Joe Brancale
@joeb218.bsky.social
Yale MD/PhD Student | Vilarinho lab studying mechanisms behind rare liver disease | Harvard Alum | 🧑🔬 all things genetics, GI and metabolism
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Neat trick if you polycolonal ab's suck. Incubate them with fixed cells with a KO of your protein of interest, then spin. Protocol here: www.med.upenn.edu/markslab/ass...
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky
October 2, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Neat trick if you polycolonal ab's suck. Incubate them with fixed cells with a KO of your protein of interest, then spin. Protocol here: www.med.upenn.edu/markslab/ass...
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky
So cool! Looking at skin cells to understand psychosis
15 years in the making, we confirmed that mitochondria - the powerhouse of the cell - have an unusual localization in patients who experience psychosis (including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders). You’ll never guess what kind of patient cells we used to make this discovery… 🧵
October 11, 2025 at 1:00 PM
So cool! Looking at skin cells to understand psychosis
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Check out our new RAEFISH spatial transcriptomics technology published in Cell! This work represents the first time that transcripts from more than 20,000 genes were directly imaged in situ with any technology, and the first time numerous gRNAs were directly probed in an image-based CRISPR screen.
Now online! Sequencing-free whole-genome spatial transcriptomics at single-molecule resolution
Sequencing-free whole-genome spatial transcriptomics at single-molecule resolution
RAEFISH delivers whole-transcriptome (>20,000 genes) imaging at single-molecule resolution in cells and tissues and enables direct gRNA detection for high-content, image-based CRISPR screens.
dlvr.it
October 8, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Check out our new RAEFISH spatial transcriptomics technology published in Cell! This work represents the first time that transcripts from more than 20,000 genes were directly imaged in situ with any technology, and the first time numerous gRNAs were directly probed in an image-based CRISPR screen.
Ever since my early Evo-Devo days I have loved non-traditional models! Hope to get back to it some day, but in the meantime love to see scientists pioneering this type of work
#FluorescenceFriday
#Seahorse retina stained with #GNB3 (green) + #DAPI (cyan). GNB3 labels cone photoreceptors + ON #bipolarcells, tracing pathways from outer to inner retina. Amazing to see conserved visual #circuits in this non-traditional model
#Seahorse retina stained with #GNB3 (green) + #DAPI (cyan). GNB3 labels cone photoreceptors + ON #bipolarcells, tracing pathways from outer to inner retina. Amazing to see conserved visual #circuits in this non-traditional model
September 14, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Ever since my early Evo-Devo days I have loved non-traditional models! Hope to get back to it some day, but in the meantime love to see scientists pioneering this type of work
Reposted by Joe Brancale
The last publication (he says!) from Rich Losick, my PhD advisor.
Historical in nature it focuses on a seminal paper in molecular biology, the study revealing the genetic code to be triplet in nature. Come for the science, appreciate the clear prose!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Historical in nature it focuses on a seminal paper in molecular biology, the study revealing the genetic code to be triplet in nature. Come for the science, appreciate the clear prose!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Revisiting a Breathtaking Publication in the History of Molecular Biology
www.sciencedirect.com
September 12, 2025 at 3:53 PM
The last publication (he says!) from Rich Losick, my PhD advisor.
Historical in nature it focuses on a seminal paper in molecular biology, the study revealing the genetic code to be triplet in nature. Come for the science, appreciate the clear prose!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Historical in nature it focuses on a seminal paper in molecular biology, the study revealing the genetic code to be triplet in nature. Come for the science, appreciate the clear prose!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Joe Brancale
24 years ago today, I fell in love in NYC. In the shadow of Ground Zero & the horrors of that day.
We have been married for 22 years now. And we have two fabulous children.
I think of this whenever I worry about the darkness.
There can be beauty, even when the worst of humanity is on display.
We have been married for 22 years now. And we have two fabulous children.
I think of this whenever I worry about the darkness.
There can be beauty, even when the worst of humanity is on display.
September 12, 2025 at 2:07 AM
24 years ago today, I fell in love in NYC. In the shadow of Ground Zero & the horrors of that day.
