New Insights into Vertebrate Cajal-Retzius Cells

We are excited to share a new study, “Evolutionary origins and transcriptomic innovations of vertebrate Cajal–Retzius cells”, led by Dr. Maria Antonietta Tosches and her lab, now published in Current Biology. This work takes a comparative, cross-species approach to address a long-standing question in neuroscience: are Cajal–Retzius (CR) cells a mammalian innovation, or do they …

We’re joining ZDM18!

The Kizil Lab will participate in the 18th International Zebrafish Disease Models (ZDM18) Conference with two talks this year! Join us in Boston from October 13–15, 2025, where we will share our latest work on zebrafish disease models and our interesting findings. We look forward to connecting with the zebrafish research community there! https://www.zdmsociety.org/zdm18-agenda

New Paper Published: Shared Genetic Architecture Between Early-Onset Alzheimer’s and Lipid Traits

We are pleased to highlight a recent publication by Ray et al. (2025) that investigates local genetic covariance between early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD) and blood lipid traits. We in the Kizil Lab are proud to have contributed to this collaboration, which deepens our understanding of how lipid biology intersects with neurodegenerative risk. 👉 Read the …

New Preprint

Our collaborators - Tosches Lab - have just published a fascinating study: “The evolutionary origins of Cajal–Retzius cells”. We in the Kizil Lab were honored to contribute to this work, which maps Tp73⁺ neurons across vertebrates (chicken, salamander, zebrafish, skate) and reveals that Cajal–Retzius (CR) cells likely emerged from an ancient Tp73⁺ lineage associated with …

Decoding the Heart’s “Little Brain”

We’re proud to share our groundbreaking study published in Nature Communications. Our work sheds light on the zebrafish intracardiac nervous system (IcNS)—a local neural network acting as the heart’s "little brain." This was a fantastic collaborative effort between teams at Karolinska Institute and Columbia University, spearheaded by the Konstantinos Ampatzis Lab and Kizil Lab. Huge …

Our publication received the McAlpine Foundation for Neuroscience Research Award

We are proud to announce that our recent publication where we identified a protective genetic variant in FN1 gene against Alzheimer's disease received a recognition award from McAlpine Foundation as one of the best publications in 2024. http://www.mcalpinefoundation.org/awards.php In recognition of the Vardarajan, Kizil, and Mayeux labs' innovative cross-species approach to uncover protective mechanisms against …

We will present our work at Karolinska Institute

Title: "Zebrafish as a new functional genomics tool for Alzheimer’s disease" Zebrafish regenerates its brain successfully even in Alzheimer’s disease conditions. No other animal has been shown to do this. The goal of the Kizil lab is to learn from zebrafish how we can enable the human brain to better cope with neurodegenerative disease and …