iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I can confirm the NIH is still working well enough to score my R01 terribly 😂🤪

Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Congratulations to newly PhD'ed @pieceofkate.bsky.social Dr. McCluskey!! She gave a fantastic thesis seminar to cap it off 👏🎓🐸✨

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

My New Year’s resolution is to be kind… of a bitch.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Check out our new preprint led by @elinakosty.bsky.social identifying convergence of autism proteins at the cilium (including chromatin regulators and synaptic proteins)! Makes us realize the deep similarity between neuronal synapses and cilia. Power of 🐸 for discovery

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Matyas Bubna-Litic @matyasbl.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

It's #FluorescenceFriday again! Some more #Xenopus... This time a #gastruloid formed by treating an explant of blastula presumptive ectoderm cells with Activin. Nuclei labelled with H2B-mCherry with colour indicating size.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Yep! Green are neurons, red is actin, blue DAPI

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Dr. Peter Walentek (Walentek Lab) @walenteklab.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Another preprint from the lab and a collaboration with Miriam Schmidts and her lab from Uniklinik_Fr pediatrics. This work was carried out mostly by fantastic MD MOTIVATE student Henrike Berns. Funded by @dfgpublic.bsky.social @cibss.bsky.social and SFB1453_NephGen. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

A homozygous human WNT11 loss-of-function variant associated with laterality, heart and renal defects

Wnt signaling plays important roles during vertebrate development, including left-right axis specification as well as heart and kidney organogenesis. We identified a homozygous human WNT11 variant in ...

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Babli Adhikary @babliadhikary.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Hello science peeps A quick introduction to Miller lab shenanigans 🐸😄 @umichlawlib.bsky.social We are very demure, very mindful labmates 🧪 🥼 #Scienceisfun

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

We are excited to continue working on KANSL1 for the foreseeable future and to think more broadly about the role of cilia in sociability. Thanks to our co-authors and funders including the KdVS Foundation and CZ Biohub.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

This work establishes that KANSL1 functions at cilia and that this function contributes to the clinical symptomatology of KdVS. Yet again, we find that a gene associated with social behavior functions at cilia.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Perhaps this non-invasive 30 second test (used to diagnose the ciliopathy Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia) could be more broadly used for identifying additional unrecognized genetic ciliopathies.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Finally, James measured the ciliary functional biomarker nasal nitric oxide in 11 individuals with KdVS and observed they had significantly lower values compared to a direct family member.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Next we translated this work to individuals with KdVS, documenting the prevalence of cilia-associated conditions like structural heart defects, structural respiratory defects, and hypogonadism via caregiver surveys in collaboration with Anna Pfalzer and COMBINEDBrain.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Loss of Kansl1 causes ciliogenesis phenotypes that can be partially rescued by human KANSL1.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Here we show that in Xenopus, Kansl1 is highly expressed in embryonic ciliated tissues and localizes to motile ciliary axonemes and basal bodies of the epidermis. This localization was seen both with an antibody we validated and by expressing GFP-tagged human KANSL1.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Since microtubule dynamics are so essential for cilia form and function, and because folks with KdVS have many clinical symptoms associated with ciliopathies (structural heart defects etc), we hypothesized that KANSL1 functions at the cilium.

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

KANSL1 is best known as a chromatin regulator, but ALSO directly stabilizes microtubules at the mitotic spindle (yet another one of these “dual function” chromatin regulators).

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

While my lab to this point has been studying genes associated with atypical sociability (namely autism), we got interested in this gene because folks with variants in KANSL1 are atypically hypersociable. Watch them here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mqY...

youtube.com

Koolen-de Vries Syndrome - Our very favorite syndrome!

YouTube video by Koolen-de Vries Syndrome Foundation

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Helen Willsey @goodfrognosis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Check out our new ✨preprint✨ led by James Schmidt! Here we identified a new role for the gene KANSL1 in ciliary biology using Xenopus, with validations in patients with associated Koolen-de Vries Syndrome, which is characterized by hypersociability. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 10/11/2024

okay has anybody made one of these for #cilia peeps yet?? go.bsky.app/ELfYqxw please find & add more names below...

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Alliance of Genome Resources @alliancegenome.bsky.social · 26/07/2024

Xenopus researchers (and only Xenopus researchers!) Open now! Xenbase.org wants to hear from you about how you use Xenbase and what they can do to make Xenbase even better. Just click forms.gle/5WFANQTKA6TuSyg67 to take the survey! #science #biology #devbio #xenopus #frogs @xenbase.bsky.social

XenBase frog on a green and purple swirled background resembling watered silk. Text in white reads "Please take our survey! Your feedback is important. Help us to better help you". The image includes a QR code to the Xenbase user survey.

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Matyas Bubna-Litic @matyasbl.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

Let's kick things off with live imaging of Xenopus deep layer blastocoel roof cells imaged using Airyscan 2.

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Frog Wranglers @frogwranglers.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Hello world! We’re here to spread the love of our favorite model organism Xenopus. Give us a follow for your daily moment of Xen(opus)!

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Reposted by Helen Willsey

Dr. Peter Walentek (Walentek Lab) @walenteklab.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

New preprint from the lab 🙌 @biorxiv. We found new foxi1 functions in multipotent mucociliary progenitors in #xenopus. 🐸 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Congrats to 3 first authors Sarah Bowden, Magdalena Brislinger-Engelhardt, Mona Hansen & team! Fu dwd by CIBSS SFB1453_NephGen dfg

biorxiv.org

Foxi1 regulates multiple steps of mucociliary development and ionocyte specification through transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms

Foxi1 is a master regulator of ionocytes (ISCs / INCs) across species and organs. Two subtypes of ISCs exist, and both α- and β-ISCs regulate pH- and ion-homeostasis in epithelia. Gain and loss of FOX...

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