Madeline Lancaster
@lancasterlab.bsky.social
Developmental neurobiologist using cerebral #organoids to study brain size and evolution. Opinions my own.
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Redirecting to Google Groups
groups.google.com
If you’re working with neural organoids, join our community to discuss methods, technical issues, and other organoid topics: groups.google.com/forum/#!foru...
Thank you for this important paper! Using biobanks of thousands of people to check what effects archaic coding variants might have. Finding certain variants in healthy modern humans helps clarify which might have real consequences to human evolution, and which do not.
How did DNA changes that alter protein structures impact evolution on the branch that led to modern humans? As we demonstrate today in Science Advances, biobanking initiatives offer ways to directly assess biological effects of rare archaic variants in living people, & (re)evaluate their roles. 🧬🧪
Evaluating the effects of archaic protein-altering variants in living human adults
Promise and pitfalls of using large biobanks to study impacts of archaic protein-coding variants in living humans.
www.science.org
December 10, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Thank you for this important paper! Using biobanks of thousands of people to check what effects archaic coding variants might have. Finding certain variants in healthy modern humans helps clarify which might have real consequences to human evolution, and which do not.
This is a great article and you can read it free here! A fresh perspective to understanding language with an interdisciplinary and integrative approach.
If you are unable to download the full version of our newly published language evolution article in Science, there is a link for direct free access on the Max Planck Institute website here:
November 25, 2025 at 10:54 AM
This is a great article and you can read it free here! A fresh perspective to understanding language with an interdisciplinary and integrative approach.
Just got @philipcball.bsky.social’s book, can’t wait to dig in!
October 31, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Just got @philipcball.bsky.social’s book, can’t wait to dig in!
Cool paper and cool thread! Makes me wonder, what’s going on in a whale or dolphin brain where there’s essentially no layer 4 🤔
A core function of cortex is predicting what happens next given the world's state.
This recent paper from Oxford shows how cortical layers may use a delay trick to learn to predict.
A simple illustration can explain the idea.
A🧵with my toy model and notes:
#neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI
This recent paper from Oxford shows how cortical layers may use a delay trick to learn to predict.
A simple illustration can explain the idea.
A🧵with my toy model and notes:
#neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI
October 31, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Cool paper and cool thread! Makes me wonder, what’s going on in a whale or dolphin brain where there’s essentially no layer 4 🤔
Super excited for the start of #EESorgan 2025! One of my favorite parts of coming to EMBL is the walk to the ATC through the forest. Can’t wait for 4 days of awesome organoid science!
October 22, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Super excited for the start of #EESorgan 2025! One of my favorite parts of coming to EMBL is the walk to the ATC through the forest. Can’t wait for 4 days of awesome organoid science!
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3
October 17, 2025 at 2:56 PM
We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
New paper alert! Rare DNA changes in the SETBP1 gene are linked to speech problems & diverse syndromes affecting brain development. Work led by ace postdoc @maggiemkwong.bsky.social uncovered impact of different gene variants, coupling clinical/speech evaluation to molecular & cellular readouts.🧬🗣️🔬🧪
SETBP1 variants outside the degron disrupt DNA-binding, transcription and neuronal differentiation capacity to cause a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder - Nature Communications
Different types of SETBP1 variants cause variable developmental syndromes with only partial clinical and functional overlaps. Here, the authors report that SETBP1 variants outside the degron region impair DNA-binding, transcription, and neuronal differentiation capacity and morphologies.
www.nature.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:36 PM
New paper alert! Rare DNA changes in the SETBP1 gene are linked to speech problems & diverse syndromes affecting brain development. Work led by ace postdoc @maggiemkwong.bsky.social uncovered impact of different gene variants, coupling clinical/speech evaluation to molecular & cellular readouts.🧬🗣️🔬🧪
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program application deadline is approaching: October 10!
Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!
training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/
#PhD #LifeSciences
Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!
training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/
#PhD #LifeSciences
October 5, 2025 at 9:35 AM
The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program application deadline is approaching: October 10!
Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!
training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/
#PhD #LifeSciences
Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!
training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/
#PhD #LifeSciences
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
Interested in the mechanisms of neurogenesis, and how they might converge/differ across species, regions, and life epochs? Check this out, wonderful location and great science! Please RT
neuro-unige.ch/news/csf-mee...
neuro-unige.ch/news/csf-mee...
