Lab News
2024 February
Check out our new review paper on fluorescence microscopy shadow imaging; and emerging imaging approach in neuroscience and beyond, and one that comes with considerable benefits compared to conventional targeted labelling startegies such as genetic fluorophor expression or immunochemistry. A nice collaborative effort with lab members and Krishna Innavali from University of Southampton, UK. Find it open access here.
2024 February
We are happy to welcome back Paula after her maternity leave; she finished the PhD shortly before starting her leave and now joins us in the ranks of post docs.
2024 January
Congratulations lab member Ane Rodriguez for excellently defending your PhD thesis and earn the title of doctor! We are all so proud of you!
Thank you Joana Ferreira, Victor Puntes and Edgar Soria for serving on the evaluation committee, and for the interesting and constructive comments and discussion.
2024 January
We are extremely happy to announce we are moving to the Instituto Biofisika (neighboring our current Achucarro center), where we will continue studying nanoscale neurophysiology.
The Instituto Biofisika is part of the Spanish National research Council (CSIC) that will be our main affiliation. We will continue to collaborate with the Achucarro center, and contribute to the local neuroscience and biophysics community.
2023 Summer
Another achievement earlier this Summer; a new lab-baby was born to a lab member. We now have a total of se7en lab babies!!
2023 June
We forgot to mention here earlier: Paula defended her PhD thesis this summer, the first of the lab! And she did it excellently!! We are so proud of her!!
2023 July
Congratulations lab member Ane Pellicer for successfully presenting your BSc project, and best of luck in your future endeavours!
2023 June
We are honoured to have taken part in the meeting of the Japanese Society of Microscopy in Matsue, Japan, this week. An amazing place, with the kindest people. Everything topped off with giving a seminar at University of Tokyo, and meeting some of the biggest names in the field of dendritic spine physiology. Arigatou!!
2023 June
New grant awarded! We are grateful for being awarded a Consolidation grant from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI). This will allow us to investigate in more detail the functional properties of the brain extracellular space.
2023 May
We just returned from the FENS Regional Meeting (FRM 2023) in Algarve, Portugal. Great conference in a great location, with interesting scientific discussions and memorable social events. We went all PhD students and postdocs of the group to make a lab trip out of it (Jonny missing from the picture though).
2023 April
We are very happy to welcome Juan Cobos as an intern in our group.
2023 January
The new year marks the start of our collaborative project DiffusionBrain with Fidel Santamaria lab at UTSA, Texas, to build and apply a new computational model of diffusion in the brain extracellular space. The goal is to gain new insights into the fundamentals of signaling and metabolite clearance, and how these processes are regulated by the dynamic morphology and viscosity of the extracellular compartment.
We will build on the initial computational modelling efforts from lab member Paula Gimenez and synergize our two labs' expertise in super-resolution shadow imaging (SUSHI) and computational modelling of diffusion. The novelty of the model we propose is that it will rely on actual super-resolve images of the extracellular space in live brain slices, whereas current diffusion models rely on synthetic representative tissue or reconstructed electron microscopy images of tissue that is confounded by fixation artifacts.
The project has been awarded a total of around 900.000 Eur from the NIH and the Spanish AEI and will run for three years.
2023 January
Happy New Year!
We start the new year with a review article on our current understanding of local diffusion in brain extracellular space, an area with surprisingly little available experimental data. It is published open access in Neurobiology of Disease here. The review is the product of a collaborative effort with Sabina Hrabetova and Federico Soria.
2022 November
We are hiring a postdoc!
Please check the Join Us section to see our latest job offer, or simply click here.
2022 October
We are happy to have been awarded a collaborative Grupos Grant together with the lab of Olga Peñagarikano, to continue our joint efforts at the University of the Basque Country to study the Development and Plasticity of Neural Circuits.
2022 September
Daniel Sanchez Iraola has joined us as a PhD student funded through our governmental AEI Retos grant. Daniel will work on the physiological roles of the brain extracellular space in signalling and metabolite clearance, and will primarily use STED microscopy in live brain slices. Welcome Dann!
2022 July
Virginia Puente, currently Marie Curie Fellow at IINS Bordeaux, has been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship (her second!) to join our lab as a senior postdoc. We look forward to hosting and working with her!
2022 July
We truly enjoyed the biannual Neurogune meeting of the neuroscience community of the Basque Country of Spain where local and invited international researchers come together to meet, greet and celebrate science!
2022 May
It was a pleasure and a privilege to spend the last days in Barcelona, as part of the BIST 2022 Symposium on Microscopy, Nanoscopy and Imaging Sciences. The first in-person meeting for a long while; a great chance to interact with students and scientists!
2022 February
We are extremely happy to welcome Jonny Draffin to the lab. Jonny has today started a postdoctoral position funded through our ASAP Consortium grant to investigate Parkinson's disease. Bienvenido!
2021 November
Our lab are currently at the 2021 Spanish Society for Neuroscience (SENC) meeting in Lleida in Spain, participating with a talk and posters. Great conference with fantastic people and interesting science. Our presentations included how we use inverted contrast to image the neuropil using the SUSHI method.
2021 October
Proud and humbled that our lab is collaborator in a newly funded ASAP Initiative consortium led by Prof. Miquel Vila from the Vall d'Hebron Institute, in Barcelona. The consortium has been awarded 11 million US dollars to investigate neuromelanin in Parkinson's disease. The consortium members count well-renowned groups from across the world. Link to website will follow.
