Our "Dr. Léopold Week” this year has come to an end!
We deeply thank Pierre @leopoldlab.bsky.social for visiting us again.
We also thank Prof. Chih-Chiang Chan and his team from National Taiwan University for visiting us as part of our collaboration!
We had a wonderful party yesterday.

As has become an annual tradition over the past few years, I am delighted that Dr. Pierre Leopold @leopoldlab.bsky.social from the Institut Curie, Paris, visited us again in Tsukuba and, as usual, gave a lecture on developmental biology to undergraduate students.

Celebration for Naoki's Nature paper!

Even Boneless Insects Have an Endocrine System for Calcium Control | Research News - University of Tsukuba In vertebrates, calcium is stored in bones, and its release is tightly regulated. Now, using fruit flies as a model orga

Here is a news post about our work from our university:
Even Boneless Insects Have an Endocrine System for Calcium Control

www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-...

I am honored to receive your kind words! As Julia also mentioned, Naoki and I are truly delighted that, by relatively simple methodologies, rather than complicated fancy high-end technologies, we were indeed able to uncover such a fundamental mechanism that no one had previously paid attention to!

Neuroendocrine control of calcium mobilization in the fruit fly - Nature The peptide hormone Capa is responsible for regulating extracellular fluid Ca2+ levels in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Beautiful "fundamental physiology" paper in a glamour journal - there is still some hope!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you, Julia!

Neuroendocrine control of calcium mobilization in the fruit fly - Nature The peptide hormone Capa is responsible for regulating extracellular fluid Ca2+ levels in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Excited to share our paper, led by Naoki Okamoto in our group, just out in Nature!

Neuroendocrine control of calcium mobilization in the fruit fly
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We “re”-discovered the calcium storage site in “boneless” Drosophila and revealed how calcium mobilization is regulated.

Congratulations!

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

Discovering genes essential for stress-induced death in insects | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Discovering Genes Essential for Stress-Induced Death in Insects | Research News - University of Tsukuba Image by Oren Ravid/ShutterstockResearchers at University of Tsukuba identified genes and signaling pathways that trigge

Discovering Genes Essential for Stress-Induced Death in Insects | Research News - University of Tsukuba www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-...

NudC moonlights in ribosome biogenesis and homeostasis in Drosophila melanogaster polyploid cells Ribosomes, the cellular machinery responsible for protein synthesis, are fundamental across all kingdoms of life. Disruption in ribosome biogenesis (RiBi) can cause severe ribosomopathies, underscorin...

Our new preprint:
NudC moonlights in ribosome biogenesis and homeostasis in Drosophila melanogaster polyploid cells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Stress-induced organismal death is genetically regulated by the mTOR–Zeste–Phae1 axis | PNAS All organisms are exposed to various stressors, which can sometimes lead to organismal death, depending on their intensity. While stress-induced or...

A new paper from our group:
Stress-induced organismal death is genetically regulated by the mTOR–Zeste–Phae1 axis | PNAS
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

At least in Drosophila, organismal death caused by excessive stress is not possible without the involvement of a genetic pathway.

A new preprint from our lab.

I really thank Prof. Frank Slack, my postdoc mentor, for giving me this opportunity, even though I'm not presenting anything about RNA or RNA medicine...!

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: HIRM Seminar - Ryusuke Niwa . After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. "How is calcium ion homeostasis regulated in “boneless” invertebrates? Lessons from the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster" Speaker: Ryusuke Niwa, PhD, Associate Professor, Life Science Center for Sur...

I will give a talk at BIDMC/Harvard, Boston, on May 9 (Fri).

Title: How is calcium ion homeostasis regulated in “boneless” invertebrates? Lessons from the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

I will be there as an invited speaker.

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting "Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling"
meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

Our lab group photo with cherry blossoms in April 2025.

Amazing talks on the fly gut at #Dros2025 !
Fantastic how the field has grown!
Great Stem Cell and Regen session with:
#NewPI Imilce Rodriguez-Fernandez formerly Jasper lab; Yuichiro Nakajima; Jessica Sawyer- Fox lab; Anthony Galenza - O'Brien lab; Qingyin Qian of the @ryuniwa.bsky.social lab
👏👏👏

I hadn’t anticipated that a ‘novel’ gene could be identified using such a straightforward approach. Remarkable dedication and devotion.

Identifying venom genes of parasitoid wasps: Successful parasitism without immediate host death Researchers at University of Tsukuba have identified venom genes from the endoparasitoid wasp Asobara japonica, which uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as its host. The protein...

Identifying venom genes of parasitoid wasps: | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Dear All, I believe that this thread will become one of my most important contributions to the fly field (I hope I will make other contributions)! Here, I introduce the Soy Milk Machine Fly Food Method, a.k.a., DeepCook!#Drosophila#NewPI

HolFast is a new chemically defined (holidic) diet for Drosophila development that performs almost as well as a yeast diet.

Our latest... Congrats to Seb Sorge, Victor Girard & coauthors for devising HolFast, a chemically defined (holidic) diet for #Drosophila development that performs almost as well as a yeast diet. If you study developmental #nutrition or #metabolism please try it out... www.cell.com/developmenta...

Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism Two parasitoid wasp venom proteins induce imaginal disc degradation of its host fly Drosophila larva, ensuring parasitism success.

Its a super interesting paper about parasitoid wasps from my previous affiliation. I am feeling happy its finally out as I've seen this story alongside with my time in undergrad - gradschool life

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thank you!

Thank you!

Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism Two parasitoid wasp venom proteins induce imaginal disc degradation of its host fly Drosophila larva, ensuring parasitism success.

I am thrilled that our paper, which is packed with our 10 years of data on the venom proteins of the parasitoid wasp Asobara japonica, has just been published!

Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

<Seminar announcement>
Jan 16 (Thu) 2025, 13:15 – 14:30 @ The seminar room, Bldg. A of TARA, Univ. Tsukuba

"Arms race between infectious retrotransposons and the piRNA pathway in animals (感染性レトロトランスポゾンとpiRNA経路の進化的関連性について)"
by Dr. Rippei Hayashi (AIU)（林立平博士）

See the poster below.

Thanks!!!