DMartin

So happy to share our latest review on how post-translational modifications of SQSTM1, including S-acylation, regulate autophagy in neurodegeneration. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

And today we submitted another revised manuscript & another new paper. Sadly also got a grant LOI rejection. Circle of #academicLife

Today: submitted NSERC, submitted revisesd manuscript, attended departmental meeting, exec meeting, & 2 MedSci meetings, marked 3 honours proposals. Need to finish reading 6 AUPs. And a student just got another scholarship! #academicLife

Watching Mobland and Ted Lasso overlap seemed surreal.

So, a journal we submitted to seems to have lost the editor working on our manuscript. It's been sitting at 'Decision in Process' for almost a month. They can't get a hold of the editor. It also took them over a month to find a suitable editor in the first place. Has this happened to anyone?

Amid this week’s huge milestone in #HD treatment, I’m excited to share part of my PhD thesis + our paper published today in @movedisorder.bsky.social on CSF #PENK predicting striatal atrophy decades before clinical motor diagnosis 🔗 movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Check out the August 2026 edition of the #HD Clinical Trials Update, published today in the Journal of Huntington's disease and freely available online! 🔓 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

📢 TALK ALERT: Montreal peeps! I will be giving a talk in Montreal at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont Centre de Recherche on Oct. 23 (12 to 1 pm) on on our work identifying ancient functions of two tumour suppressors: promyelocytic leukemia (PML) protein and pre-mRNA processing factor 4 kinase (PRP4K).

Hoping Alberta makes good choices today. Canada is stronger together & Alberta is stronger in Canada.

NGL, I definitely didn't think we needed another version of Carrie. But I didn't realize it was directed by Mike Flanagan until episode 7. Explains why it was so well done. Would recommend to horror and King fans.

Watching Episode 7 of Carrie. It's like a Battlestar Galactica cameo reunion. Respect to the director Mike Flanagan.

**Recruitment** We are looking to hire a psychiatrist/scientist (MD or MD/PhD) who focuses on neuromodulation, particularly rTMS in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary. Come join myself, @mayoonthebrain.bsky.social and more. Details 👇 careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1829278...

If I could give one piece of scientific advice, it would be to avoid doing what everyone else is doing. Unless you want funding and people to care about your work.

Faculty position at the University of Toronto 👇 jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

uniQure reports that after 4 years, people given high-dose AMT-130 continue to show signs of slower HD progression, providing hope for their recent regulatory submission. But the new analyses are nuanced. We unpack the hopeful but complex results in this article → en.hdbuzz.net/amt-130-at-f...

‼️ attention Canadian health researchers ‼️ #CIHR has posted the Project Grants Discussion Paper and a related *survey* cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/54821.html Please please participate 🙏

Double jeopardy grant review is a thing. On re-review of a grant at CIHR the success rate goes up when you have more reviewers re-reviewing the sequential resubmission. It rises to 59% success rate if all 3 reviewers re-review a grant vs 21% with no common reviewers. Let that sink in … 🤔

The CAG repeat that causes Huntington’s disease (HD) has a tendency to grow with age. New research on over 900,000 people uncovers parallel patterns and finds CAG growth can happen in many other parts of the genome. #hdresearch Read the full article → en.hdbuzz.net/studying-stu...

Well, this is ...something: universityaffairs.ca/news/remove-... I am tired. So very tired. This is really hard work. #AcademicSky 🧪

There’s a concerted campaign to undermine EDI in Canada. The evidence behind EDI policies reducing excellence are based on abysmal, flawed evidence. Look at who feels threatened by equity, diversity and inclusion. They’re the least diverse, least equitable and most exclusive people. Just no.

GAPDH is tethered to axonal transport vesicles by S-acylation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.17.752404v1

Sanofi inaugurates $925-million Toronto facility that will produce seasonal flu vaccines for Canadians. Site is also designed to provide new capacity for vaccine production in event of another pandemic, by @hannay.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/business/eco... via @theglobeandmail.com

But seriously, when did this happen & why? Also, am I the only one who cares? It's hard to teach students that latin words have to be italicized if they're not seeing it in the papers they read.

Skyhawk Therapeutics shared data for SKY-0515, an experimental once-daily pill that targets both huntingtin and somatic instability, making it a possible “two-for-one” drug to treat HD. Read more about this exciting news on HDBuzz → en.hdbuzz.net/encouraging-...

For the benefit of followers who have complained to me about how I’m wrong and Canada values science and advanced education, a graph that illustrates my point #Canada

It's 2026 and a bunch of dudes just published something called the "Equity-excellence trade-off". Their central hypothesis is that CRC should not have introduced quotas that force universities to nominate women and minorities. They want to go back to a time when chairs were 80% men and mostly white.

Can someone tell me when journals stopped italicizing latin terms like in vitro or in vivo?

Finally a more intuitaive way to learn pLDDT/pAE? 😎 sokrypton.github.io/protein_figh... (Character idea from @hannes-stark.bsky.social & Alex Waldherr)

Was running through Victoria Park today listening to the audio book for Black House by @stephenking.bsky.social & Peter Straub. This plaque is very fitting & kinda creepy. IYKYK. 'Gorg! Ty! Abbalah!'

The latest publication from the lab is now out in @natureportfolio.nature.com. We show that pharmacological inhibition of NMT1 perturbs respiratory virus infectivity due to Golgi-bypassing egress, compromising spike maturation and incorporation. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🦠🧫🔬

NMT1 inhibition blocks N-myristoylation of newly synthesized proteins - an important fatty acid function - disturbing ER to Golgi trafficking and activating an unconventional secretory pathway from ER to plasma membrane. Wild. Congratulations to all authors! 🎉 #antiviral #SARSCoV2 #RSV #VSV

I am the very model of a modern day typographer A font take on the tune “Modern Major General” by Gilbert & Sullivan #typography #fonts #graphicdesign

This is wild. Not sure I can remember a time where Canadians were so united. 'The very large majority (78%) believe the federal government made the right decision to reject the proposals of the Trump Administration and end the negotiations.' bruce728.substack.com/p/liberals-l...

Excessive cholesterol accumulation in microglia increases neuronal synaptic vulnerability to amyloid-beta #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.27.747668v1

I feel like I’m going to throw up

OK #Neuroscience friends. I'm teaching a grad course on New Topics in Neuroscience. What are you reading these days that excites you? Students for this class have backgrounds in theoretical Neuro, math, engineering, biochem, physiology, pharmacy, & more.

My department and the University of Manitoba is hiring a structural virologist/vaccinologist for a tenure-track position at assistant or associate level, if you know of someone or are interested the details can be found in this job ad: jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/679829/a...

2 grant rejections 1 manuscript - revise 1 massive manuscript submitted After the 2 grants, it took me a full day to be able to read the paper revisions. #academiclife

What a rollercoaster of a Friday. Got reviews back for a paper. Revisions! Not outright rejected! I'll take it.