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jared toettcher

@toettch.bsky.social
1.2K followers 181 following 49 posts

Dad, bioengineer, climber, skier, surfer (in that order, more or less). Chaotic good alignment, or so my lab tells me...

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Hooray congrats!
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 05/10/2026
BREAKING NEWS The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Princeton postdoctoral fellowship opportunity to work in my lab & others! This opportunity is part of a new NSF-funded center here, and is particularly focused on candidates who are interested in biomolecular condensates and programmable soft materials. Deadline Nov 1. apply.interfolio.com/193107
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Kate Cavanaugh @katecavanaugh.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
And finally—a bit of personal news: 🔬 I’m on the faculty job market this year! I’m looking for tenure-track opportunities where I can build a lab at the intersection of developmental biology, mechanobiology, reproductive biology & aging.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I wanted to emphasize that a first major project is about to begin, so we are very interested in filling this position ASAP :)
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Hey friends, we're hiring over here at Princeton Bioengineering! In addition to the usual positions (faculty, grad students, postdocs), BioE is looking for a Program Manager to help oversee big multi-PI projects (e.g. DARPA, ARPA-H). Pass along & apply if interested! apply.interfolio.com/187973
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
this sounds like something i need to think & learn more about. stop by any time and tell me more!
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I should also point out that there are other *excellent* steps in the "smart microscopy" + optogenetics direction, including recent efforts by the Pertz and Kapitein labs, that are reviewed here. Take a look! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Anyhow, there is lots more in the paper. There is also a LOT more work out about how wave speed defines tissue migration direction. But we're excited about this first step, as well as for Harrison's beautiful software that finally enables us to perform more sophisticated optogenetic experiments.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Our data suggested that differences in wave speed are sufficient to determine migration direction. And indeed, when we stimulate MDCK tissues with linear waves at different speeds, we observe a reversal of direction when wave speed increases!
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Why is this important? Well it turns out that migration-associated signaling waves have been observed n a few different contexts. In some cases (e.g. zebrafish scales), waves are slow and cells follow the outgoing wave, whereas in others (e.g. mouse skin) waves are faster and cells move "upstream".
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
If you look carefully, you'll notice something wild! Cells on the inside of the rotating-bar pattern generally follow the bars, twisting in a counterclockwise fashion. But cells on the outside go the opposite direction - moving in a *clockwise* direction! This effect is also clear in quantification.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
OK, but how does this compare to a traveling wave of light, where cells have to respond to a macroscopic cue traveling across the tissue? Amazingly, we get migration in this case too but with some key differences.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
OK, so what about cell migration? Can we optogenetically stimulate every individual cell in an epithelial tissue? How does this compare to signaling waves? PyCLM made it easy to segment all the cells in an MDCK OptoEGFR monolayers and give each cell its own tiny gradient. Voila!
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I won't dig into Python code here, but crucially Harrison's tools are incredibly easy to use. You can "re-mix" any prior combination of experiments using simple text configuration files, and writing new experiments is straightforward. Here is an example of single-cell optogenetic feedback control!
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Maybe surprisingly, the biggest challenge here was *software*! How can we automatically tailor light inputs to 100s of cells or deliver waves across a tissue? Harrison solved this problem beautifully by building a suite of tools for microscope control, cell segmentation, and optogenetic stimulation.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
A long dream of my lab has been to interrogate tissue-scale movement with optogenetic receptor tyrosine kinases (like EGFR). With light, we can deliver local directional inputs to each cell in a tissue, or apply waves of light to a tissue at user-defined speeds.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Well, how tissues move naturally? One surprise is that tissue movement is often accompanied by long-range propagating waves of receptor tyrosine kinase activity (see work by Aoki, Di Talia, Matsuda, Ebisuya, & others). One prevailing notion is that these waves direct tissue movement.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Biologically, this work was motivated by a simple question: how can biochemical signals make a TISSUE move in a user-defined way? To move a 1000-cell tissue, should directional stimuli be delivered to each of the 1000 cells? Or can one take advantage of the collective?
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
New Toettchlab paper alert! Harrison Oatman just published his beautiful work combining software design for "smart" microscopy+optogenetics and some really beautiful work understanding EGFR-driven collective cell migration. www.cell.com/cell-systems...
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Ankita Jha @ankita13jha.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Excited to share our new paper, now published in Nature Cell Biology! 🎉 We asked a fundamental question in cell biology: How do cells maintain polarity while migrating? Especially how do cancer cells navigate confined spaces? www.nature.com/articles/s41556-026-01981-1
nature.com
CD44 restricts EGFR mobility to polarize cytoskeletal signalling modules driving bleb-based migration - Nature Cell Biology
Jha et al. show that the transmembrane protein CD44 restricts EGFR mobility to maintain an EGFR–PI3K–Rac gradient during bleb-based cell migration.
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Hey friends, we're hiring over here at Princeton Bioengineering! In addition to the usual positions (faculty, grad students, postdocs), BioE is looking for a Program Manager to help oversee big multi-PI projects (e.g. DARPA, ARPA-H). Pass along & apply if interested! apply.interfolio.com/187973
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Ohhh I am jealous, maybe I can reply and get my own moniker
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Boris Sieber @borissieber.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Together with mammalian KSR1/2 and budding yeast Ste5, our discovery of Sms1 demonstrates the #evolutionary #convergence of the MAPK scaffolds in opisthokonts, with the independent acquisition of MAPK affinity and plasma membrane targeting domains.
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Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
IU let them lock the labs without notice and the occupants had to beg to make sure equipment was turned off and experiments running taken care of to, you know, not cause the building to burn down
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Erik Sontheimer 🇺🇸💙🇺🇦 @eriksontheimer.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Site-specific, multi-kilobase insertions and over-writes in mammalian cells, without DSBs, HDR, recombinases, integrases, transposases, or active cell cycling? Using fully or predominantly single-stranded DNA donors? 1/15
