Announcing!

Postdoc Lisa Miller is the 1st author on our latest work from the lab. The author list has many other Kirby lab members, mostly alum at this point.  Read the article below to learn about the beneficial role of VEGF synthesizes by adult hippocampal NSCs in mice.

Miller, L.N., Walters, A.E., Denninger, J.K. et al. Neural stem and progenitor cells support and protect adult hippocampal function via vascular endothelial growth factor secretion. Mol Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02827-8

Read it with no paywall here: https://rdcu.be/dZSbF

We were there. We had posters. It was a fun and illuminating time. Here’s the proof!

India Carter at her 2nd SfN ever. She’s wiser this year and ready for it all.

Nidhi reps the Kirby lab for the 3rd time at SfN , but only her 2nd time in person (2021 SfN was weird). She has the informal lab record for most lab swag obtained at the Expo.

Lisa brings seniority to our group, as the resident postdoc representing us at SfN. But, she still manages to have a new experience: 1st time at SfN Chicago having to travel there, rather than attending as a local.

BN lab Olympics took over the psych basement once again late this summer. These are the first games since 2021, which means many of our previous athletes had retired (graduated). But we had a few senior participants as a bushel of new folks who came ready to compete!

Representatives from the Coutellier, Lenz, Leuner, Sehgal and Kirby lab came together in the spirit of fun and light hearted competition. The overall winner, with the greatest award total from individual events, was Lenz lab postdoc Marissa Smail.

Marissa humbly accepts her award

Some other photos of general Olympics activities:

The Spin and Pour Event: An individual event where you spin around in a chair 10x, then have to transfer water between several containers without spilling. Winner is based on time. Spilling more than 5ml is a DQ.

More Spin and Pour event

“Tip Your Friends” A pairs event where you shoot pipette tips at a beaker held by a friend.

“Salty Disposition” A singles event where you guess the mass of the NaCl in the weighboat. Winner is closest without going over!

A big chunk of Tyler Dause’s thesis is out in Life Science Alliance. Quick summary: Adult hippocampal neural stem cells (NSCs) use self-signaling from VEGF to support their own migration towards/adhesion to local blood vessels.

Or you could read the whole thing! It’s open access so there are no excuses. https://www.life-science-alliance.org/content/7/7/e202402659

Stay tuned for the rest of Tyler’s thesis coming soon (currently under review)! It’s a real twist ending to the story this paper above starts.

Congrats to Nidhi Devasthali for passing her candidacy exam! Below, you can see Nidhi celebrating while she wears the traditional Kirby Lab horns of victory. She has some exciting plans for the next few years!

Nidhi basks in the joy of becoming a PhD candidate

Congrats to India! She crushed her senior thesis defense today, entitled “Postnatal Development of Vasculature in the Hippocampal Neural Stem Cell Niche”. And though she is graduating, we don’t have to be sad (yet). She will be joining us as a full time technician next year while she applies to grad school. We have had India’s pic on our posts frequently, so this time let’s admire one of her images. A 3D rendering of vasculature in the adult hippocampus, one of the images in her thesis. The color coding tells you the layer of the dentate gyrus (purple = molecular layer; green = granule cell layer; yellow = subgranular zone; red = hilus).

It’s Kirby Lab Mistake of the Year 2023! We celebrate our mistakes every year, with nominations and voting by everyone in lab for best mistake made in the lab. We do this to show how mistakes are normal in research. And if you make an interesting-enough mistake, you can even get a prize.

This year we celebrate:

Runnerup: Jeremy (visiting grad student in MD/PhD program) for forgetting to come to lab meeting when he was presenting

Winner: Nidhi (NGP grad student) for making licor image files so large the software crashed, which tech support says has never happened before.

Congrats to this years winners!

Once again, we have had a successful Neuroscience-Math mixer holiday party back in December. The White Elephant gift exchange was, as always, a battel to the bitter end. Also as always, I did not get many pictures. But here are some of the few I did capture:

Ashley opens her white elephant gift while Nidhi, India and Patricia watch, along with some math folks.

Ashley, Bryon and Nidhi have some food while math people lurk in the background.

Congratulations to India! She has been awarded a travel award from the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN), sponsored by the International Brain Research Organization. This was a national competition for awards of $1000 to help fund travel to SfN this Fall to present a poster. Her poster will be on display in the main poster session at SfN on Wednesday morning, November 15, 2023. Her poster is titled: “Hippocampal neural stem cell proximity to vasculature emerges during postnatal development”.

Here is India!