October 5, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Interested in the mechanisms of neurogenesis, and how they might converge/differ across species, regions, and life epochs? Check this out, wonderful location and great science! Please RT
neuro-unige.ch/news/csf-mee...
neuro-unige.ch/news/csf-mee...
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
🚨 Excited to share the latest preprint form the lab ➡️https://tinyurl.com/32d3be9f
Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience
➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism?
Check out what we found!
🧵1/n
Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience
➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism?
Check out what we found!
🧵1/n
September 10, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world.
Gift link.
Gift link.
Opinion | We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health
www.nytimes.com
September 1, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world.
Gift link.
Gift link.
Amazing work! The Silver lab is on a roll!
Sharing our newest study led by the incredibly talented @federicamosti.bsky.social investigating new molecular mechanisms of human brain development. We discover a human-specific enhancer HAR1984 that influences chromatin looping to promote cortical size and folding! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
August 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Amazing work! The Silver lab is on a roll!
This new preprint looks pretty interesting. Human neurons take up to 4 decades to fully mature!
Human neurons undergo protracted functional maturation into adulthood https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.01.668139v1
August 2, 2025 at 6:07 AM
This new preprint looks pretty interesting. Human neurons take up to 4 decades to fully mature!
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
Delighted & excited to share our latest preprint on non-canonical enhancers in human pluripotent stem cells, the result of a fantastic and fun collaboration with @guenesdoganlab.bsky.social:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵 below
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵 below
Non-canonical enhancers control gene expression and cell fate in human pluripotent stem cells
Enhancers are key gene regulatory elements that ensure the precise spatiotemporal execution of developmental gene expression programmes. However recent findings indicate that approaches to identify en...
www.biorxiv.org
June 2, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Delighted & excited to share our latest preprint on non-canonical enhancers in human pluripotent stem cells, the result of a fantastic and fun collaboration with @guenesdoganlab.bsky.social:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵 below
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵 below
This is amazing. Really interesting science made accessible to non experts. I recommend tuning in if you can, even for a little while
200+ scientists are in the middle of a marathon livestream to show why weather and climate science is so important and needs all our help to continue.
It is here: wclivestream.com/watch
It is here: wclivestream.com/watch
Redirecting to: https://www.youtube.com/@wclivestream/live
wclivestream.com
May 29, 2025 at 9:02 AM
This is amazing. Really interesting science made accessible to non experts. I recommend tuning in if you can, even for a little while
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
Hi friends - In the face of unprecedented cuts to the basic research science funding, climate scientists are staging an 100-hour live stream of why science matters. There will be many talks on all sorts of things (I'm Saturday at 12:30 PT). Please share widely! wcstreamathon.netlify.app. 🌊🧪
The Weather & Climate Livestream
Join us starting May 28th, as meteorologists and climate scientists from across the US share their research and answer your questions.
wcstreamathon.netlify.app
May 28, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Hi friends - In the face of unprecedented cuts to the basic research science funding, climate scientists are staging an 100-hour live stream of why science matters. There will be many talks on all sorts of things (I'm Saturday at 12:30 PT). Please share widely! wcstreamathon.netlify.app. 🌊🧪
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
Still openings, check it out!
🧠Job Opening!🧠
We are opening 2️⃣! positions
– bioinformatics / molecular biology –
in a project studying how temporal patterns set up connectivity in human brain tissue.
@institutimagine.bsky.social.
Full details below, contact me for details if interested.
And please retweet (re-bluesky?)!
We are opening 2️⃣! positions
– bioinformatics / molecular biology –
in a project studying how temporal patterns set up connectivity in human brain tissue.
@institutimagine.bsky.social.
Full details below, contact me for details if interested.
And please retweet (re-bluesky?)!
May 28, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Still openings, check it out!
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
New Faraday Fellowships for international applicants moving to the UK
Up to £4 million per researcher over 5-10 years
Fast-track option for mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK
Up to £4 million per researcher over 5-10 years
Fast-track option for mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK
Today we've announced the new Faraday Fellowship accelerated international route, which will grant up to £30 million in funding over the next two years to attract global talent and support the development of world-leading research groups in the UK: #RSGrants royalsociety.org/news/2025/05...
