September 2025

Ethan presented a poster, and Tanya gave a talk, at the 1st UK Zebrafish meeting, held at Exmouth and the Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter.  It was a lively meeting, full of excellent science and discussions, and we enjoyed meeting up with friends, colleagues and collaborators.  Many thanks to the local organisers Steffen, Soojin, Greg, Nik and Carol for such a great meeting!

Nahal returns to join the lab as a postdoc, continuing her work on disease modelling and characterising new CRISPR-generated mutants with interesting ear phenotypes!  

Nahal ran the Sheffield 10K in support of Crohn's and Colitis UK.

Our collaborative paper on zebrafish olfactory ionocytes is now out in Chemical Senses.  Former PhD student King Yee Cheung, jointly supervised by Suresh Jesuthasan, shares first authorship with Júlia Peloggia, a former PhD student in the Piotrowski lab.

August 2025

Many congratulations to Nahal Shahidan, who successfully passed her PhD viva, and gave an excellent pre-viva talk.  Many thanks to Emily Noël and Graham Ladds (University of Cambridge) for examining.  Nahal now takes a well-earned rest before returning to the lab as a postdoc in September.

Congratulations also to Anna Tythacott, who has completed her MSc research project in the lab, supervised by Nahal.  Anna gave an excellent poster presentation of her work as part of the MSc examination.

July 2025

Tanya gave a lecture on the use of zebrafish chemical screening for drug discovery at the 44th European School of Medicinal Chemistry (ESMEC), in beautiful Urbino, Italy.  Many thanks to the organisers for the invitation, and to all the students for their hard work and enthusiasm on the course!

In Sheffield, we hosted a visit from our collaborator Dr Giselle Wiggin from Nxera Pharma, a GPCR-based drug discovery company based in Cambridge.  Giselle gave a seminar and met with lab members, in addition to discussing collaborative projects. 

Later in the month, Nahal paid a reciprocal visit to the Nxera Pharma labs in Cambridge.  She gave a talk on her PhD project on the adhesion GPCR Adgrg6, and enjoyed a day of discussions with colleagues there.  She also met up with former PhD student Anzar Asad, who is now employed at the company and doing well:

Anzar -- Nxera Pharma team -- Nahal

We also enjoyed two excellent one-day meetings held in Sheffield: a BSDB Northern Developmental Biology meeting, at which Haseeb gave a talk, and a symposium for the Bateson Centre for Disease Mechanisms.

Congratulations to former undergraduate summer project student Isabella Russell-Smith, who graduated with a First Class MBiomedSci degree this month.  Issi will be soon be starting a PhD at Imperial College London (UK Dementia Research Institute) supervised by Dr Samuel Barnes, with the aim of developing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

June 2025

New lab photo!

Tanya attended the 2025 UK Cilia and Centrosome Network Meeting at the Institute for Child Health in London, and a memorial symposium at the Crick Institute to remember and celebrate the life of David Ish-Horowicz.  There are several touching obituaries of David available online, including those by Ilan Davis and Phil Ingham.
 

Haseeb, together with Emily and Corinna from C21, completed the Big Walk to raise funds for research into neurological diseases.

May 2025

Sunny and warm - time for an ice cream in Weston Park

Tanya's chapter on development of the semicircular canals, otoliths and otoconia is now out in Current Topics in Developmental Biology: Development of the Senses, eds. Guy Richardson and Doris Wu.  Free to download until July:  https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1l8PbFzn7WIEK

An image from the lab is currently on display in the wonderful exhibition 'Anatomy at Sheffield: from scalpel to virtual dissection and beyond’, curated by Daniela Cacciabue, in collaboration with the University Library.  The opening event on 2nd May included a fascinating and entertaining talk on the cochlea by Professor Matthew Mason (University of Cambridge). 

The developing inner ear in a live two-day-old zebrafish embryo.  Sensory hair cells are highlighted with Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP).  Image taken by Dr Esther Maier; transgenic line originally from the Baier lab.

April 2025

Tanya gave a talk on epithelial morphogenesis in the zebrafish inner ear at the European Zebrafish Principal Investigators' meeting, held at the Institut du Cerveau in Paris, France.

March 2025

Aaron, Haseeb and Sarah presented posters at the fabulous Biologists @100 meeting in Liverpool, celebrating 100 years of the Company of Biologists.  The venue was the Area and Convention Centre (ACC) Liverpool, located on the former King's Dock, with spectacular views across the Mersey.  It was great to catch up with former lab member Kate Hammond, now Director of the BSc Genetics degree programme at the University of Liverpool.

King Yee Cheung visited from Singapore, and popped into the lab to help complete revisions on our collaborative manuscript on zebrafish olfactory ionocytes.  King has recently started postdoctoral work in the lab of Adam Claridge-Chang at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

January–February 2025

Tanya paid a visit to the lab of Berta Alsina at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, to act as external examiner for one of Berta's PhD students, who gave an excellent talk and thesis defence.  It was great to catch up with Berta and the other members of the thesis committee, Alejandro Barallo Gimeno and David Raible.  Later we were joined by Cristina Pujades to explore the beautiful Catalan countryside and coastline.