2021 October
We are hiring! We are hiring a PhD Student as part of our Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) Retos grant. Find more info here, note the short deadline!
2021 October
We are hiring! We are looking for a postdoc for a 3-year fully funded position as part of the ASAP Initiative consortium grant (see above); please see our add on this website here
2021 September
We are very proud and happy to have been part of this paper in Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids headed by our colleagues Ruben Hernandez-Alcoceba and Ana Ricobaraza at the CIMA in Pamplona.
2021 August
We are happy to have been awarded a 3-year research grant from the Spanish Government's Retos programme to study metabolite clearance from the brain's extracellular space.
2021 June
Afternoon lab beers, with sunshine and masks off for a moment. Taking time out to celebrate a paper, a pregnancy, an upcoming paternity leave, and summer in general.
2021 June
Just out: Our latest review article in Neurobiology of Disease on STED microscopy for imaging in live brain tissue. It is freely available through open access here. Great work by Stefano Calovi and Federico Soria!
2021 March
Check out the latest publication from the Nägerl lab that we have contributed to, describing the general project of nanoscale imaging of the functional anatomy of the brain. It can be found here (paywalled).
2021 January
After substantial delivery delays due to the Covid-19 epidemic, we are back on track with the custom construction of our STED microscope for imaging in live tissue. The beam paths are lighting up nicely, and a doughnut has appeared in our STED beam profile.
2020 December
Congratulations lab member Ane Rodriguez for being awarded a 1,000 USD Sigma Xi Research Grant for the purchase of a new microscope perfusion chamber for imaging live brain slices! Great way to end 2020!
2020 November
Congratulations to visiting PhD student Stefano Calovi, from Beata Sperlagh lab in Budapest. Stefano's main results from his thesis work have just been published in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience here, and we are happy to have played a small part in this solid and extensive work.
2020 October
Our latest review article on Current Techniques for Investigating the Brain Extracellular Space is out in Frontiers of Neuroscience, find it here. Thank you Fede, Cris and Olga for the team work!
2020 September
We are happy to have contributed to this review on Neurobiological Mechanisms of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Epilepsy published in Neuroscience. The work was headed by Peñagarikano Lab. The paper is freely accessible for 50 days, starting 20 September 2020.
2020 March
If you are interested in super-resolution microscopy do not miss the latest special issue of Methods dedicated to this topic and guest edited by J Tønnesen (yours truly). Here is an open access link for the editorial, valid for another 40 days.
2020 February
Our research center, the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience, is looking for a new scientific director. We are an emerging neuroscience center with an emphasis on glia cell biology. The center hosts several newly established groups working in various fields of neuroscience, providing for inspiring and productive professional dynamics.
More info here.
2020 February
Congratulations lab member Paula Gimenez for landing a 1,000 USD Sigma Xi Research Grant grant for buying a computer for modelling work!
2020 February
We are happy to be part of this Methods paper presenting a new freely available ImageJ based spine analysis software. It enables geometric analyses of spine morphology in raw images, and is particularly suitable for STED images, though it will readily accept images from any imaging modality.
2019 November
If you are a student or postdoc and you are into glia cells, you should check out the Glia School held at our center, Achucarro, June 23 to 25 2020 in Bilbao, Spain.
2019 November
Very happy to have been part of this Nature Methods publication driven by Krishna Inavalli and Martin Lenz to combine STED and PALM microscopy into a single microscope and apply it to study synapses on live neurons.
2019 October
Welcome aboard Kostas! Kostas will perform an internship for his bachelors degree in physics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
2019 September
New grants: We have over the summer been awarded a grant from the University of the Basque Country for the purchase of lab infrastructure, as well as project money from the Basque Government. The latter in collaboration with the neighboring Achucarro groups of Olatz Pampliega and Maz Hasan.
2019 May
Welcome Stefano Calovi, visiting PhD student from the lab of Beata Sperlagh in Budapest!
2019 March
Welcome Islam Ayman!
Islam will be doing an internship as part of the Euro-Mediterranean Master of Neuroscience program.
2019 February
We just published a new book chapter on practical considerations for obtaining and analyzing STED microscopy images together with my former colleague from Bordeaux, Martin Lenz, who is now in Cambridge. The chapter is part of the ever popular book series Methods in Molecular Biology and can be found here.
2019 January
Welcome Ane Rodriguez!
Ane has joined us as an intern, shared with the neighboring lab of JM Encinas. UPDATE: Ane has obtained a PhD fellowship and wil continue on as a PhD student - congrats!
2019 January
Happy New Year!
We are starting the year strong: Our lab has made a joined group with the lab of Olga Peñagarikano and is now a formal research group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) called Development and Plasticity of Neural Circuits. Our joined group has received a bit of funding too, to help us along :)
2018 June
In recognition of the SUSHI project, yours truly (group leader Tonnesen) received one of this years medals for "Les Grandes Avancées Françaises en Biologie" from the French Academy of Sciences at a ceremony in Paris.
2018 May
Eating sushi with Valentin Nägerl and Krishna Inavalli (aka 'the SUSHI chefs') in Bordeaux earlier this month; it takes sushi to make SUSHI!
2018 April
Nature Methods just highlighted our recent publication in Cell on how to image the extracellular space and intact neuropil in living brain tissue.
2018 March
Check this video of a migrating glial cell moving through live brain tissue, from our recent Cell paper.
2018 Feb
Tonnesen's work describing a new way of visualizing live brain parenchyma, from his time in the Nagerl lab in Bordeaux, is now out in Cell.
