Aaron Douglas Profile
Aaron Douglas

@Akaron0884

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Postdoctoral fellow investigating neuroimmune interactions for brain-body communication.

Dublin City, Ireland
Joined May 2017
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
Very excited to share part of my postdoctoral work from the @RyanLabTCD, out now in @Nature. Here, my brilliant co-author @Andrea_MZamora and I explored the link between memory engrams and whole-body metabolism. A thread: 🧵.
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nature.com
Nature - Cold-sensitive engrams contribute to learned thermoregulation in mice that are returned to an environment in which they previously experienced a cold challenge, through a network formed...
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
6 days
RT @NatMetabolism: The source of dietary fat influences anti-tumour immunity in obese mice
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
@TJRyan_77 @e_urrieta @paconway_ @jamesoleary @Clrar @lynchielydia @DrChristineAnnD @IrishResearch @Researchirel @ERC_Research @NIH @tcdTBSI @tcddublin @BrighamWomens @Harvard @PrincetonMolBio @Princeton @Columbia @Andrea_MZamora and I are now based in the Icahn school of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the brilliant labs of @Michel_Enamorad and @cam_phd respectively, so keep an eye out for the cool work to come from there also!.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
@TJRyan_77 @e_urrieta @paconway_ @jamesoleary @Clrar @lynchielydia @DrChristineAnnD This work was supported with funding from @IrishResearch, @Researchirel, @ERC_Research and @NIH, and was carried out across multiple institutions including @tcdTBSI, @tcddublin, @BrighamWomens, @Harvard, @PrincetonMolBio, @Princeton and @Columbia.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
With that, a massive thank you to my postdoc mentor @TJRyan_77, amazing lab mates @e_urrieta, @paconway_, @jamesoleary, @Clrar, and brilliant collaborators @lynchielydia and @DrChristineAnnD without who this project could not have been done.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
In summary: mice can form memories of cold environments and upregulate metabolism in a non-cold environment as preparation. 🔥. What’s next?. → Some of the big questions now are whether we can harness these cold memories to treat metabolic dysfunction and disease? 🍔🍟.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
But wait there’s more! We can turn these cells on, but can we also turn them off?. By using engram specific DREADDs, if we inhibit the DG engram cells, we see no increases in whole-body metabolism.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
By labelling neurons in the DG at 4°C, we can later activate them with light at the flick of a switch.🎚️🔋⚡️. Through activating the DG engram cells we find:. 📈Whole-body metabolism.📈BAT thermogenesis genes.📈Engrams in the LHA, suggesting connectivity with the DG.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
How do we know these cells are ACTUALLY responsible for increasing metabolism in response to memory of a cold environment?. By using lights and lasers of course!💡🔦. Our tagging techniques allow us to express light-sensitive channels on neurons, which we can activate with light.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
We can visualise the cells that are important for the cold memory in the DG and LHA. We show that only the mice that reexperience the previous 4oC environment show increased cell overlap (🟢+🔴=🟡) -> meaning the cells active during the cold, are also active during the memory.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
But how do we know that these cells are in fact memory (engram) cells? Using activity dependent labelling we can show:. 🟢Cells active at 4oC.🔴Cells active during memory at 21oC.🟡The memory engram – cells which were active during the cold (🟢) and reactive at memory recall (🔴).
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
Therefore, the memory of a cold environment alone, can increase whole-body metabolism when not in the cold. 🐭💭❄️. What pathways mediate the cold memory brain-body connection? We found increased coordinated activity between the HPC and HY, particularly the DG and LHA.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
We found that mice who have previously experienced a cold (4oC) environment will:. 📈Increase their whole-body metabolism🔥, and.📈Upregulate heat producing genes in brown fat to stay warm. 🔥. In response to the previously 4oC environment – but in the ABSENCE of the cold (21oC).
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
We set out to answer 2 questions:. 1) Do mice store information in the brain about where they have previously felt a cold environment? ❄️🥶. 2) Can accessing the stored information (memory) cause mice to produce more heat? 💭🌡️.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
3 months
RT @cam_phd: We are thrilled to share the latest from the lab! We demonstrate that multi-organ MCSF-dependent myelopoiesis is dynamic in MS….
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nature.com
Nature Communications - Myeloid cells contribute to the etiology of multiple sclerosis (MS), but the dynamics of myelopoiesis during disease progression is still unclear. Here the authors show, in...
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
9 months
Thank you to @NatureRevEndo for their perspective piece on our recent paper from the @lynchielydia lab! Online @Nature.
@NatureRevEndo
Nature Reviews Endocrinology
9 months
New content online: IL-17 has a role in whole-body homeostasis
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
9 months
A research briefing of our recent work is now available online at @Nature!. "Fat keeps metabolism in tune and on time using an inflammatory immune protein".
nature.com
Nature - Immune cells that release the molecule IL-17A help to drive the metabolic rhythms of fat.
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
9 months
RT @tcddublin: Scientists from @tcdTBSI and @Princeton have identified an immune molecule that keeps metabolism in tune and on time, which….
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
9 months
And in a happy accident, the work of my soon-to-be postdoc lab also published in the same issue, with some amazing work on how immune cells drive sleep following myocardial infarction. Check it out! @cam_phd @peacemakerhuynh .
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nature.com
Nature - Studies in humans and mice show that myocardial infarction recruits monocytes to the brain’s thalamus, promoting sleep, which in turn restricts cardiac inflammation and sympathetic...
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@Akaron0884
Aaron Douglas
9 months
This work was supported with funding from the @IrishResearch, @Researchirel, @ERC_Research and @NIH, and was carried out across multiple institutions including @tcdTBSI, @tcddublin, @BrighamWomens, @Harvard, @salkinstitute, @Neuro_CF and @PrincetonMolBio @Princeton @LudwigCancer.
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