Wendy Xin

Super stoked to share that I’m starting my lab at UHN @dkjei-uhn.bsky.social / @kbi-uhn.bsky.social and the University of Toronto! If you’re interested in neuron-myelin interactions in circuit maturation and cognition, please reach out - we are hiring! www.oligodendrocyte.org 1/

Check out those GORGEOUS (and massive) Remak Schwann cell EMs!!!

Check out this Perspective piece from me and @shkwon-bcmbneuro.bsky.social, which we had a lot of fun writing, exploring ideas on how emerging omics and genomic data is asking us to rethink how interactions between genes X environment might be mediated by neuron-glial interactions in schizophrenia.

Not sure who needs to hear this but if you are paying IDCs out of an R00, the effective DCs going to the PI is substantially less. Yet the K99/R00 is still being used as a primary filter for the job market. Like all grant mechanisms, what is needed is an increase in the max allowable request.

Really happy to share the last of my postdoc work in @nature.com! Along with co-first author Junsung Woo, we identified functionally distinct astrocyte subpopulations in vivo! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

At today's New Members Reception, we welcomed and celebrated the Investigators and research staff who joined UHN’s Donald K. Johnson Eye Institute, Krembil Brain Institute, and Schroeder Arthritis Institute, or were promoted between 2023 and 2026.👏 @dkjei-uhn.bsky.social @schroeder-uhn.bsky.social

Neuro friends! Are you attending #SfN26? Join @amygleichman.bsky.social and me on Mon Nov 16th at TallBoy DC for a glial-centric gathering. No registration necessary, all welcome! 🕘Monday, Nov 16, 9PM 📍TallBoy DC, 1239 9th St NW 🙏 to @rwdlifescience.bsky.social and Avantor for sponsoring!

Fantastic article on Canuck memory legend Karim Nader by Samia Madwar. Karim’s 2000 reconsolidation paper was a game changer, reorienting neuroscientific studies towards a more reconstructivist view of memory. thewalrus.ca/karim-nader/

So excited to finally share this collaborative work exploring the role of CADM2 recursive splice site deletions led by Philip Boone. We were fortunate to characterize the neural and behavioural consequences of CADM2 RS1 deletion: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

**Recruitment** We are looking to hire a psychiatrist/scientist (MD or MD/PhD) who focuses on neuromodulation, particularly rTMS in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary. Come join myself, @mayoonthebrain.bsky.social and more. Details 👇 careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1829278...

I'm SO excited to have this out in the world!!!! Check out our latest work on the contribution of the anterior hypothalamic nucleus to stress sensitivity and valence processing.

Faculty position at the University of Toronto 👇 jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

NEW: The anterior hypothalamic nucleus acts like a volume knob for stress, scaling the brain’s response to threatening events 🧠 Read the Cai Lab's latest paper, led by @zachtpennington.bsky.social, in @nature.com 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... More: bsky.app/profile/did:...

Come join us at the @crchum.bsky.social ! It really is as good as it looks!

So grateful to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for the opportunity to talk about a paper that truly shaped how I think about my science by @fowleruci.bsky.social and @paulkennyphd.bsky.social! They helped make causal sense of the association that people call “Mr. Big“ in the context of 🚬!

Epinephrine producing neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) are among the earliest cells affected in Alzheimer’s disease, and yet we know remarkably little about their molecular biology in human 🧠, in part due to technical challenges because the LC is tiny and really difficult to profile.

Happy to share the version of record of our locus coeruleus paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Prior thread on some of our discoveries in this study: bsky.app/profile/jere...

🚨 new work from the lab! "Hippocampal astrocytic sequences emerge during learning and memory recall" by @ryguy.io & @rsuthard.bsky.social thank you to the entire team for your camaraderie and for muscling through science together 🧠 -- we welcome all feedback! nature.com/articles/s41...

Super excited to share that I will start my lab at University of Oregon in Fall 2027! We will study astrocyte-neuron interactions in neurodevelopment and related disorders. Grateful to all my mentors and colleagues! I couldn’t be happier to return to the PNW! ion.uoregon.edu/research/fac...

📢Open-rank tenure track faculty position in the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA!!✨🧪

Job descriptions for 2 new postdocs positions to study the spinal cord basis of motor control (Just looking at the letterhead for the new lab location has me so excited. Krembil Brain Institute, University Health Network, U. Of Toronto 🇨🇦, here we come!) @kbi-uhn.bsky.social @uhnresearch.ca

Yale Neuroscience 🧠 @yaleneuro.bsky.social is hiring this year! We have 2 searches, one cell/molecular/systems neuro (apply.interfolio.com/190736) and one computational neuro (apply.interfolio.com/190740). Got questions about the searches, the department, or the process? Please ask, happy to chat!