We have been married for 22 years now. And we have two fabulous children.
I think of this whenever I worry about the darkness.
There can be beauty, even when the worst of humanity is on display.
We have been married for 22 years now. And we have two fabulous children.
I think of this whenever I worry about the darkness.
There can be beauty, even when the worst of humanity is on display.
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Please RP.
We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first preprint is out!
”Whole-genome single-cell multimodal history tracing to reveal cell identity transition”
We report HisTrac-seq, a multiomic single-cell molecular recording platform.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first preprint is out!
”Whole-genome single-cell multimodal history tracing to reveal cell identity transition”
We report HisTrac-seq, a multiomic single-cell molecular recording platform.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 16, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Please RP.
We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first preprint is out!
”Whole-genome single-cell multimodal history tracing to reveal cell identity transition”
We report HisTrac-seq, a multiomic single-cell molecular recording platform.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first preprint is out!
”Whole-genome single-cell multimodal history tracing to reveal cell identity transition”
We report HisTrac-seq, a multiomic single-cell molecular recording platform.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Have $10M and want to cure some diseases?
It costs ~$1B to invent a new medicine…but $10M buys you Project Encore, to see if ANY existing drug might be repurposed for ~100 diseases that have no treatments.
Contact me - be a hero for desperate patients!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
It costs ~$1B to invent a new medicine…but $10M buys you Project Encore, to see if ANY existing drug might be repurposed for ~100 diseases that have no treatments.
Contact me - be a hero for desperate patients!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
August 5, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Have $10M and want to cure some diseases?
It costs ~$1B to invent a new medicine…but $10M buys you Project Encore, to see if ANY existing drug might be repurposed for ~100 diseases that have no treatments.
Contact me - be a hero for desperate patients!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
It costs ~$1B to invent a new medicine…but $10M buys you Project Encore, to see if ANY existing drug might be repurposed for ~100 diseases that have no treatments.
Contact me - be a hero for desperate patients!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Reposted by Joe Brancale
A new tragedy for the Endocrine community An outstanding scientist leaves us too soon
August 4, 2025 at 6:15 PM
A new tragedy for the Endocrine community An outstanding scientist leaves us too soon
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who constantly googles “tocris calculator”
If anyone needs a fast loading and ad-free c1v1=c2v2 calculator, this one I use often. No frills. Just works.
www.tocris.com/resources/di...
www.tocris.com/resources/di...
www.tocris.com
April 10, 2025 at 12:50 AM
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who constantly googles “tocris calculator”
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Nanopore technology might be able to sequence proteins soon! Read about the road ahead in this exciting Perspective rdcu.be/edWPi in @naturebiotech.bsky.social
Toward single-molecule protein sequencing using nanopores
Nature Biotechnology - Maglia and colleagues discuss advances in nanopore technology en route to single-molecule protein sequencing
rdcu.be
March 18, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Nanopore technology might be able to sequence proteins soon! Read about the road ahead in this exciting Perspective rdcu.be/edWPi in @naturebiotech.bsky.social
Reposted by Joe Brancale
💫NEW: @valentatormenta.bsky.social, Perry & co track the endogenous redox ratio (NAD(P)H/FAD) with live imaging in the mouse skin and find that maintaining a robust redox ratio is key to clonal prevalence.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Metabolic rewiring in skin epidermis drives tolerance to oncogenic mutations - Nature Cell Biology
Hemalatha et al. track the endogenous redox ratio (NAD(P)H/FAD) with live imaging in the mouse skin to study the interface of wild-type stem cells with oncogenic mutant cells. They find that maintaini...
www.nature.com
February 16, 2025 at 6:47 PM
💫NEW: @valentatormenta.bsky.social, Perry & co track the endogenous redox ratio (NAD(P)H/FAD) with live imaging in the mouse skin and find that maintaining a robust redox ratio is key to clonal prevalence.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Love research applying newer microscopy techniques to liver biology!! Congrats @hannahhrncir.bsky.social and @graczlab.bsky.social
Some good news: @hannahhrncir.bsky.social ‘s primary PhD paper is finally online! This study lays the groundwork for a lot of technical and conceptual things the lab is currently working on, including light sheet microscopy for imaging entire biliary trees in mouse liver: rdcu.be/d90Br 1/4
Sox9 inhibits Activin A to promote biliary maturation and branching morphogenesis
Nature Communications - The bile ducts of the liver form a network of large ducts and small ductules, though how they are patterned remains unclear. Hrncir et al. show that Sox9 is required for the...
