Through the provision of these two-year collaborative research grants, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) programme aims to accelerate cutting-edge research and technology in metabolism and metabolic physiology. The objective of these grants is to map, measure, and integrate metabolism across different scales—from molecules and organelles to cells and tissues—deepening our understanding of human biology, and to investigate the metabolic processes that maintain physiological homeostasis.

Understanding Treatment-Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a particularly challenging form of major depressive disorder. As Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Neuropsychiatry Unit and the study’s national coordinator for Portugal, explains, “TRD is defined as the persistence of depressive symptoms despite adequate courses of at least two different antidepressant medications”. Despite repeated therapeutic attempts, these patients’ depressive symptoms remain.

Why we have a brain

“The brain’s primary function is movement”, explains Claudia Feierstein, lead author of the study published today in Current Biology. “Plants don’t need a brain because they don’t move. Yet, even for something as seemingly simple as eye movements, the brain’s role remains largely enigmatic. Our goal is to illuminate this ‘black box’ of motion and to decode how neural activity controls eye and body movements, using zebrafish as our model organism”.