Skip to content

Leung Lab Christmas Party 2022!

We ate well to hibernate before the winter storm hit us!

The Leung Lab attended the Heatland Vision Science Symposium

Our lab has started to travel again after several years of hiberation due to COVID. The first trip we recent had was to attend the Heartland Vision Science Symposium at the Glick Eye Institute at Indiana University School of Medicine. We met many old and new friends. Beichen presented his current project to the audience. His talk’s title was “In vivo drug screening for night blindness using zebrafish visual behaviour”.

Beichen gave his first public presentation as a graduate student!
Beichen’s talk was energetic and engaging.

Truc presented her retinal-degeneration research at the SURF Research Symposium

On 8/1/2019, Truc Kha presented her research work on retinitis pigmentosa, a form of retinal degeneration, at the SURF Research Symposium.

Truc presenting her research work on retinal degeneration.

My visit to ZhongShan Ophthalmic Center at Sun Yat-Sen University

I was invited by Prof. Chunqiao Liu to visit ZhongShan Ophthalmic Center at Sun Yat-Sen University from 2019-05-27 to 05-29.

Zhongshan Opthalmic Center. They have two beautiful buildings: one for clinical service, and another one for research.

The clinical building has more than 20 floors! The research building also has 10 floors!

What a great view at the top of the clinical building!

I had a great interaction with Prof. Liu’s group and many other professors in the institute. They are doing top-notch research work!

Profs. Chunqiao Liu and Yuk Fai Leung

I gave a seminar on our drug discovery using zebrafish to colleagues at ZhongShan Ophthalmic Center.

 

Lab hiking!

At Purdue, five zebrafish laboratories (Qing Deng, Daniel Suter, Yuk Fai Leung, David Umulis, Guangjun Zhang) have a joint lab meeting called FLAME (zebraFish LAb MEeting). We not only meet regularly to discuss science, but we also have fun together. On 5/13/2019, we concluded another productive year by hiking together at the Turkey Run State Park.

The FLAME group

The Flame Group

Fai leading the younger generation.

 

Logan climbing up the (academic) ladder.

Fai and Isaac!

 

2019-04-09 Emre Coskun presented at the Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference 2019

Emre attended the Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference 2019 and presented a poster entitled “Investigating Inhibition of Apoptosis as a Novel Treatment for Retinitis Pigmentosa using a Transgenic Zebrafish Model”.

Emre presenting his work at the Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference.

 

2019-03-30 Leung Lab attended the the 134th Annual Meeting for the Indiana Academy of Science

Emre Coskun, Rebecca James, Logan Ganzen, Truc Kha and Yuk Fai Leung attended the 134th Annual Meeting for the Indiana Academy of Science in Indianapolis, IN on March 30th, 2019. All students presented at the meeting.

The Leung Lab!

Logan Ganzen, our graduate student, presented his work identifying a FDA-approved drug for treating night blindness.

Logan presenting his work.

Emre Coskun (right) presented his work on “Investigating Inhibition of Apoptosis as a Novel Treatment for Retinitis Pigmentosa using a Transgenic Zebrafish Model”.

 

Rebecca James presented her work on “Utilization of a Zebrafish Visual Motor Response Assay to Discover FDA Approved Drugs to Treat Retinitis Pigmentosa”

 

2018-11-12 Emre presented his undergraduate research project at Purdue Fall Undergraduate Research Exposition

On 11/12/2018, Emre Coskun attended the Purdue Fall Undergraduate Research Exposition and presented a poster of his undergraduate reserarch work on “A Pharmacological Model of TRPA1-Mediated Nociception in the Zebrafish for Therapeutic Discovery”. This project was conceived by our graduate student Logan Ganzen. Logan and Emre worked closely to develop the foundation of this research project, and established zebrafish as a model for screening drugs to alleviate pain in patients.

Emre presenting his undergraduate research work.

