In vivo imaging of zebrafish spinal cord neural circuit development, captured with adaptive optical lattice light-sheet microscopy. Credit to Eric Betzig @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

A graph of eye velocity versus time that establishes that fish with loss of function mutations in the phox2a gene can't move their eyes when tilted.

An image showing expression of a particular gene in the motor neurons that move the eyes. Black spots show where the gene is expressed, dotted lines outline the cranial motor nucleus nIV that contains motor neurons that move the eyes up

The top shows a schematic of a fish with motor neurons marked in green and a pipette used to suction motor neurons for later analysis. The bottom left shows white dots that mark each motor neuron; the bottom right shows no white dots to indicate the motor neurons had been selectively removed for later analysis.

Our new work goes from genes to behavior to understand the molecular underpinnings of the most common childhood disorder of vision: strabismus. Led by UCSF-bound Emily Gershowitz & Kyla Hamling, plus rockstars
@denagoldblatt.bsky.social & @paigel.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social

We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked

What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective

We call it the digital sphinx

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Mammals have hundreds of joints and muscles. Controlling them individually would be nearly impossible.

How does the nervous system organize such complexity into coherent actions?

Our new study explores this question through a natural behavior: jumping.

Check out the newest work from our, from Fabricio Nicola @fabricionicola.bsky.social on mouse jumping and spinal cell types.

Excellent collab with @vulcnethologist.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The people behind the papers – Dena Goldblatt and Stephanie Huang The vestibulo-ocular reflex circuit converts vertical head or body movements into opposite eye movements to keep vision stable in vertebrates. In their work, Dena Goldblatt and colleagues show that bi...

Extra thanks to @dev-journal.bsky.social for the author highlight and (as always) to @schoppik.com for supporting every step along the way.

Birthdate aligns vestibular sensory neurons with central and motor partners across a sensorimotor reflex circuit for gaze stabilization Highlighted Article: Circuit nodes often develop along common axes. We find that a ‘first-come, first-served’ temporal rule underscores the organization of a canonical sensorimotor circuit for gaze st...

This one is extra special: my rockstar former UG (now MD-PhD!) Stephanie's first 1st author paper, and my first as senior author, is now out in Development!

Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons Nature - Using two-photon microscopy with a panoramic virtual reality setup, how head direction cells in larval zebrafish integrate visual landmarks and optic flow to track orientation is revealed.

1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here:
rdcu.be/eX1L4

Rewiring an olfactory circuit by altering cell-surface combinatorial code - Nature In Drosophila, changing the expression of a small set of cell-surface proteins in just one type of olfactory neuron rewires its connections almost entirely to a new postsynaptic partner neuron type, altering the fly’s odour response and courtship behaviour.

Nature research paper: Rewiring an olfactory circuit by altering cell-surface combinatorial code

go.nature.com/3MbCoZT

Excited to share this work where we found how fish swim differently to keep balance in the dark / explore more in the light.

Spoiler: ever wonder what they do during “little pauses” between swims? They are counting!

Bioinformatics Bootcamp - Zebrafish Special Edition - the Node A deep-dive into the many cool (and free) resources available to zebrafish researchers! Disclaimer: This is not a comprehensive list but a list of useful

I've updated my Bioinformatics Bootcamp: Zebrafish Special Edition blog post on @the-node.bsky.social! Please do share with trainees or anyone new to the community. I hope it adds some breadth to the many resources available to #zebrafish researchers. 🔗 thenode.biologists.com/bioinformati...

Thread coming soon, but be the first to read the latest from @franziau.bsky.social!

Supraspinal commands have a modular organization that is behavioral context specific Lau et al. use calcium imaging and statistical modeling to comprehensively survey reticulospinal activity during diverse locomotor behaviors. They find that a small set of functional modules act combi...

