From the Lab to the Limelight - Blog version of our #TraineeTuesday Twitter series
Welcome back to #TraineeTuesday! Today’s spotlight is on Yury Nikolaev, PhD, a postdoc in the Sensory Physiology Labs at Yale (a collaborative project between Slav Bagriantsev, PhD, and Elena Gracheva, PhD). On Sept. 13, he published a paper in Science Advances on touch detection!
In his research, Yury asks a fundamental question: how does the skin detect transient touch and vibration? By revealing the structure and function of mini-organs called ‘mechanosensory corpuscles,” Yury unraveled the mechanisms underlying tactile sensation in vertebrates.
The textbooks would say that the neuronal ending is the touch detector in the skin. But we show that lamellar cells also actively contribute to touch sensation. These cells are the key elements of the mechanosensory corpuscles and are non-neuronal cell types.
Yury Nikolaev, PhD
Yury began his scientific journey across the globe, in Sydney, Australia. He first became interested in molecular mechanobiology during his PhD. At the time, there had been a groundbreaking discovery in the world of mechanosensors: Piezo ion channels (the subject of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). Driven by this newfound passion, Yury joined Dr. Bagriantsev's lab at Yale, where he has since contributed to research on mechanosensory corpuscles.
From collaborating with exceptional researchers to accessing cutting-edge tools — enhanced focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM), for example — Yury described his research experience at Yale as “invaluable.”
The highlight of my time at Yale has undoubtedly been the research community. I have never met so many smart, enthusiastic, and driven people in the same place at the same time. This has made me believe that there are no limits to what we can achieve in science.
Yury Nikolaev, PhD
Yury hopes to one day lead an independent research group. Continuing his work in sensory neuroscience, his ultimate goal is to improve the lives of individuals with sensory impairments.
“I believe touch is the most important sensation out of all. Touch is a fundamental way for us to express affection and connect with the world around us. From a mother's love for her newborn to the sensation of the wind on our face or the texture of food, touch plays a vital role in our perception of the world and emotional connection with one another,” he said.