rdcu.be
February 16, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Love research applying newer microscopy techniques to liver biology!! Congrats @hannahhrncir.bsky.social and @graczlab.bsky.social
Reposted by Joe Brancale
We have a new EO launching the MAHA Commission. There's a lot of enthusiasm in nutrition spaces that MAHA will finally bring a spotlight to food, but I have a number of concerns - from un-serious descriptions of the problems we face to chemophobic dogwhistles
kcklatt.substack.com/p/the-maha-c...
kcklatt.substack.com/p/the-maha-c...
The MAHA Commission Launches
A new executive order, red flags and wet blankets
kcklatt.substack.com
February 15, 2025 at 6:18 PM
We have a new EO launching the MAHA Commission. There's a lot of enthusiasm in nutrition spaces that MAHA will finally bring a spotlight to food, but I have a number of concerns - from un-serious descriptions of the problems we face to chemophobic dogwhistles
kcklatt.substack.com/p/the-maha-c...
kcklatt.substack.com/p/the-maha-c...
Reposted by Joe Brancale
We're seeing continued censoring from the administration of scientific and clinical information including this crucial webpage from FDA of "Approved Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS)" which serve as critical programs for drug safety. No explanation, no notice. #MedSky
February 15, 2025 at 8:17 PM
We're seeing continued censoring from the administration of scientific and clinical information including this crucial webpage from FDA of "Approved Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS)" which serve as critical programs for drug safety. No explanation, no notice. #MedSky
Reposted by Joe Brancale
The correct term is conjunctival icterus.
The expression "scleral icterus" was previously and incorrectly perpetuated. See this scathing remark in @jama.com by an ophthalmologist.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
#Liversky #GiSky #Medsky @cwruim.bsky.social
The expression "scleral icterus" was previously and incorrectly perpetuated. See this scathing remark in @jama.com by an ophthalmologist.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
#Liversky #GiSky #Medsky @cwruim.bsky.social
'Conjunctival Icterus,' Not 'Scleral Icterus'
To the Editor.—
The expression "scleral icterus" generally used by physicians is grossly incorrect. For decades, physical diagnosis primers have cued medical students to look for "scleral icterus...
jamanetwork.com
February 13, 2025 at 1:39 AM
The correct term is conjunctival icterus.
The expression "scleral icterus" was previously and incorrectly perpetuated. See this scathing remark in @jama.com by an ophthalmologist.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
#Liversky #GiSky #Medsky @cwruim.bsky.social
The expression "scleral icterus" was previously and incorrectly perpetuated. See this scathing remark in @jama.com by an ophthalmologist.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
#Liversky #GiSky #Medsky @cwruim.bsky.social
Reposted by Joe Brancale
A poem for today. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/...
Good Bones
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children.
www.poetryfoundation.org
January 20, 2025 at 4:17 PM
A poem for today. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/...
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Interested in how T cells are regulated in a tissue-specific manner? Karthik Varanasi’s exciting work shows Bile Acid synthesis impedes tumor-specific T cell responses during liver cancer @science.org Huge THANKS to all the amazing collaborators + @salkinstitute, SBP
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Bile acid synthesis impedes tumor-specific T cell responses during liver cancer
The metabolic landscape of cancer greatly influences antitumor immunity, yet it remains unclear how organ-specific metabolites in the tumor microenvironment influence immunosurveillance. We found that...
www.science.org
January 11, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Interested in how T cells are regulated in a tissue-specific manner? Karthik Varanasi’s exciting work shows Bile Acid synthesis impedes tumor-specific T cell responses during liver cancer @science.org Huge THANKS to all the amazing collaborators + @salkinstitute, SBP
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Impressive paper out in @science.org by the Kaech lab investigating the role of bile acids in mediating T-cell response in HCC. #Liversky #Gastrosky www.science.org/doi/full/10....
www.science.org
January 12, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Impressive paper out in @science.org by the Kaech lab investigating the role of bile acids in mediating T-cell response in HCC. #Liversky #Gastrosky www.science.org/doi/full/10....