Royal Society announces £30m fund to attract global talent over next two years | Royal Society
International recruitment scheme comes amid announcement of Government principles for 10-year research funding
royalsociety.org
May 19, 2025 at 12:03 PM
New Faraday Fellowships for international applicants moving to the UK
Up to £4 million per researcher over 5-10 years
Fast-track option for mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK
Up to £4 million per researcher over 5-10 years
Fast-track option for mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK
This is so cool! It’s beautiful to see exactly the kind of elegant genetic locus swapping experiments I’ve been hoping to see in the field 🤩 Nice work Debby and team!
Thrilled to share our latest study out in @natureportfolio.nature.com led by the fantastically talented Jing Liu. Our study provides insight into a long standing question in biology: What molecular features make us uniquely human and how do these function? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A human-specific enhancer fine-tunes radial glia potency and corticogenesis - Nature
HARE5, a human accelerated region enhancer, modulates cortical development by influencing neural progenitor cell behaviour, leading to an enlarged neocortex with increased functional independence betw...
www.nature.com
May 20, 2025 at 8:59 AM
This is so cool! It’s beautiful to see exactly the kind of elegant genetic locus swapping experiments I’ve been hoping to see in the field 🤩 Nice work Debby and team!
Check out this impressive work from the Jabaudon lab exploring an age old question: how does the forebrain grow more than the rest of the brain?
Why does the forebrain expand dramatically while other neural regions grow less? Our new publication reveals progenitor metabolism critically shapes region-specific brain growth. Thread below. authors.elsevier.com/a/1k-udL7PXu...
May 20, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Check out this impressive work from the Jabaudon lab exploring an age old question: how does the forebrain grow more than the rest of the brain?
So many exciting papers and preprints in the past few weeks. This one is quite the tour de force!
Delighted to share our new preprint, the outcome of many years of collaborative work with Giuseppe Testa’s group, both at the bench & in front of the computer, probing human brain evolution using organoids. We tried something cool, and learned a lot 🧪🧫🧠🧬
[follow 🧵]
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
[follow 🧵]
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Regulatory logic of human cortex evolution by combinatorial perturbations
Comparative genomic studies between contemporary and extinct hominins revealed key evolutionary modifications, but their number has hampered a system level investigation of their combined roles in sca...
www.biorxiv.org
May 20, 2025 at 8:40 AM
So many exciting papers and preprints in the past few weeks. This one is quite the tour de force!
Exciting work from the Albert lab on unique signatures of human basal radial glia. And look at those beautiful organoids with their basal progenitors! 🤩
March 14, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Exciting work from the Albert lab on unique signatures of human basal radial glia. And look at those beautiful organoids with their basal progenitors! 🤩
Interesting new work from the McDole lab on the extreme stress primordial germ cells have to endure on their journey to the gonads during embryonic development. It’s wild that a new generation is even possible after all that!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
March 4, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Interesting new work from the McDole lab on the extreme stress primordial germ cells have to endure on their journey to the gonads during embryonic development. It’s wild that a new generation is even possible after all that!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
In case you missed it, check out our recent preprint on developmental timing and how slower means bigger, axons that is!
Led by the extraordinary @felinewlindhout.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Led by the extraordinary @felinewlindhout.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Calcium dynamics tune developmental tempo to generate evolutionarily divergent axon tract lengths
The considerably slow pace of human brain development correlates with an evolutionary increase in brain size, cell numbers, and expansion of neuronal structures, with axon tracts undergoing an even gr...
www.biorxiv.org
March 3, 2025 at 8:06 PM
In case you missed it, check out our recent preprint on developmental timing and how slower means bigger, axons that is!
Led by the extraordinary @felinewlindhout.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Led by the extraordinary @felinewlindhout.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Madeline Lancaster
A couple of weeks left to apply to join Development's *Pathway to Independence* programme
Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market
Deadline: January 31
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market
Deadline: January 31
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
Development PI Programme | Development | The Company of Biologists
Development PI Programme | Development | The Company of Biologists
Development's Pathway to Independence programme
Development is excited to announce our second call for our Pathway to I...
journals.biologists.com
January 17, 2025 at 9:21 AM
A couple of weeks left to apply to join Development's *Pathway to Independence* programme
Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market
Deadline: January 31
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...
Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market
Deadline: January 31
journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...