Cool neurogenesis meeting in the Swiss Alps!!

'Neurogenesis from development to adulthood in health and disease'

To submit an application: asconameeting@unige.ch

Interesting in aging, immune function, and organ health?

Join us for a super exciting joint Keystone Symposia in Banff, Canada in March 2026!!

@ericverdin.bsky.social

Exciting meeting in beautiful Ascona, Switzerland!!

Interested in brain aging? We are super excited to share our new review!!

"Brain aging and rejuvenation at single-cell resolution" 🧪🧠

Massive CONGRATS to Eric Sun, Rahul Nagvekar, and Angie Pogson, three phenomenal graduate students in the lab!!

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Happy New Year!!

For this, we used a computational method developed by Eric and James called TISSUE to impute single cell RNA-seq datasets (which have ~10,000 transcripts) onto our MERFISH spatial datasets (which have 300 transcripts).
This is to have larger number of transcripts to identify molecular signatures.

We wondered if some cells could have a proximity effect by impacting the age of cells around them in the brain. Using spatial aging clocks, we found that indeed some cells had a pro-aging effects (red) on cells around them whereas other cells had a pro-rejuvenating effect (blue) on nearby cells.

Conversely, these spatial aging clock indicate that an Alzheimer's disease model exhibits premature aging (red) of several cell types.

These spatial aging clocks show that 'rejuvenating interventions' such as exercise and partial reprogramming have a pro-rejuvenating effect (green) on several cell types of the brain. Especially exercise!

Based on this spatial transcriptomics atlas, we built 'spatial aging clocks'. Those are machine learning models that predict age based on the spatial transcriptomics data.

We validated that these 'spatial aging clocks' were robust at predicting age and could also generalize across datasets.

We generated a spatial transcriptomics atlas of brain aging at single cell resolution using the MERFISH technology (which is both spatial and single cell). This was done via Vizgen!

The brain is extremely complex: it has diverse cell types and specific spatial organization.

So could studying brain aging in a spatial and quantitative manner uncover new mechanisms of brain aging?

Brain aging is associated with cognitive decline and devastating diseases such as Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Updated Aging Starter Packs to find people and labs who work on aging!!

Aging Starter Pack 1 (already reached the maximum number!): go.bsky.app/5UXXaDA

Aging Starter Pack 2 (can still add!): go.bsky.app/RfFYndJ

Let me know if you'd like to be added! 😀

Yes! Added!! 😊