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Andrew G. York @andrewgyork.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Meet MagLuc: a magnetically-controlled luminescent protein. This is a foundational tool for remote control of biological processes, also known as "magnetogenetics". Can you tell when the magnetic field turns on and off? From @mariaingaramo.bsky.social and the team at @nonfictionlabs.bsky.social
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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
New review on optogenetics in development is out in @genesdev.bsky.social with @toettch.bsky.social and Yang Gao! 💙💡🔦 genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl... We aim to capture why opto is such a powerful tool for devbio and how future advances can make it even better. Some highlights:
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The number of NIH competitive awards is down 50% from 2025, and down ~70% from prior years. Even if they catch up by the end of the year, only wealthy institutions can bridge these huge funding gaps.They're killing science-and violating the constitution-by weaponizing the bureaucracy
figure showing the trends I detail in the tweet text
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
A third case where I would use it for optogenetic/chemogenetic tools is to describe the change in Kd between stimulated and unstimulated conditions...
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
It's weird to admit that I would use dynamic range in both cases, depending on the context!
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Gabriel Abrahams @gabriel-abrahams.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Quantum biological control, now in a multicellular organism! Super exciting to see this work from @scburd.bsky.social et al 🧪
nature.com
Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pair dynamics in vivo - Nature
Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pairs alters red fluorescent protein emission in transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans, demonstrating in vivo magnetic field modulation of biomolecula...
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Addgene @addgene.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Wondering what's the difference between Halorhodopsin and Channelrhodopsin? Curious how a plant photosensor domain could power your next gene editing experiment? Check out our Optogenetics Guide to learn about these tools and more to light up your lab! 🧠💡🔬
twp.ai
Addgene: Optogenetics Guide
Learn about using Optogenetics plasmids in your lab, including microbial opsins and optical switch systems.
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Robert Arkowitz @robertarkowitz.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Ribosome Molecular Aging Shapes Translation Dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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RamenSploosh @ramensploosh.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
daily #pokemon doodle 218 - #Slugma in a @beetlemoses.bsky.social style comic
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Michael Lin, MD PhD @michaelzlin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.
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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Our new paper just out! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
pubs.acs.org
Optogenetic Translocation to Subcellular Compartments through Regulation of Protein Avidity
Inducible translocation to subcellular compartments is a common strategy for protein switches that control a variety of cell behaviors. However, existing switches achieve translocation through induced...
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Gabriel Abrahams @gabriel-abrahams.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Our research on magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins and some of their applications has now been published! Huge thank you to the many many people involved in making this happen. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Quantum spin resonance in engineered proteins for multimodal sensing - Nature
A recently developed class of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins are engineered to alter the properties of their response to magnetic fields and radio frequencies, enabling multimodal sensing of b...
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Arjun Raj @arjunraj.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Blog post: Just quit Quitting projects in science is hard, but we should be doing a lot more of it. open.substack.com/pub/arjunraj...
open.substack.com
Just quit
Quitting projects in science is hard, but we should be doing a lot more of it.
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MPI for Biology Tübingen & Friedrich Miescher Laboratory @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Here's another exciting doctoral project led by Research Group Leader Beatrice Ramm at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory. Check the list of other available projects on our website: lnkd.in/gEMXNQY6 The application portal is open so apply now! #PhD #IMPRS #graduateprogram #maxplanck
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Rita Strack @ritastrack.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Janelia is hiring! "Invent new imaging methods, molecular tools, or protein chemistry approaches" www.janelia.org/content/lead...
janelia.org
Lead a lab at Janelia
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
An elegant sprite!
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H. B. Beryl Rappaport @hbrappap.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵
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Alessandro De Simone @desimonelab.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
The lab’s first pre-print! We investigated how growth-inducing Erk activity waves are regulated in regenerating zebrafish scales. We discovered that Erk waves are followed by waves of expression of their own inhibitors, as predicted by excitable waves theory. tinyurl.com/26r2cmpj
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Reminds me of a guy I knew in grad school who filled out his NCAA bracket based on amino acid hydrophilicity (ignoring non AA letters). D(u)KE always did well :)
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Cara Giovanetti @idontevencara.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Domesticated animals have pulled our heavy carts and turned our large mills for centuries. But what about the opposite end of the spectrum—what if the wheel you want to turn is so small you can’t see it? Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines. 1/7 ⚛️🧪
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Leslie B Vosshall PhD @leslievosshall.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Great Job - Great Colleagues - Great Science👍 Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Senior Director - Scientific Officer
Primary Work Address: 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) advances the disco...
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Lucien Hinderling @lhinderling.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Want to get started with smart microscopy? 🧠🔬 Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati... More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
screenshots of some of the sample implementationsScreenshot of smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementations.html, showing an overview of collected implementation examples
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John Ngo @johntngo.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com! Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
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Daniel J. Cohen (Princeton) @djcohen.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N
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