We aim to understand how different glial cells shape the form and function neural circuits. How are they integrated into neuronal circuits and how do they in turn shape the form and function of the central nervous system?
We are based at the University of Edinburgh, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences.
September 2024: Welcome to our new PhD student Zita Francsics!
July 2024: Great news that we got a pump priming grant from Tenovus Scotland to foster collaboration with the group of James Minchin to look into how neuronal and glial encoded obesity genes affect feeding circuits and energy balance. Very much looking forward to entering these new directions!
May 2024: Interested in Glial Cell Development and Function in Zebrafish? Read our latest book chapter for Cold Spring Harbour Perspectives in Biology! It was fun to put write this piece together with Kelly Monk and Francesca Peri.
April 2024: Happy to announce that we are now Investigators of the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain Edinburgh. We will leverage the advantages of zebrafish to disentangle function-determining features underlying atypical circuitry in genetic models of neurodevelopmental disorders.
February 2024: New collaborative paper out in Nature Neuroscience, together with Kelly Monk's lab describing dynamics of postsynaptic proteins in OPCs. Link
September 2023: Check out our latest Perspectives article in Nature Neuroscience on the myelination independent functions of OPCs!
May 2023: Also a big welcome to our new postdoc Lian Hollander-Cohen.
March 2023: Welcome to Lucy Wheatley who has joined our team for her postdoctoral studies.
July 2022: Welcome to Denis Yuan who has just joined our team!
March 2022: New paper out in Nature Neuroscience where we show that oligodendrocyte precursor cells sculpt neural circuits - a novel function of this cell type over and above their traditional roles in giving rise to myelinating oligodendrocytes. Congratulations to Yan and everyone else involved. This was a great collaboration with Ruben Portugues' lab!
March 2022: Happy to announce that from today, our lab will be funded by a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship to spend the next five years figuring out how oligodendrocyte precursors shape neural circuits!
February 2022: New paper out in Cell Reports where we show that axon can dictate the position of their own nodes of Ranvier! Congratulations and Stavros and Franzi who have been leading this work, and everyone else involved.
January 2022: Wellcome to Dr Nicola Porter who joined our team to carry out electrophysiological examinations of neuron-glia interactions!
November 2021: We have a PhD project available in the EASTBIO programme to investigate how oligodendrocyte precursors are involved in function and dysfunction of the CNS. Here's the link
October 2021: Congratulations to Dr. Stavros for passing his PhD defense!! Very well deserved! Stavros is now off to join Thora Karadottir's group.
October 2021: Welcome to Emma Dumble and Patricia Bispo who join us a Research Assistant and PhD student, respectively.
September 2021: Welcome to Zoë Speirs who joins us for as a Research Assistant.
May 2021: Just received the excellent news that our latest grant application at BBSRC has been successful! Are there different mechanisms of oligodendrocyte recruitment when new myelin is made during nervous system plasticity and regeneration? Might be hiring soon...
April 2021: New collaborative paper in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology together with Hauke Werner at Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine. Great resource for everyone who is interested on the myelin proteome in zebrafish.
March 2021: Have a look at our new Preprint on BioRxiv. Exciting work by our postdoc Yan Xiao on non-canonical roles of OPC in the brain. OPCs are multifunctional and can sculpt neural circuits. Keeping fingers crossed!
February 2021: New collaborative paper in Journal of Cell Biology together with Thomas Misgeld on myelination of motor axons during neurodevelopmental remodelling.
December 2020: PhD studentship available in my lab! How does activity dependent communication between axons and oligodendrocytes shape CNS structure and function?
December 2020: Outreach to the wider audience on the functions of myelin in the brain by dasgehirn.info, "Highspeed dank Myelin". I also put my two cents in, fwiw...
May 2020: Welcome to our new postdoc Adna Dumitrescu, who joined us from Claire Wyart's group at ICM Paris. Looking forward to doing some exciting new work on axon-oligodendrocyte communication using optogenetics and -physiology!!
February 2020: Have a look at our new paper in Nature Neuroscience showing that oligodendrocyte lineage progression is not linear for all cells, and that their precursors can form local subgroups with distinct functions. Congratulations to Roberta, Tobias, and everyone else involved. This was a great collaboration with Gonçalo Castelo-Branco.
January 2020: New collaborative paper in Communications Biology together with Hernán López-Schier on Sarm1 out now!
January 2020: Exciting news - the Czopka Lab will relocate to University of Edinburgh over the next year!! Back to the roots... and to one of the best places to be to work on oligodendrocyte and myelin biology for nervous system function!
We will be looking for interested students and postdocs.
December 2019: Farewell Franzi, who stayed with us for the past 4 years and will now join the lab of David Schoppik and NYU for her postdoctoral research
October 2019: Samatha Ho has joined us for an MSc rotation project until Christmas.
Welcome Sam!
September 2019: Congratulations Franzi, who is now Dr. Franziska Auer after her successful PhD defence! Very well done, and very well deserved!!
May 2018: Nada Majernikova has joined us for a research internship over the summer.
Welcome Nad'a!
January 2018: First own paper out in Current Biology. Thanks a lot to Franzi and Stavros for their great work!
November 2017: Welcome to our new postdoc Yan Xiao, who joined us from Hernán López-Schier's group.
November 2017: We are now members of the SFB870 on the "Assembly and Function of Neuronal Circuits" for its new funding period 2018-2021!
September 2017: Congratulations to Stavros Vagionitis! Stavros has been awarded with a PhD stipend by the TUM Medical School.
January 2017: Happy New Year!
November 2016: Welcome to our new PhD student Roberta Marisca.
October 2016: Welcome to our new PhD student Stavros Vagionitis.
September 2016: Congratulations to Franziska Auer! Franzi has been awarded with the prestigious Gertrud Reemtsma PhD award of the Max Planck Society.