays is going to be nice. I needed a break from pushing through data collection and I need time to make figures. Should have all data collected Jan. 1st which will be a neat way to start the new year. 😃
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Chemjobber @chemjobber.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Me: I was waiting for the NMR
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Parts came in finally! Very happy with the blue pieces I chose. #teammasspec #chemsky
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Super secret C. elegans mass spec imaging manuscript submission timeline has shifted slightly. Some authors will be unavailable to review the manuscript until the week or Jan. 6th-10th so we hope to have it submitted/accepted the following week. Once that’s done we’ll upload a preprint!
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Sarah Schrader @microbecharmer.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
C. elegans and Mtb! www.etsy.com/shop/Microbe...
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callista yee @csybio.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
tis the season
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Failed to make a good looking NGM plate out of legos so it’s back to Zeiss and Leica microscopes for the nematode folks.
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Karen Lange @karenphd.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Amazing C. elegans cake made by my talented PhD student! #worms
A white vanilla cake covered in sliced almonds. On top There is a pink gravid hermaphrodite with.  In blue There are extra details including pharynx, gut, and embryos.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Next model: Bruker D8 Venture Single Crystal XRD (request from friend). Contains simplified Photon CPAD detector and X-ray source with space for a small colored stud of whatever color you want your crystals to be. A reference photo from internet is attached. #Chemsky
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Adelita D. Mendoza @adelitadmendoza.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
The Mendoza lab is hiring a Research Assistant at the University of Colorado Boulder!! Come join our brand new lab as we launch our group! We study zinc homeostasis using a variety of techniques in C. elegans and human models. The view in Boulder ain't bad either! Reach out with questions!
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
I think I’m going to make some non-mass spec lego stuff for a bit. Maybe a little vivarium and an NGM plate… maybe my Zeiss I use, too? I’ll be back to make other mass spec eventually. Will probably do Something Sciex or Shimadzu.
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
This has been made, and it came out perfectly. Still waiting on the ICP-TOF parts to come in (you can see the current build behind my hand LOL) #teammassspec #Chemsky
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Aidan Reynolds (Chemistry Lego Guy) @aidan-reynolds.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Final product has been made! It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be but it’s a perfect paper weight for a desk! #teammassspec #Chemsky
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