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Margarita Parada-Kusz

@margaritapk.bsky.social

840 followers 520 following 17 posts

Cellular and molecular biologist at @VAInstitute studying neuroimmune communication in #zebrafish. Not my first rodeo. Former Broad Institute/HMS/MGH. (Views are my own)

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Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Nov 15

Featuring work from my postdoc for my new friends:

We have discovered a novel molecular pathway linking #tryptophan metabolism and #kainate receptors (known for their role in neuronal excitability) to protective antimicrobial #innate immune responses in #zebrafish.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

3-Hydroxykynurenine targets kainate receptors to promote defense against infection - Nature Chemical Biology

A tryptophan metabolite was identified that acts systemically to promote defense against bacterial infection by targeting kainate receptors (KARs), revealing a novel intersection between tryptophan me...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Boston Public Health Commission @publichealth.boston.gov · 8d

We’re offering free vaccine clinics in Boston. Vaccines are safe, effective, and protect against serious illness. Getting vaccinated keeps you healthy and helps protect your family, friends, and community.

Find upcoming vaccine clinics at boston.gov/vaccine-clinics.

Free Vaccine Clinics in Boston

Everyone ages six months and older is encouraged to get the updated flu and COVID-19 vaccines. Pregnant parents, babies, and older adults should consult their health care professional about RSV vaccin...

boston.gov

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Hanna Zwaka @hannazwaka.bsky.social · 20d

“Blame your parents if you can’t pay enough attention." At least when you are a zebrafish! Our new study on attentional switching together with Kumaresh Krishnan, @paulapflitsch.bsky.social , @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social and Florian Engert is out in Science Advances:
doi.org/10.1126/scia...

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Sofia de Oliveira, Ph.D. @sdeoliveira.bsky.social · Jul 31

🧪📣The final version of our latest paper is out!!🤗

"Metainflammation alters neutrophil function and migration in vivo in response to tissue injury"

Go check it out in case you haven't yet😉🔬🐟
#zebrafish
#neutrophils
#injury
#microscopy
#metainflammation
#MetabolicSyndrome

Metainflammation alters neutrophil function and migration in vivo in response to tissue injury

Authors provide a platform to study systemic immune response to threats in vivo under metainflammation context using a diet-induced metainflammation zebraf

academic.oup.com

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Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Aug 29

Not your everyday view!

#Zebrafish #Research ❤️

Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Aug 25

More beautiful biology! Z-stack maximum projection confocal image of a section of the cow #cerebellum. Magenta: neurofilament heavy chain, green: actin, blue: DAPI

#Axons #microscopy #biology #science

Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

André Nadler @nadlerlab.bsky.social · Aug 21

Out today in @nature.com: Together with the Honigmann, Shevchenko, Drobot and Hof labs, we present a general workflow for imaging the localization and transport of individual lipids in cells and mapping their metabolism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Aug 19

Awesome work from the Lempradl lab showcasing the precise regulation of metabolism during embryogenesis in our fruit fly friends!

Lempradl Lab @lempradllab.bsky.social · Aug 14

🚀 Our new study is out in Nature Metabolism!
We used single-embryo metabolomics and transcriptomics to map the earliest metabolic transitions in Drosophila development, including the onset of zygotic metabolism.
Explore the dataset & findings:
🔗 rdcu.be/eAH12

#DevBio #metabolomics #Drosophila

Resolving early embryonic metabolism in Drosophila through single-embryo metabolomics and transcriptomics

Nature Metabolism - By developing a method for single-embryo multi-omics in Drosophila, the authors provide a high-resolution view into the transcriptional and metabolic underpinnings of early...

rdcu.be

Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Jul 28

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coenzyme Q headgroup intermediates can ameliorate a mitochondrial encephalopathy - Nature

Decreased brain coenzyme Q10 levels cause encephalopathy and are associated with neurodegeneration; supplementation with 4-HMA or 4-HB restores coenzyme Q10 synthesis in mice and humans with HPDL vari...

www.nature.com

Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · Jun 9

Article by @cenmag.bsky.social on the #BethesdaDeclaration by NIH scientists and staff released earlier this morning:

cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

NIH staff break ranks in open letter to Director Jay Bhattacharya

Bethesda Declaration urges reversal of recent policies, including funding cuts

cen.acs.org

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Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · Jun 5

I love my lab so much 😭❤️🥹 feel so lucky

Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

eric lai @lucksmith.bsky.social · Jun 4

Hello Fly Folks. quick note FlyBase is under duress due to termination NIH$ to Harvard and intl collabs. The hardworking folks @flybase.bsky.social are doing their darndest to ensure access to current data. For US, there will soon be a new site to donate. Please spread the word, ideas and support 🪰💪

Marc Dionne @marcsdionne.bsky.social · Jun 3

My lab studies bacterial infections. We spend a lot of time looking at (or for) species-specific genetic and genomic databases for hosts and microbes. FlyBase is the best of all—there is literally no comparison. Its existence is under threat. Please donate.
www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Drosophila Genetic Database

The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Alex Rubinsteyn @alexr.bsky.social · Jun 4

Lyft driver picked me up from UNC, turned out he was a medicinal chemistry post-doc in a building near mine, until his grant got cut last month.

Worked on novel antivirals.

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Jun 4

“I would like to cure brain cancer. I think that's not particularly controversial.” Be that as it may, the NIH terminated that scientist's grant. Here's a huge survey of the 2,500 grants that NIH has killed or delayed...so far. Gift link: nyti.ms/43Jz1yJ

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Sue Massa @smassa.bsky.social · Jun 4

13-yr-old Camarria Williams made a remarkable discovery when she found a compound with potential cancer-fighting properties in goose poop from Garfield Park, Chicago.

