Congratulations Mariana J García, MBE on a successful thesis proposal defense! Now officially a PhD candidate! Excited to see your final thesis work #T1D #islets #stemcells #IMM UTHealth Houston Rice University

Excited to host William Terrell, PhD for his visit to UTHealth Houston #IMM. Looking forward to an exciting seminar on the differentiation and co-culture of autonomic neurons and cardiac myocytes. #stemcells #hearthealth #metabolicdiseases #postdoc

Super happy for Madigan Snyder, Ph.D. and proud of her. A great accomplishment and recognition of all her hard work this past year. Well-deserved!! #PostDocStar The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) #IMM #mitopower #T1D #isletbiology

Mariana García is a very happy trainee today! Officially made her first stem cell-derived islets! She has persisted through many hurdles to reach this stage and is now poised to perfect the process and extend her PhD studies. Great job! UTHealth Houston #IMM Rice University Bioengineering

Great time at my 1st Midwest Islet Club Meeting #MIC Indiana University Impressive science from talented trainees with wonderful thought provoking lectures from the Paul Lacey Medal Awardee Al Powers and Bob Sorenson Young Investigator Awardee Jing Hughes #heterogeneity #diversity #isletbiology

Check out my talk this afternoon where I’ll share our latest work! #isletbiology #metabolism #IMM The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston)

Wishing Tanyel all the best as she takes the next step in her career and heads back across the pond. Thanks for helping grow the lab and pushing our efforts forward! #IMM #UTHealthHouston

Thanks!

Thanks!

Importantly there is a deficiency in basic science translation and clinical studies including women or female pre-clinical models #InclusionMatters. Everyone equally deserves breakthrough medications treatments and cures for illnesses. It all begins with NIH funded basic science to study diversity

Ultimately, we propose a coordinated transcriptional mechanism involving Xbp1 and Myc to alleviate UPR and stimulate beta cell proliferation in obese female mice

We unify independent observations of UPR (Laura Alonso
@JimJohnsonSci Jesper Gromada) and Myc (Vincent Poitout Adolfo Garcia Ocaña Donald Scott Andy Stewart) regulated beta cell proliferation, while identifying novel aspects of stress attenuation and Myc transcriptional co-regulators

High confidence transcriptional target (HCT) analysis (McKenna/Ochsner) lead us to identify the enrichment of specific Myc co-regulators (Hcfc1 and Wdr5) that may determine specific gene programs activated by Myc during UPR and Xbp-1 activation to drive beta cell proliferation

Acute Lepr KO induces an Xbp1 regulated transcriptional program to resolve UPR stress during adaptive beta cell proliferation. UPR resolution involved attenuation of HSF1 gene regulation and increased ribosomal biogenesis associated with prominent MYC transcriptional activity

Overall, we captured the transcriptional signatures of beta cell populations undergoing adaptive stress (without decompensation) and attenuation in association with significant beta cell proliferation (~20% of all beta cells) in obese female mice following acute leptin receptor KO

Obesity is the most potent physiologic stimulus to expand beta cells in both humans and pre-clinical models, representing a significant opportunity to identify relevant robust targets that translate to humans to expand and regenerate beta cells as replacement therapy in #T1D #T2D

This was fun project not possible without my amazing co-authors: Dr. Sean Hartig animal studies, writing, support, mentorship; Peter Masschelin talented grad student at the time performed single cell analyses; Drs. Neil McKenna and Scott Ochsner for innovative bioinformatics tool

Excited to share our publication in @cp-iscience.bsky.social
Islet single-cell transcriptomic profiling during obesity-induced beta cell expansion in female mice #IMM @uthealthhouston.bsky.social @bcmhouston.bsky.social 🧵 www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Also shoutout to the amazing Dr. Kendra Carmon!
shorturl.at/7eBzT

International women and girls in science day - late but important to recognize my incredible team of women, proud of their accomplishments and excited for the future. #IMM
@uthealthhouston.bsky.social #WomenInScience Dr. Ege Sanem Oturmaz Dr. Tanyel Ashiik Dr. Madigan Snyder & Mariana Garcia M.Eng.

Enjoyed our first Secret Santa Exchange at yesterday’s lab meeting. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holidays!! 🎄❄️