News
2025
June 5th: Carley Miller successfully defended her PhD thesis! Congratulations! Best of luck as Carley returns to medical school! Double Doc inbound.
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May 19th: Eric's thesis work was acknowledged by the Graduate School with the CU Anschutz Outstanding Thesis Award! Congratulations, Eric!
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April 1st: The Aoto lab is awarded a new R21 from NIMH!
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March 12th: Eric G. Stokes successfully defended his thesis! Congratulations, Dr. Stokes!
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February: Huge congratulations to Eric G. Stokes! His first author Nature article is published! In collaboration with Dr. Kevin Beier's lab (UCI), Eric used electrophysiology and super-resolution imaging to answer the enigmatic question: how does the Zeta Inhibitory Peptide (ZIP) eliminate LTP and learning and memory? We found that the net cationic charge of ZIP drives the endocytosis of AMPARs and that other positively charged peptides can induce a similar effect.
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2024​
September 23rd: Eric Stokes won best talk and Carley Miller won best poster at the 12th Annual Student Research Day !
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September 11th: JungMin Kim successfully defended her thesis! Congrats!
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September 4th: Eric Stokes' first author paper is out in The Journal of Neuroscience! Congrats! Thank you to our collaborators, Dr. Jaewon Ko and Hyeonho Kim!
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August 23rd: Carley Miller's first author paper is on BioRxiv.
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August: The lab's collaborative work with Dr. Kevin Beier (UCI) is published in Neuron!
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July: Shelby Fainelli joins the lab! Welcome, Shelby!!
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2023
November: Eric Stokes' collaborative work with the Beier Lab (UCI) is out as a preprint!​
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September: The lab's collaborative work with Ulli Bayer's lab on the structural role of CaMKII is out in Nature.
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August 5: Brian Lloyd's first author paper is out in Nature Communications. Brian applied 3D dSTORM and novel neurexin knock-in mice to identify the nanoscale organization of these enigmatic molecules. His findings begin to explain how individual neurexins can control different synaptic properties. Thank you to our collaborators, Dr. Bo Zhang and his student, Ying Han! Check it out here!
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June 21: Brian Lloyd successfully defended his thesis! Congratulations, Brian! Best of luck as he returns to medical school.
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February 15: Emma Boxer's and JungMin Kim's co-first author paper is out in the Journal of Neuroscience. Thanks also goes to Brett Dunn for developing many of the circuit tracing reagents used in the study. Check it out here!
2022
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December 21: Emma Boxer's review has been published in Frontiers Synaptic Neuroscience. Check it out here!
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December 8: Emma Boxer's last day in the laboratory. It's the end of an era! Her scientific growth - intellectual, conceptual and methodological - was nothing short of remarkable. Now off to California to postdoc with Dr. David Anderson's lab at CalTech. Good luck, enjoy the sun and we are all rooting for you!!!
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December 8: Jason is a co-awardee (with Dr. Ulli Bayer) of the Faculty Excellence in Teaching award from the Dept of Pharmacology.
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December 7: Emma Boxer's review "Neurexins and their ligands at inhibitory synapses" has been accepted for publication at Frontiers Synaptic Neuroscience!
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October 19: Emma Boxer successfully defended her thesis! Congratulations, Dr. Boxer!!
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August 3: Carley Miller's F30 MD/PhD Predoctoral Fellowship is funded by NIDA!!!
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July 28: Eric Stokes has been selected as a 2022 HHMI/Gilliam Fellow!!! After a rigorous selection process, Eric is one of 51 Gilliam Fellows selected.
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July 1: Jason is now an Associate Professor. Many thanks to the current and former lab members.
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May 10: Emma is awarded an Outstanding Student Research Award and Jason is awarded a Faculty Excellence in Research Award at the Pharmacology Awards Ceremony for 2020-2021
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May 4: Carley Miller passed her comprehensive examination!!! Congratulations!
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April 20: Jason won the 2022 Dean's Doctoral Mentoring Award!! We are very excited and glad that Jason was selected as the winner and is recognized for his dedication to mentorship.
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March 4: The Aoto Lab's R21 is funded! Building on Brian Lloyd's work, we will investigate how neurexins control the nanoscale architecture of excitatory and inhibitory synapses.
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2021
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December 7: Emma's article is published in Cell Reports! She found that the cell-type and synapse specific connectivity and usage of neurexin-3 in the ventral subiculum microcircuit is sexually dimorphic.
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August 4: Emma receives her notice of award for her F31! Congratulations!!
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July 1: Carley Miller joined the Aoto lab!!
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June 5: Melanie Becher's last day as a PRA in the lab. She will be starting graduate school at Georgetown University.
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June 1: Becca Roth has officially joined the lab!
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March 15: JungMin Kim passed her Comps exam! Now she is an official PhD candidate. Congrats, JungMin!