This. This is what good science, medicine and public health can achieve!
After nearly three decades, a Minnesota summer camp for kids with HIV/AIDS is closing and up for sale... because retroviral drugs are so effective that there aren't enough campers.
Science works, y'all.
www.startribune.com/closure-of-n...
Science works, y'all.
www.startribune.com/closure-of-n...
Closure of northern Minnesota camp is ‘the greatest story.’ Here’s why.
Willow River, Minn., camp One Heartland is for sale after serving kids there for nearly three decades.
www.startribune.com
December 28, 2024 at 2:05 AM
This. This is what good science, medicine and public health can achieve!
Reposted by Joe Brancale
We present Gene Regulatory nETwork Analsyis (GRETA), a framework to infer, compare and evaluate gene regulatory networks #GRNs. With it, we have benchmarked multimodal and unimodal GRN inference methods. Check the results here 👇
Paper: doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.20.629764
Code: github.com/saezlab/greta
Paper: doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.20.629764
Code: github.com/saezlab/greta
December 23, 2024 at 8:43 AM
We present Gene Regulatory nETwork Analsyis (GRETA), a framework to infer, compare and evaluate gene regulatory networks #GRNs. With it, we have benchmarked multimodal and unimodal GRN inference methods. Check the results here 👇
Paper: doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.20.629764
Code: github.com/saezlab/greta
Paper: doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.20.629764
Code: github.com/saezlab/greta
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Been looking forward to sharing this for a long time! Great collaboration with folks from across the world in which we identified a SVA_E insertion missed by standard clinical testing in individuals with Canavan disease, an early onset neurodegenerative disease.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
A Diagnostic Blind Spot: Deep intronic SVA_E Insertion identified as the most Common Pathogenic Variant Associated with Canavan Disease
Canavan disease (CD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by biallelic disease-causing variants in the ASPA gene. Here, we utilized long-read sequencing (LRS) to investigate eight individuals clinic...
www.medrxiv.org
December 23, 2024 at 2:49 AM
Been looking forward to sharing this for a long time! Great collaboration with folks from across the world in which we identified a SVA_E insertion missed by standard clinical testing in individuals with Canavan disease, an early onset neurodegenerative disease.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
I’ve been out of the microbiome field field for a few years now but every time I see amazing work like this I’m impressed at how far we have come! Congrats @gangfang.bsky.social and @yufan01.bsky.social
Glad to share our preprint 🏃 **LongTrack**: long read metagenomics-based precise tracking of bacterial strains (and their genomic changes!) after 💩 fecal microbiota transplantation. A 4+ years journey and tour de force by ** @yufan01.bsky.social ** & team. A long 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
December 12, 2024 at 1:02 PM
I’ve been out of the microbiome field field for a few years now but every time I see amazing work like this I’m impressed at how far we have come! Congrats @gangfang.bsky.social and @yufan01.bsky.social
Reposted by Joe Brancale
Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent antibody response against a pathogen. Could lead to topical vaccines that are applied in a cream. @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social led the charge... @natureportfolio.bsky.social 1/55
December 11, 2024 at 4:29 PM
Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent antibody response against a pathogen. Could lead to topical vaccines that are applied in a cream. @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social led the charge... @natureportfolio.bsky.social 1/55
Reposted by Joe Brancale
eLife will send WOS a partial feed of "solid" articles. This decision will be applauded by some supporters but lamented by others as de facto re-introduction of an accept/reject decision... elifesciences.org/inside-elife...
December 10, 2024 at 4:55 PM
eLife will send WOS a partial feed of "solid" articles. This decision will be applauded by some supporters but lamented by others as de facto re-introduction of an accept/reject decision... elifesciences.org/inside-elife...