Latest from the lab. Beautiful work from Joanna Lau and a fantastic collaboration with James Fitzgerald.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

D&D style alignment chart for microscopy images. Lawful good: .ome.tiff Lawful neutral: .png Lawful evil: .jpg Neutral Good: .tiff Neutral: .pdf Neutral Evil: .mrxs Chaotic Good: .h5 Chaotic Neutral: .ppt Chaortic Evil: .jpg.avi.tiff

I got this in my head and I couldn't focus on work until it existed.

Microscopy image file alignment chart, based on how I feel if you give me an image to analyze:

MBARI’s innovative EyeRIS camera system collects near real-time three-dimensional visual data about the structure and biomechanics of marine life. Filming deep-sea pearl octopus (Muusoctopus robustus) with this system has provided new insight into octopus locomotion that can contribute to the design of bioinspired robots in the future. Image credit: MBARI

Excited to share that our manuscript "In situ lightfield imaging of octopus locomotion reveals simplified control" has been published in @nature.com. www.nature.com/articles/s41... If you love 🧪🌎🦑🌊, keep reading this thread! 1/n

Pathway to Independence – an interview with Joaquín Navajas Acedo Joaquín Navajas Acedo is a Postdoc in the lab of Dr Alexander Schier in Biozentrum at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is interested in how the nervous system evolves and develops at the singl...

In case you've ever wondered, I talked with @amjeve.bsky.social about science, myself, and the future of #DevBio as part of the Pathway to Independence Fellowship @biologists.bsky.social 🧪 journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...

New preprint!



tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵

w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Incredible — close enough to see, too far away to hear… @capitalweather.bsky.social from Bethesda

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

Good Science

xkcd.com/3101/

Meanwhile, in RI: “Well you drive past the big blue bug and the old Apex building and then turn left at the Dunkin…”

Are all muppets the same species just with wildly different phenotypes like dogs or are there a lot of different species of muppet

Hooding day for @ericfranklin.bsky.social !!!!!!

Image of the TV series The Magic School Bus accompanied by the following text: Airing on PBS in the mid-1990s, this NSF-funded animated TV show follows Ms. Frizzle and her class as they set off on field trips out of this world, including careening across the solar system, traveling through the human body or visiting the late Cretaceous period.

I was today years old when I learned that the Magic Schoolbus was an NSF-funded project.

#zebrafish | Kevin Thiessen, Ph.D. A while back, I put together a Bioinformatics Bootcamp for #zebrafish researchers. Here are some of the helpful links & resources that I've come across in my search: Disclaimer: This is not a...

Cross-posting from LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/posts/kevin-...

These are useful (and free!) websites that I found in my search for all things #zebrafish as part of my Bioinformatics Bootcamp. If there’s enough interest, I may do a blog post on the Node. Enjoy!

HBO max logo evolution

PI: "this draft is so great, why didn't we write it this way in the first place??"

PhD student: "I did, and then you told me to change it"

When I read ideas about ChatGPT as a replacement for writing, I immediately go to Weick’s explanation of the old adage, “How do I know what I think, until I see what I say?” If it replaces or profoundly shapes the writing process, then it changes the thinking process… which will align w/ its outputs

This time-lapse captures 17 hours of axonal growth from a chicken dorsal root ganglion explant, visualized through the actin cytoskeleton using live confocal imaging.
I just submitted this video to the Nikon Small World in Motion competition. Today is the last day to upload yours! 😉
🧪

one of the healthier ways I’ve been managing stress lately is to bottle up all of my rage and anxiety during the day and channel it into watching a baseball game the goddamn Phillies try to lose at 10pm on a weeknight

Heterochronic transcription factor expression drives cone-dominant retina development in 13-lined ground squirrels. Evolutionary adaptation to diurnal vision in ground squirrels has led to the development of a cone-dominant retina, in stark contrast to the rod-dominant retinas of most mammals. The molecular mechani...

Our latest manuscript (7 years in the works) tackles the question of how diurnal ground squirrels evolved a cone-dominant retina, in contrast to the ancestral rod-dominant retina retained by virtually all other mammals./1
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...