Thank you!!

Thank you Ciaran!! 😄

Thanks so much! Dori has been a fantastic mentor - I’m glad you were able to connect with her 😊

Ha, fair takeaway 🙂. Mice use whiskers a bit like we use our fingertips — trimming them helps us study how brain connections change when inputs go quiet. If you’re curious, here’s a short public talk I gave that starts broad and then dives into this work: youtu.be/Gb22qhBVfOA?...

Thanks Ethan!!

Thanks so much! Really appreciate it 🙏

Thanks Lindsay! We're really excited to see where this work leads. It's great to see the growing interest in glia-glia interactions.

Thanks Lewis!

🙏 Thanks to my mentor Dorothy Schafer, collaborators @caglaeroglu.bsky.social, @pinar-ayata.bsky.social, and Anne Schaefer, and all my co-authors.

Proud to do this work at @umasschan.bsky.social.

💡 Excited to see where glial biology goes next!

🔮 Open questions ahead:

When do microglia release Wnt?

What happens when astrocytes change how much they touch synapses in development, sleep, aging, or disease?

Does less astrocyte contact generally make synapses easier for microglia to remove?

How do microglia remove less-contacted synapses?

We show that astrocytic Wnt signaling is also seen in:
💤 Sleep
⏳ Aging
⚡ Seizures
🧠 Alzheimer’s disease

In these contexts, changes in astrocyte morphology & synapse loss have been reported, suggesting this pathway may be shared across brain states & disorders.

To reveal this pathway we used:
🧠 A defined cortical circuit model of activity-driven synapse loss
🔍 Expansion microscopy to map astrocyte–synapse contacts
🧬 TRAP-Seq + MERFISH to identify microglial Wnts
✂️ Cell type–specific knockouts to test signaling

After sensory deprivation we found:
⚡ Neurons signal to microglia via CX3CL1–CX3CR1
🔁 Microglia release Wnts, causing astrocytes to reduce synaptic contact
🧹 Reduced astrocyte–synapse contact allows microglia to remove synapses

(Our prior work on CX3CL1/CX3CR1: doi.org/10.1038/s415...)

🧩Both microglia and astrocytes can remove synapses.

But their respective roles — and whether they act independently, redundantly, or in coordination — has been unclear. How do neurons, microglia, and astrocytes work together during synapse remodeling?

Another option is rabbit anti-SOX9 (1:500; ab185966 Abcam). Example images and protocol in here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...