This surprising find happened while participating in the Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab, a STEM program in collaboration with the

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · Jun 4

The gutting of US biomedical research with loss of ~2,500 grants affecting research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious disease, global health and much more
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Jun 3

The #Drosophila community can donate to the European side to save FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social at the following link:
www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

We are writing to ask your help in saving FlyBase. We have lost the majority of funding for FlyBase from the US National Institute of Health (NIH), due to the turmoil of current US politics. We had successfully renewed FlyBase grant funding for another 5 years, however the main FlyBase Grant from NIH to Harvard, with its subawards to Indiana University and Cambridge UK, has been terminated at short notice. Furthermore, the user fees that have been so generously provided by Drosophila researchers are tied to the FlyBase grant so we are not permitted to use those either. As it stands, by the end of July, 2025, there will be no future updates to FlyBase, and in the worst case scenario access to the website will also be lost.

We are therefore reaching out to the community to request emergency funding to maintain the FlyBase team until we can source alternative and sustainable grant support. We have assembled and trained an expert group of curators in Cambridge, and if they are lost, it is unlikely we would be able to restart FlyBase should funds became available later. If FlyBase is essential for your research, please do make a contribution, as you would pay for other essential reagents. We appreciate that research funds are tight for many of you, but ask you to take a moment to consider how your group would be able to pursue your research without FlyBase.

We have divided our new fundraising efforts into a USA component to support Harvard and Indiana FlyBase teams, and this component within Europe to support the Cambridge UK team. Please note, in our fundraising we are not using the term FlyBase to ensure that there is no risk that NIH could freeze these funds too, but instead have used the name Drosophila Genetic Database. Please work with your administration to make your payments as soon as possible. ...

If we get a rapid positive response from the community, we will be able to reassure our Cambridge curators that they still have a job ahead and retain them, rather than losing them to other jobs.

There are two ways you can contribute:

Method 1. If you are able to pay with lab funds, we have attached two requests for payments, aimed at smaller and larger labs, which we hope will be acceptable for your finance administrators. If you require a different kind of form, please reply with the details that you need. Similarly, if you wish to pay a different amount we can also adjust it for you.
Please use the reference ‘Drosophila Genetic Database’ and add your name and institution to the requests.

Method 2. If you want to make a personal donation or if it is easier to pay with a credit card, we have set up the following crowdfunding website:
https://www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-cambridge/physiology-development-and-neuroscience/drosophila-genetic-database

Thank you in advance for your help in saving our essential Drosophila Database.

We will keep you updated.

With best wishes,

Nick Brown and Katja Röper

Cambridge UK PIs of the Drosophila genetic curation team

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

James Gagnon @james-gagnon.bsky.social · Jun 2

To dissect the gene regulatory networks used to build organisms, we need Perturb-seq-like tools that work in whole animals.

For this purpose, we developed MIC-Drop-seq, a tool that couples high-throughput CRISPR in zebrafish embryos with single-cell RNAseq.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

MIC-Drop-seq: Scalable single-cell phenotyping of mutant vertebrate embryos

Pooled perturbation screens can reveal cellular regulatory networks, yet scaling these techniques for large-scale screens in animals remains challenging. To address this, we developed MIC-Drop-seq, wh...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Ed Yong @edyong209.bsky.social · May 30

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding.

It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job.

unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Medical Research Funding — Unbreaking

How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

unbreaking.org

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Seth Thomas Scanlon @immunoeditor.bsky.social · May 23

Out now in #Science #Immunology:

Christopher Hall & colleagues at @aucklanduni.bsky.social report in #zebrafish that the #circadian clock gene per2 boosts daytime #antibacterial activity in #neutrophils by promoting infection-responsive hmgb1a expression!

A light-regulated circadian timer optimizes neutrophil bactericidal activity to boost daytime immunity

The neutrophil clockwork boosts daytime immunity against bacterial infection.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

The Academic Resistance @academicresistance.bsky.social · May 19

Trump’s proposed $23 billion in cuts to NIH & NSF could cost the U.S. economy at least $10 billion a year, according to new research. Public science funding drives innovation, productivity, and long-term growth. Slashing it isn’t saving money; it’s losing our future. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually

Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

www.forbes.com

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · May 14

My ongoing request:

If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.

NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...

NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...

Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · May 14

NSF appears to be terminating hundreds of its grants to Harvard, per internal sources at NSF and at Harvard. At least one division has had all its grants cut.

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Kevin Thiessen, PhD @kevinthiessen.bsky.social · May 18

My Bioinformatics Bootcamp turned blog! Enjoy this collection of free #zebrafish resources, now posted on @the-node.bsky.social. While not comprehensive, it gives an assortment of cools tools available to researchers. Feedback would be appreciated! thenode.biologists.com/bioinformati...

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Kristina Lerman @kristinalerman.bsky.social · May 16

NSF just cancelled ALL grants to Harvard researchers. That’s right - physics, astronomy, bio, CAREER - ALL. Professors won’t get paid. Postdocs won’t get paid. PhD students won’t get paid. This is insane!

If they can do this to Harvard, they can do this to your school.

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Reposted by Margarita Parada-Kusz

Communications Biology @commsbio.nature.com · May 15

A review emphasizes the advantages of using zebrafish in research, outlines key differences in experimental approaches, and offers guidelines for designing studies in a way that enhances experimental rigor and reproducibility. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Zebrafishology, study design guidelines for rigorous and reproducible data using zebrafish - Communications Biology

www.nature.com

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Margarita Parada-Kusz @margaritapk.bsky.social · May 14

I find it so beautiful, that moment when you’re deep in a conversation about science, exploring the unknown, and everyone brings their own ideas about things that are not yet known, built on what we do know. There’s something profoundly mesmerizing in imagining realities together.

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