PhD CandidatešŸ‘©šŸ¼ā€šŸ”¬ @NCState studying #toxicology #immunology #PFAS #macrophage #zebrafish🐟 Previously in 🐭🧠 #neuroendocrinology Views = my own. She/her

Raleigh, NC
Joined March 2021
Two down, one to go! I had a wonderful time presenting my poster on using molecular docking to investigate how PFAS affect neutrophil function at the recent Environmental Data Science - Connect and North Carolina @SOToxicology meetings! So many insightful conversations!
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Next up: I’ll be presenting at the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology this week during Wednesday’s poster session! If you’re attending, please come by and say hello - I’d love to hear your thoughts about my project!
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Ashley Connors retweeted
Amazing! Optogenetics gave scientists a way to switch neurons on or off with light and see how they shape memory, emotion and behavior. Literal sci-fi stuff. It transformed neuroscience. And it began with studying how algae responds to light. This is why we fund basic research.
BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel ā€œfor their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.ā€
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Ashley Connors retweeted
CRISPR would be a beautiful name for an air fryer
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Ashley Connors retweeted
reminder to everyone that today is national voter registration day- CHECK and make sure you are registered! I just checked mine, and it's still under my old name; gotta fix that. in lots of places you *cannot* register on Election Day!
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Ashley Connors retweeted
Today we’re announcing the largest environmental damage payment in North Carolina history. Chemours and DuPont are responsible for massive PFAS contamination of our water, especially in eastern NC. This settlement is worth nearly $600m, with most funds going directly to local communities. It was crucial that we got real money for our state, because the EPA completely failed. It gave these companies a slap on the wrist without even consulting us. We just got North Carolina at least 20x what the EPA got for us. This new money is in addition to the $1.2b Chemours has been required to spend by the previous court order to clean up their mess, but now that cleanup effort must also be financially guaranteed by DuPont - a key win to ensure the cleanup work continues. My thanks to @NCDEQ for their partnership and dedication to clean water for our state. abc11.com/post/chemours-accu…
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I added this picture to my ā€œspot the red flagsā€ undergraduate safety training slide deck so damn fast
This vial contains a new drug called PAC-3310. It was designed by ChatGPT, and I synthesized it in a chemistry lab I built in my garage. PAC-3310 is a new selective M4 muscarinic receptor agonist for treating schizophrenia - similar to the recent breakthrough drug Cobenfry, but improved. (1/7)
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Ashley Connors retweeted
Turns out, food regulations were really important for regulating food
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The replies to this post raise a lot of questions. Is measles actually dangerous, is the hospitalization number real, is the antibody thing overblown. These are fair questions and they have answers, so here's the evidence, with sources. TL;DR, the data are worse than my post. 🧵
Measles hospitalizes 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who catch it, killed two children last year, and wipes out antibodies kids have built against other infections. We have a vaccine that's 97% effective. Caring about public health means not picking one crisis and ignoring the other.
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Chemours dumped PFAS into the Cape Fear River for decades. It’s drinking water for 500,000 people. The EPA just settled with them without ever calling us. Not one dollar is guaranteed to come to North Carolina. That’s not a settlement. That’s a favor. I’m asking the court to toss it.
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Ashley Connors retweeted
20-25% of all mammals are bats and megabats have such advanced intracellular innate immunity via APOBEC3s that their LINE 1 transposons in their genome are all extinct huge part of what makes them great viral vectors in addition to like five other weird features
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Ashley Connors retweeted
Insane new research. Scientists gave asthma patients free electric stoves to replace their gas stoves, then checked to see if symptoms improved. Not only did symptoms improve, ditching gas was *better than medicine.* Details in today's newsletter: climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/…
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Ashley Connors retweeted
There’s poop on the lettuce. There’s worms in the beef. There’s glass in the bread. What kind of Upton Sinclair timeline is this
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Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
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The recent U.S. FDA characterization of baby formula as ā€œsafeā€ is entirely misleading. In the FDA dataset, about two-thirds of the infant formulas tested had detectable PFAS. The highest levels were found in soy-based formula samples, especially powder soy-based formulas. These detections were mainly driven by PFBA, with some soy powder samples containing around 30-34 ppt. @bennettpeer @Nathan_Donley theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
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Ashley Connors retweeted
FYI - People are confusing "hantavirus has a long incubation period" with "covid was contagious before symptoms showed up." Incubating ≠ contagious. Andes virus is not an upper-airway, high-shedding respiratory virus. It evolved for a very different survival strategy.
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Ashley Connors retweeted
I think we can all agree the government telling scientists what to publish is catastrophically bad. When I say they're annihilating American science, this is what I mean.
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Ashley Connors retweeted
Hi, medical toxicologist/ER doctor here šŸ‘‹ here’s what you need to know about medetomidine in the illicit opioid supply
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The hill I will die on - we have to rethink graduate training. ā€œScientists are trained for a world where data speaks for itself. Where misinformation moves slowly. Where scientific expertise naturally rises above noise. That world is gone.ā€ sciencepolitics.org/2026/03/…
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