 

2018-11-10 Leung lab attended the 2018 Sensorium

On 11/10/2018, Logan Ganzen and Yuk Fai Leung attended the 2018 Sensorium at Purdue University. Logan gave a talk on “Drug Screening and Hit Identification for Retinitis Pigmentosa with Zebrafish” and shared our latest discoveries on using zebrafish to find new drugs to treat night blindness.

Logan described how we used zebrafish model of night blindness to screen and find new drugs to treat the disease.

Logan described the therapeutic effect of a positive compound that he identified in his doctoral research.

 

2018-06-28 new articles we read this few months

ELSI

  1. Shotton D. Funders should mandate open citations. Nature. 2018 Jan 11;553(7687):129. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-00104-7. PubMed PMID: 29323317.
  2. Lavazza A, Massimini M. Cerebral organoids: ethical issues and consciousness assessment. J Med Ethics. 2018 Feb 28. pii: medethics-2017-104555. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2017-104555. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29491041.

Genome Editing

  1. Gao X, Tao Y, Lamas V, Huang M, Yeh WH, Pan B, Hu YJ, Hu JH, Thompson DB, Shu Y, Li Y, Wang H, Yang S, Xu Q, Polley DB, Liberman MC, Kong WJ, Holt JR, Chen ZY, Liu DR. Treatment of autosomal dominant hearing loss by in vivo delivery of genome editing agents. Nature. 2018 Jan 11;553(7687):217-221. doi: 10.1038/nature25164. Epub 2017 Dec 20. PubMed PMID: 29258297.
  2. Urnov F. An ode to gene edits that prevent deafness. Nature. 2018 Jan 11;553(7687):162-163. doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-08645-z. PubMed PMID: 29323325.

Development

  1. Nowoshilow S, Schloissnig S, Fei JF, Dahl A, Pang AWC, Pippel M, Winkler S, Hastie AR, Young G, Roscito JG, Falcon F, Knapp D, Powell S, Cruz A, Cao H, Habermann B, Hiller M, Tanaka EM, Myers EW. The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators. Nature. 2018 Jan 24. doi: 10.1038/nature25458. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29364872.
  2. Harland RM. A new view of embryo development and regeneration. Science. 2018 Jun 1;360(6392):967-968. doi: 10.1126/science.aat8413. PubMed PMID: 29853675.
  3. Rozario T, Newmark PA. Prospecting for Planarian Pluripotency. Cell. 2018 Jun 14;173(7):1566-1567. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.05.062. PubMed PMID: 29906442.
  4. Zeng A, Li H, Guo L, Gao X, McKinney S, Wang Y, Yu Z, Park J, Semerad C, Ross E, Cheng LC, Davies E, Lei K, Wang W, Perera A, Hall K, Peak A, Box A, Sánchez Alvarado A. Prospectively Isolated Tetraspanin(+) Neoblasts Are Adult Pluripotent Stem Cells Underlying Planaria Regeneration. Cell. 2018 Jun 14;173(7):1593-1608.e20. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.05.006. PubMed PMID: 29906446.

Stem cells

  1. Cyranoski D. How human embryonic stem cells sparked a revolution. Nature. 2018 Mar 22;555(7697):428-430. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03268-4. PubMed PMID: 29565377.
  2. da Cruz L, Fynes K, Georgiadis O, Kerby J, Luo YH, Ahmado A, Vernon A, Daniels JT, Nommiste B, Hasan SM, Gooljar SB, Carr AF, Vugler A, Ramsden CM, Bictash M, Fenster M, Steer J, Harbinson T, Wilbrey A, Tufail A, Feng G, Whitlock M, Robson AG, Holder GE, Sagoo MS, Loudon PT, Whiting P, Coffey PJ. Phase 1 clinical study of an embryonic stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium patch in age-related macular degeneration. Nat Biotechnol. 2018 Mar 19. doi: 10.1038/nbt.4114. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29553577.