UM-MIND is hiring! We are recruiting several tenure-track neuroscience faculty members, preferably at the Assistant Professor level, to join our institute at the University of Maryland School of Medicine here in Baltimore, MD. Learn more here: umb.taleo.net/careersectio... @medschool.umaryland.edu

In this month’s “Liftoff,” our Q&A series with PIs who opened new labs, @jhennig.bsky.social discusses fostering a culture of polite and constructive disagreement and @droligo.bsky.social talks about the value of being kind. By @franciscorr25.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/liftoff-new-...

With expansion of several stem cell based initiatives @lieberinstitute.bsky.social - we are hiring! We are looking for a Staff Scientist with expertise in hiPSCs and iPSC-derived neuronal models to join our Stem Cell Core, directed by @tsawada1.bsky.social recruiting.paylocity.com/recruiting/j...

This seems super important for in vivo experiments #Norepinephrine and #dopamine #sensor crosstalk depends on local innervation density doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Do psychiatric symptoms in epilepsy always arise from seizures? In ALDH7A1 models, seizure risk traced to the liver; mood-related behavior to astrocytes. One gene. Two tissues. Two pathophysiologies. Neither begins in neurons. New in Science Advances: doi.org/10.1126/scia... 1/11

New preprint from the lab 🥳 We made new knock-in zebrafish 🐟 that fluorescently tag endogenous neurofascins. So now, we can live-image neuronal nfasca/NF186 and glial nfascb/NF155 non-invasively, as nerves, nodes of Ranvier and paranodes develop in vivo 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🎉 Please join us in welcoming Dr. Richard Roth to UHN’s @krembilresearch! Dr. Roth joins us as a Scientist, focusing on the interplay between synaptic plasticity and neural circuit adaptation, and how these processes shape motor learning.    🔗 Learn more about his research: www.motor-plasticity.org

Excited to share my postdoc paper from the @lyons-lab.bsky.social Our question: what controls axon diameter? It varies >100-fold between neurons, shapes signal speed & myelination, and changes in disease. Yet very little is known about what regulates it. 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Excited to get started!

We are thrilled to announce the 2026 Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Fellows! 40 remarkable postdocs pursuing transformative research in biological/biomedical sciences. This is the 7th Leading Edge cohort and we are so excited to welcome them! www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows/

Myriam Heiman named the director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Heiman, who studies neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, will lead the institute beginning July 1. picower.mit.edu/news/myriam-... #neuroscience

hippocampus brain section keychain? yes please🙂‍↕️

Thrilled to share that I’ll be starting my lab at the SickKids Research Institute and University of Toronto in August! williamsonlab.ca Recruiting at all levels. Get in touch if you’re interested in astrocyte biology of cognition and disease!

We updated our preprint, "Mapping spatially organized molecular and genetic signatures of schizophrenia across multiple scales in human prefrontal cortex" to now include spatial eQTL and genetic colocalization analyses: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper from the lab. Using longitudinal ca imaging, activity-dependent tagging and optogenetics, we show that newly allocated fear engram neurons in amygdala undergo a brief period of coordinated “offline reverberation” immediately after learning. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Do brain circuits really sit in a 'soup' of neuromodulators? Are neurons like soggy bits of bread soaked in signaling factors? Is the whole brain just squelching around in one big pool of warm modulators?

Woo!!!!!! PenningtonLab.com is live!

Deadline fast approaching! ACNP Travel Award Applications are open for the ACNP 65th Annual Meeting: January 10-13, 2027, San Diego, California. Deadline to Submit is May 14, 2026, at 5:00 pm Central. tinyurl.com/5bzaz8va #ACNP2027 #travelawards

New preprint led by recent PhD graduate Dalton Fitzgerald characterizing two distinct populations of VTA dopamine neurons that differ in ion channel expression, intrinsic excitability, and response to drugs of abuse. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy to share my postdoc paper with @joeycheers.bsky.social & collaborators! Building on the work of many former lab members, we describe a VP-VTA projection modulated by endocannabinoids that guides action selection informed by learned cues: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

📣 Exciting news: my lab is moving to the Krembil Institute at the University of Toronto’s University Health Network in Fall 2026. We’ll be recruiting for all roles, so reach out if you’re interesting in joining us to study spinal circuits for sensorimotor control www.levine-lab.org

Excited to share our latest in @currentbiology.bsky.social (they who publish the coolest papers!) Memories are encoded by sparse neuronal ensembles (engrams). But most evidence comes from "simple" associative learning tasks. What about more integrative memories like spatial navigation?

#neuroskyence Help! Anyone know of a freezing stage microtome that is still in production? Leica and Epredia have both inexplicably discontinued their models 😢