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Nidhi Devasthali (current PhD student) and India Carter (former undergrad and postbac) have their first, 1st author paper published today. This co-first authored paper shows characterization of the vascular neurogenic niche over postnatal development in male and female mice. It’s free to access and read at Scientific Reports starting today!

Devasthali, N., Carter, I., Saulsbery, A.I., Kirby, E.D. Postnatal development of the dentate gyrus vascular niche. Sci Rep 15, 38550 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-22591-1

This past summer, we had a guest student, Irene Liang, as part of the Summer Research Opportunities Program. Irene spent the last couple months working on one of our newer research directions, studying how exercise impacts social behavior. Here’s Irene at her poster on the final research symposium day, along with lab members Nidhi Devasthali and Lisa Miller, as well as Dr. Kirby. With that, Irene is headed back home for a few weeks then returning to her home institution, Cornell. We wish Irene good luck with grad school aps and her senior thesis!

From left to right: Irene, Liz, Nidhi, Lisa

This morning, Emma Corbett successfully defended her undergraduate senior thesis “Localization of the Excitatory Amino Acid Transporter 1 (EAAT1) in the Inner Molecular Layer
in Response to Glutamate Release”. Emma showed stellar composure while fielding tough questions from her committee and made us all proud in the Kirby lab. Emma is currently looking for tech positions in neuroscience with more of a human subjects focus before deciding what route to pursue for grad school. Good luck and we will miss you, Emma!

The final pieces of Tyler Dause’s PhD thesis are officially published now in Molecular Neurobiology. In this paper, Tyler shows some of the detailed mechanism of how neural stem cells signal to themselves with VEGF. In an unexpected twist, Tyler found that while neural stem cells express VEGF receptors, they also express enzymes that shave them off the cell surface. The end result is that these cells only respond to the VEGF inside the cell, where VEGF receptors remain intact prior to insertion in the membrane. This is not the canonical form of VEGF signaling but is has been described before, for example in some cancer cells. Fascinating stuff! Congrats Tyler!

Read the paper here:

Dause, T.J., Osap, R., Kuwahara, A.A. et al. Intracrine VEGF Signaling Is Required for Adult Hippocampal Neural Stem Cell Maintenance and Vascular Proximity. Mol Neurobiol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12035-025-04861-1

Another year is logged in this great Kirby Lab tradition. This year, we have our first tie and our first repeat winner.

Postbac India Carter ties with grad student Nidhi Devasthali. Nidhi is our first ever double winner. She was also our champ last year.

They each got bragging rights and a cool brain light as their winnings. Read about their mistakes below then get out there and do some science so you make your own excellent mistakes!

India: Imaging with the slides wrong-side up and being unable to figure out why they were so blurry when at 20x but were ok at 10x. She imaged for 45min before getting Bryon, who
showed her the problem.

Nidhi: In trying to combine 2 antibodies, one of which required 37 deg incubation (calbindin) and one of which did not (cfos), Nidhi incubated tissue in both primary antibodies at 37 degrees. She also did the secondary antibody step in PBS instead of blocking solution. The stain looked weird but she counted all 17 animals anyways, only to realize this was a mistake when her results did not make sense.

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.