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March 1: Becca Roth (NSP) started her 3rd rotation. Welcome, Becca!
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February 23: Susy successfully defended her thesis! Congratulations, Dr. Restrepo!!!
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February 9: Emma Boxer's collaboration with Christopher Ford's lab is out in Neuron! Emma contributed single-cell qPCR experiments to measure mGluR1 levels in ChI's.
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2020
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July: Eric Stokes officially joins the laboratory! Welcome back!
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July 22: Brian Lloyd passed his comprehensive examination with flying colors and is now an official PhD candidate!
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June: Carley Miller (MSTP) started her summer rotation. Welcome, Carley!
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May: Susy's methods paper: "Measuring Transcellular Interactions through Protein Aggregation in a Heterologous Cell System" is out in JoVE!
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February 24th: Eric wrapped up his second rotation with a great post-rotation talk. Great job, Eric!
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2019
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November 18th: Dean finished his rotation with a great post-rotation talk, and Eric Stokes will start his second rotation in Aoto lab. Good job Dean, and welcome Eric!
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November 15th: Congratulations to Emma Boxer for winning "Best Poster at the Neuroscience program retreat" for her interrogation of microcircuitry as voted on by students and faculty! JungMin Kim also gave a wonderful talk and poster on her collaborative work investigating vSub-NAc projection circuitry.
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October 2nd: Susy's paper is officially out in J. Neuro!
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August: Dean Kareemo starts his first rotation in the lab. Welcome, Dean!
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August: Brian Lloyd officially joins the laboratory! Welcome!
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May: JungMin Kim officially joins the laboratory! Welcome!
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April 29th: Brian Lloyd (MSTP) begins his summer rotation. Welcome, Brian!
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March 3rd: Emma Boxer's collaborative work with Dr. Matthew Kennedy's lab that characterizes a novel light-activated split botulinum toxin is in print at Neuron!
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February 19th: JungMin's successful post-rotation talk caps a very productive second rotation.
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February 6th: Susy's poster characterizing a mutation in neurexin-3 that is linked to epilepsy and profound intellectual disability was awarded second place at the 2019 Winter Conference on Brain Research.
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2018
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December 10th: Susy's was awarded a Yale Ciencias predoctoral fellowship. Congratulations, Susy!
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November 11th: JungMin Kim starts her second rotation in the lab. Welcome, JungMin!
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October 23rd: A paper in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dell'Acqua's lab in Cell Reports is published!
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October 12th: Susy received the "best student seminar" award for her talk characterizing the functional impact of a disease-relevant point mutation in neurexin-3 at the Department of Pharmacology Research Symposium!
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October 4th: Emma Boxer passed her comprehensive examination and is now a bonafied PhD candidate!
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July 26th: Susy Restrepo passed her comprehensive examination and is now an official PhD candidate!!! Well done, Susy.
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July 1st: Nora Langer joins the Aoto lab as the new PRA! Welcome, Nora!
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June 29th: Kylan's last day in the lab! Thanks for helping to get the lab running and for all the technical support - you were indispensable! Good luck!
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June 14th: Susy is awarded a prestigious Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study from HHMI!
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June 1st: R01 from NIMH awarded!
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February 20th: Ellen Ford finishes her Winter 2017-2018 rotation with a nice end of rotation talk.
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2017
November 17th: Hannah Actor-Engel ends her productive rotation with a bang. Excellent end of rotation talk! Ellen Ford begins her Winter rotation. Welcome, Ellen!
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August 21st: Hannah Actor-Engel starts her Fall 2017 rotation. Welcome, Hannah!
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June 28th: Brett Dunn successfully defended his Masters thesis! Congratulations!
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May 22nd: Susy Restrepo and Emma Boxer have officially decided to join the Aoto lab to carry out their PhD's! Welcome back, Susy and Emma!
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May 16th: Emma Boxer ends her productive third rotation in which she identified some completely unexpected disease-relevant phentoypes!
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March 27th: Susy Restrepo ends her productive second rotation and Emma Boxer begins her third rotation. Welcome, Emma!
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January 17th: Jun Wang starts her postdoc in the Aoto Lab. Welcome, Jun!
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2016
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November 22nd: Joshua Garcia ends his very productive first rotation (Fall) and Susy Restrepo begins her second rotation (Winter). Welcome, Susy!
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August 29th: Joshua Garcia begins his Fall 2016 rotation. Welcome, Josh!
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August 8th: Jason receives notice of a Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD) Young Investigator Award.
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July 15th: Kylan Nelson starts her PRA position.
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July 10th: Brett Dunn officially joins the lab.
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April 25th: Brett Dunn begins his rotation. Welcome, Brett!
February 24th: The R00 portion of the K99/R00 has been awarded to Jason Aoto.
January 15th: The Aoto Laboratory opens! We are located on the 6th floor of RC-1N.
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