Neuroscience

  1. Telley L, Jabaudon D. A mixed model of neuronal diversity. Nature. 2018 Mar 22;555(7697):452-454. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02539-4. PubMed PMID: 29565398. Science career
  2. Powell K. How to sail smoothly from academia to industry. Nature. 2018 Mar 22;555(7697):549-551. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03306-1. PubMed PMID: 29565380.

Microbiology

  1. Doron S, Melamed S, Ofir G, Leavitt A, Lopatina A, Keren M, Amitai G, Sorek R. Systematic discovery of antiphage defense systems in the microbial pangenome. Science. 2018 Mar 2;359(6379). pii: eaar4120. doi: 10.1126/science.aar4120. Epub 2018 Jan 25. PubMed PMID: 29371424.
  2. Pushkarev A, Inoue K, Larom S, Flores-Uribe J, Singh M, Konno M, Tomida S, Ito S, Nakamura R, Tsunoda SP, Philosof A, Sharon I, Yutin N, Koonin EV, Kandori H, Béjà O. A distinct abundant group of microbial rhodopsins discovered using functional metagenomics. Nature. 2018 Jun 20. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0225-9. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29925949.

Evolution

  1. Riddle MR, Aspiras AC, Gaudenz K, Peuß R, Sung JY, Martineau B, Peavey M, Box AC, Tabin JA, McGaugh S, Borowsky R, Tabin CJ, Rohner N. Insulin resistance in cavefish as an adaptation to a nutrient-limited environment. Nature. 2018 Mar 29;555(7698):647-651. doi: 10.1038/nature26136. Epub 2018 Mar 21. PubMed PMID: 29562229; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5989729.

Neuroscience

  1. Weinhard L, di Bartolomei G, Bolasco G, Machado P, Schieber NL, Neniskyte U, Exiga M, Vadisiute A, Raggioli A, Schertel A, Schwab Y, Gross CT. Microglia remodel synapses by presynaptic trogocytosis and spine head filopodia induction.  Nat Commun. 2018 Mar 26;9(1):1228. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03566-5. PubMed PMID: 29581545; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5964317.
  2. Van Essen DC. Scaling of human brain size. Science. 2018 Jun 15;360(6394):1184-1185. doi: 10.1126/science.aat8948. PubMed PMID: 29903961.
  3. Reardon PK, Seidlitz J, Vandekar S, Liu S, Patel R, Park MTM, Alexander-Bloch A, Clasen LS, Blumenthal JD, Lalonde FM, Giedd JN, Gur RC, Gur RE, Lerch JP, Chakravarty MM, Satterthwaite TD, Shinohara RT, Raznahan A. Normative brain size variation and brain shape diversity in humans. Science. 2018 Jun 15;360(6394):1222-1227. doi: 10.1126/science.aar2578. Epub 2018 May 31. PubMed PMID: 29853553.

Genetics

  1.  Brainstorm Consortium et al., Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain. Science. 2018 Jun 22;360(6395). pii: eaap8757. doi: 10.1126/science.aap8757. PubMed PMID: 29930110.
  2. Wray NR, Wijmenga C, Sullivan PF, Yang J, Visscher PM. Common Disease Is More Complex Than Implied by the Core Gene Omnigenic Model. Cell. 2018 Jun 14;173(7):1573-1580. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.05.051. Review. PubMed PMID: 29906445.

Cell Biology

  1. Ota S, Horisaki R, Kawamura Y, Ugawa M, Sato I, Hashimoto K, Kamesawa R, Setoyama K, Yamaguchi S, Fujiu K, Waki K, Noji H. Ghost cytometry. Science. 2018 Jun 15;360(6394):1246-1251. doi: 10.1126/science.aan0096. PubMed PMID: 29903975.

Signal Transduction

  1.  Capper MJ, Wacker D. How the ubiquitous GPCR receptor family selectively activates signalling pathways. Nature. 2018 Jun;558(7711):529-530. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05503-4. PubMed PMID: 29946098.