We had a great post-doc, @EmanuelaPasciu1, drive a project showing #Tcells in mouse and human brain, with key functions. Among these T cells were a small population of anti-inflammatory #Tregs, again in mouse and human. 3/12 cell.com/cell/fulltext/…
@EmanuelaPasciu1 So we knew there were #Tregs in the #brain, even under healthy conditions, but the numbers don't seem high enough to control #inflammation and promote repair after injury. The mission was clear: find and deliver the limiting factor in #traumaticbraininjury! Enter @ys_lidia. 4/12
We teamed up with Matthew Holt @CBD_VIB@i3S_UPorto to design a system to feed extra #IL2 into the brain. The gene delivery system harnesses #genetherapy technology and #astrocyte biology, to bring brain IL2 levels up to the same level as the blood. 6/12
Biggest paper yet from the lab out now in @ImmunityCP! It is a massive #openscience resource on #tissueTregs, and what makes #Tregs tick in the #tissues. Spoiler-alert: Tissue Tregs are really different from what we all thought. 🧵 1/21
Where do #TissueTregs come from? The previous standard model is the "seeding and specialisation" model, where #Tregs enter from tissues, turn on a dedicated transcriptional program per #tissue, and dwell indefinitely in that tissue as specialised cells. 2/21
We had examples of #fatTregs and #muscleTregs becoming unique permanent residents, and the
@ERC_Research funded us to undertake an overly ambitious project to look at everything, everywhere, all at once. Only possible because of the #dreamteam of @jldvib and @olivertburton. 3/21
Biggest paper yet from the lab now a #preprint on @biorxivpreprint. A massive #openscience resource on #tissueTregs, and what makes #Tregs tick in the #tissues.
Spoiler-alert: Tissue Tregs are really different from what we all thought. 🧵 1/21
Go back to that sweet innocent time in the spring of 2016. #Brexit was an unlikely joke, @HillaryClinton was cruising to a landslide against some reality TV starlet, and we thought that #TissueTregs formed by seeding tissues and differentiating into unique terminal cells. 2/21
We had examples of #fatTregs and #muscleTregs becoming unique permanent residents, and the @ERC_Research funded us to undertake an overly ambitious project to look at everything, everywhere, all at once.
Only possible because of the #dreamteam of @jldvib and @olivertburton. 3/21
For anyone doing #flowcytometry, would you like to have a new protocol that reduces your #antibody costs by ~10-fold and also gives you higher quality data, with better signal-to-noise ratio?
Bottom-line-up-front: stain overnight. Antibody staining is sensitive to both dilution and time, so a titration that gives crummy staining in 30' can actually give beautiful staining overnight. The best part is, that lower dilution gives less background, for better separation 2/6
You can see this quite clearly with even tricky staining, like #Foxp3 and #cytokines. The overnight stain gives a stronger positive signal without increasing the background at all. Plus your cells are ready in the morning, when the cytometer is free, rather than 8pm at night! 3/6
We have an exciting new #preprint on @medrxivpreprint ! A novel class of #primaryimmunodeficiency, with the discovery of ITPR3 mutations in two families with combined immunodeficiency. As always, studying #PID teaches us so much about biology! 1/8
The work is based on patients identified @UZLeuven by Rik Schrijvers and @IsabelleMeyts. Both patients had a combined #immunodeficiency with sensitivity to infections, one complicated by peripheral #neuropathy and one by #autoimmune hemolytic anemia. Over to the gene hunters! 2/8
Mutations in ITPR3 were identified by Erika Van Nieuwenhove and Frederik Staels. ITPR3 is part of a #Calcium channel, so we turned to the Serysheva lab @Irina52948708 to predict the impact on structure. Clear as day, the mutations change the charge of the channel. 3/8
I am really thrilled to release #AutoSpill onto @biorxivpreprint. It is a novel method for applying compensation to #flowcytometry data, which reduces the error by ~100,000-fold. It is thanks to AutoSpill that we can push machines to their max colours
So how does #AutoSpill work? If you just want to compensate your data, simply upload your single colour controls to autospill.vib.be and then copy the spillover matrix to your #flowcytometry program of choice
@CarlyEWhyte can walk you through the whole process in <2'
Don't be too scared off by the comments you have here. Most only really apply to the US. I'm assuming that you are doing a biomed PhD in the UK based on your profile, so a few tips... 1/n
That said, you will doubt it. Especially at the 3-6 month period and at ~2 years in. That is normal.
2/n
@sakisci@BetterAcademia@AcademicChatter@OpenAcademics Second, it is your PhD, but the lab's project. You should aim to become the intellectual leader of the project after around a year, but always lead with humility. Others around you will always know more than you on specific techniques or domain knowledge. 3/n