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PDN Academic, Professor Matthew Mason, is working with the Physiology Society to create a series of video resources as part of their new Training Hub. The three-part series, focusing on cardiovascular physiology, provides physiology educators who are new to teaching with useful analogies and advice to communicate key concepts in physiology effectiv…

A study by a team of PDN researchers under the leadership of Professor Angela Roberts and published in Science Translational Medicine, reveals how the anxiety and anhedonia that is induced by overactivation of Area 25, a region of the frontal lobe intimately associated with depression in humans, is dependent upon two separate pathways.The team was …

Congratulations to Dr Angie Tavernor, Veterinary Teaching Associate at PDN, who is one of thirteen recipients of this year's Pilkington Prize for Teaching Excellence. The prizes are awarded to individuals who make an outstanding contribution to teaching at the University of Cambridge. They were endowed and inaugurated in 1994 by Sir Alastair Pilkin…

Our congratulations to PDN Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, Christine Holt, who has been awarded the Brain Prize 2023.The prize is awarded by the Lundbeck Foundation for critical insights into the molecular mechanisms of brain development and plasticity. It is the world’s largest award for outstanding contributions to neuroscience.Professor…

A new paper published in Frontiers in Physiology reports on a BBSRC-funded study in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, and includes image analysis carried out by Rhian Young, a Part II PDN project student during the 2020-21 lockdown period.  The paper, co-written by lead author Young and PDN colleagues, shows that thyroid hormones are…

Gates Foundation supported Physiology PhD student, Jenna Armstrong, will join Rowing Club team mates on Sunday 26th March as part of the Cambridge crew at the Gemini Boat Race 2023. Jenna is a member of Professor Andrew Murray's team, and her research looks at the effects of altitude on placental metabolism. Read all about her journey to the river …

A team led by University of Cambridge researchers, including Professor Albert Cardona of PDN and the MRC LMB, and Dr Michael Winding at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, have built the first ever map showing every single neuron and how they’re wired together in the brain of the fruit fly larva. The study, which also involved coll…

The GL Brown Prize Lecture series from The Physiological Society is aimed at an early career audience to stimulate an interest in physiology.On Thursday 9 February 2023, the department hosted Dino A Giussani, Professor of Developmental Cardiovascular Physiology and Medicine at the University of Cambridge, to deliver the GL Brown Prize Lecture.In 19…

Working with Ewan Smith from Pharmacology and a team from Belgium, Matt Mason has been investigating how the anatomy of the semi-circular canals links to function in different mammals. The semi-circular canals are involved in the detection of head rotations and can be used to determine aspects of head orientation. The team found that the canals are…

Combined steroid and statin treatment could reduce ‘accelerated ageing’ in preterm babies, study in rats suggestsA new study into new-born rats, which are naturally born prematurely, has combined glucocorticoid steroids and statin therapy. The results, published today in Hypertension, show that the combined treatment led to the elimination of negat…

DNA methylation is a repressive epigenetic modification that is essential for development, exemplified by the embryonic and perinatal lethality observed in mice lacking de novo DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs). A new paper characterises the role for DNMT3A, 3B and 3L in gene regulation and development of the mouse placenta. The authors, including Dr …

Two new studies have been published by the Surani lab.The first, led by Wolfram Gruhn, has discovered that epigenetic resetting in the human germline is associated with profound changes in repressive histone modifications. Gruhn et al. find that the loss of repressive epigenetic information in the early human germline extends to major repressive hi…

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