Dr. Aly Cavalier was invited for an oral presentation at the Gerontological Society of America Meeting in Boston, MA based on her stellar abstract submission. Thanks to Aly for spreading the good word on double stranded RNAs in Alzheimer's disease and related tauopathies.

Congratulations to Dr. Aly Cavalier for her appointment to the Advancing Research Careers (ARC) program through the Brown University Carney Institute for Brain Science. ARC scholars receive career development training, structured mentoring support, and $25,000 in seed funding to support independent research projects. As an ARC scholar, Aly will be using iPSC-derived neurons and astrocytes and CRISPR gene editing to explore innate immune mechanisms of astrocyte reactivity in t

We are excited to share another new study from the lab! This project was led by Dr. Paul Ramirez, Lead Biostatistician for the Brown University Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research. Exclusion of genomic “dark regions” from traditional DNA sequencing analysis limits our understanding of human biology and disease. These regions are highly repetitive, structurally complex, and lacking in the standard GRCh38 human reference genome. Dark regions include low-complexity microsate

We are excited to share the culmination of critical discussions from the Fall 2024  Alzheimer's Association  Research Roundtable. The Research Roundtable serves as a forum for scientists and industry leaders to address key areas in the field, including drug development, clinical trials, and emerging research frameworks. This particular Roundtable, organized by Bess Frost,  Hartmuth Kolb ,  Christopher Weber  and committee members from  Eisai Co., Ltd. ,  Johnson & Johnson , 

Cells detect and respond to mechanical forces that shape their function and survival through a process termed “mechanotransduction.” While well studied outside of the brain, little is known regarding neuronal mechanotransduction despite exposure of the brain to vascular flow, movement, injury, and disease. This study was an outgrowth of our original finding that tau destabilizes the nucleoskeleton in neurons and drives nuclear envelope blebbing and invagination (2016 Frost et

Motivated by the general sense that scientists are not effectively communicating the importance of their work to the general public, we held our first Frost Lab and Friends Science Communication Chaaaaallenge! Frost lab members (and friends) were randomly paired with 15 undergraduate volunteers from Brown. Each lab member had 10 minutes to explain their project, after which the undergraduates each had five minutes to present the project to the group. The challenge was for lab

Are you interested in transcriptome comple xity,  RNA  modifications, polyA tail length, or  retrotransposons ? Are you simply obsessed with mining new datasets? Our new Nanopore-based direct RNA sequencing study in  Drosophila  (in the context of health and  tau  pathogenicity) is for you: Our de novo transcriptome assembly reveals previously missed complexity in the Drosophila genome, including abundant transcripts with retained introns. Transcripts with long polyA tails

Julianna Chang Maufinda Howard, BS We would like to wish a warm welcome to two new Frost lab members! Julianna Chang is a senior at Brown...

We are thrilled that Aly has been awarded a position on the Brown University Biology of Aging T32! Aly is investigating double stranded RNA in the context of tauopathy, particularly as it related to retrotransposons and astrocyte reactivity. Woohoo!

Standing room only at Morgan's poster at AAIC! We are all about weird DNA species and how they may contribute to neurodegeneration.