New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from Dr. Leila Elabbady on neural circuits that transform a touch stimulus into spatially targeted grooming.
Leila discovered a leg somatotopic map and used it to infer tactile receptive fields in the fly VNC connectome.
authors.elsevier.com/a/1mvu83QW8S...
Sometimes failed experiments reveal gaps in how we are thinking about a problem, and digging into why an experiment didn't work can lead to discovery. This new preprint by Anne Sustar, in collaboration with Dion Dickman's lab, is one of those gratifying instances.🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
fly circuit diagram
When a fly lands on your arm, how does your nervous system decide where to swat?
By reconstructing tactile axons in a Drosophila connectome, we found a leg somatotopic map and downstream circuits that sample the map to initiate targeted grooming
Led by Leila Elabbady, PhD
doi.org/10.64898/202...
Happy to share work I contributed to during my time in the Murthy lab!
now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🎉🥳
www.cell.com/current-biol...
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...
I often think about Zohran Mamdani saying “to get to any of us, you’re gonna have to go through all of us.”
How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm?
Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg.
w @bingbrunton.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-november-11th-we-cave
NEW: Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, will become New Jersey's next governor, The Associated Press reports. https://to.pbs.org/4paXpT5
BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race, NBC News projects. nbcnews.to/4nIzNUC
Do flies feel pain?
Spooky new preprint from our lab on the cells and circuits that mediate nociceptive behaviors in adult Drosophila, led by graduate student (and newly minted PhD!) @jonesjes.bsky.social.
🪰⚡👻🎃
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Agrawal lab logo. A fly in the UBC colors, with dots framing its body.
The Agrawal lab is moving! This January we will be setting up shop at #UBC in Vancouver, in the department of #Zoology! We are actively recruiting at all levels, especially masters and PhD students. These position are #funded! Please send anyone interested my way!
Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
So proud of Jess Jones, an HHMI Gilliam Fellow, for defending her PhD today in @tuthill.bsky.social's lab! Jess was one of my lab's 1st hires in 2018. She was also 1st author of one of our first papers: elifesciences.org/articles/57258. I wouldn’t be where I am today without her contributions.
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
More Steve Flurkel !!
cartoon of a fly cleaning its eyes
Graduate student @kylethieringer.com and I wrote a dispatch about a new @currentbiology.bsky.social paper (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) describing a proprioceptive neural circuit that helps the fly visual system identify (and ignore) its own legs.
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lYLj3QW8S...
Photos of Aedes aegypti female (left) and male (right). Numbers indicate location of collected tissues (listed in legend boxes). Photos by Alex Wild.
I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research.
Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/n
Happy Friday! The female adult fly brain-and-nerve-cord (BANC) connectome is now LIVE!
Explore the data here: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc
Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Thanks for an amazing last cycle!
settling back into Edinburgh after a great USA trip for the 2025 somatosensory rat module with another outstanding group of students, faculty, course managers & directors @nsb-mbl.bsky.social @mblscience.bsky.social & bonus visit to the Dulac lab @dulaclab.bsky.social
We're thrilled to announce the largest private gift in our 137-year history: a $25 million unrestricted donation from MBL Whitman Scientist Mark Terasaki.
His extraordinary generosity will bolster our renowned research and education programs. 🔬
Learn more: bit.ly/452WL1m
Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..
8 weeks in the hole!
Oh how I love these people ❤️
Amidst everything, the lab's first preprint is out! It's just a methods paper, no scientific results (yet!), but it's still great to see it all pulled together. We hope that these open-source behavioral tools will be useful for others!
Embodiment is the concept that the function of the brain is inexorably shaped by the body, a lens that is often neglected when neuroscientists study specific brain subsystems, write @bingbrunton.bsky.social and @tuthill.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence #neuroai
www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/brea...
Using high-speed video and neural networks, researchers have compared hunting behaviours across five species of larval fish.
The study uncovers both shared strategies and striking differences in how fish move, see, and strike during prey capture.
buff.ly/T2o9JJp
#EvoBio
As grants are canceled, delayed and subject to general uncertainty, participating in study sections can feel futile. But I think it’s more important than ever, writes @tuthill.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...
