Many thanks to the cohauthors of this work!

4) Germ-free larvae exhibited altered long-chain fatty acid profiles. Using bacteria deficient in fatty acid β-oxidation, we observed developmental defects compared to larvae colonized with WT bacteria, highlighting the importance of bacterial fatty acid degradation for larval development.

3) Germ-free larvae showed lower levels of cholesterol, the precursor of the moulting hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone. Cholesterol supplementation partially rescued the developmental defects of germ-free larvae, indicating that the microbiota may contribute to cholesterol availability.

2) Germ-free larvae displayed significantly reduced levels of metabolites involved in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and the uricolytic pathway, suggesting a general slowdown in metabolic activity and impaired nitrogen waste processing.

1) We profiled both larval guts and whole larvae, generating a comprehensive inventory of metabolites present in mosquito larvae, as well as metabolites specifically enriched in the gut compartment.

Using metabolomics, we identified metabolites that are differentially regulated in mosquito larvae depending on the presence or absence of microbes. Our main findings are as follows:

The microbiota affects energy production, nitrogen excretion and sterol metabolism in mosquito larvae Mosquito larvae rely on a living microbiota for normal development because the microbiota supplies essential nutrients, particularly vitamins. Beyond vitamin provision, transcriptomic data suggest tha...

With some delay, I’m happy to share our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... ! In this work, we aimed to better understand the role of the microbiota in mosquito larval development and nutrition.

Version 2 is out! More comprehensive text plus new tissue- and pathway-specific analysis revealing how different viruses trigger systemic aging through diverse mechanisms.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hello mosquito 🦟 and microbiota 🧫 🦠 aficionados, we are looking for a postdoc to join our team (Saleh's lab @salehlabparis.bsky.social at Institut Pasteur @pasteur.fr ) to investigate the interplay between the mosquito, its microbiota, and arboviruses. More information here 👇

I'm so excited to share this with all of you!
This is the very first paper where I am the first author 🥹
Let me share some insights about our work 👇🧵(1/5):

How do persistent viral infections impact the host?

What happens when a fly becomes persistently infected by a virus?

🚨 Ph.D. Opportunity! 🚨 I’m recruiting students to start in the Spring Semester 2026 (Jan 2026) or the Fall Semester 2026 (Aug 2026) to study the behavior & neurobiology of mosquito-host interactions. Know someone who’d be a perfect fit? Please share! 🦟 #Mosquito #Neurobiology #VectorBiology #Itch

Blood, sweat, and beers: investigating mosquito biting preferences amidst noise and intoxication in a cross-sectional cohort study at a large music festival www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08....

Aedes aegypti VLG-1 challenges the assumed antiviral nature of Vago genes - BMC Biology Background Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) such as dengue virus (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV) pose a significant threat to global health. Novel approaches to control the spread of arboviruses foc...

🚀 Excited to share (with a little delay) my first first-author publication on #Vago genes in #mosquitoes! 🦟 🦠 Have a look to see how we questioned a mosquito immunity dogma and challenged the existing understanding of Vago-like genes as antiviral factors ⬇️

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Great project, great PI, and great team. Apply now!!! You won’t regret it.

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯

Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below.

This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

Thrilled to receive @anrs-mie.bsky.social grant with @lambrechtslab.bsky.social & @retrogenomics.bsky.social! Making mosquitoes intolerant to arboviruses. Thanks @pasteur.fr, @inserm.fr & @cnrs.fr for support. Exciting times for #ARBORETRO project! Stay tunned.

At the end it worked after heating up the blood and stretching the parafilm almost to the breaking point!

colony), so I don’t know what to change. I need to use parafilm because it’s the only material I can sterilize. Any advice?

Mosquito people I have a problem: I am trying to blood feed mosquitoes using parafilm as a membrane, but the mosquitoes are not able to feed. They probe a lot (=they can sense the blood) but can’t really feed.. I’ve done this before and it wasn’t a problem (although mosquitoes were from another

Celebratory post: after 3.5 years in the @salehlabparis.bsky.social I finally have a lab coat with my name on it! I can stop using Carla’s one I guess 😬 thank you to all the people that supported my in this journey!

Hi everyone, what's up? We have our monthly seminar this week, with some super cool work on arbovirus entry receptors from leading researcher Jolanda Smit from @unigroningen.bsky.social
All welcome - help spread the news with a re-post 🙂
NOTE THE EARLIER TIME for everyone outside the USA

A cute aged fly, despite my mom thinking it’s a bee.

In my first Drosophila study at @salehlabparis.bsky.social, we found that:

1. Enteric viral infections accelerate aging.
2. Even if the infection is cleared, aging process remains triggered.
3. Accelerated aging correlates with reduced lifespan.

📑Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A photo of a young Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting with a book on her lab staring into the distance.

A photo of an older Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting at a lab bench with a microscope and dozens of glass milk bottles bunged with cotton. Lilian is in the middle of applying ether to anaesthetize a bottle of flies.

This #InternationalWomensDay I want to tell the story of Lilian Vaughan Morgan. I learned of Lilian this past year - what a badass.

Lilian was a leading scientist when women weren't welcome in the lab, nor even the department. But she contributed immensely to the genetics of sex determination

1/n

For #IWD2025, the men from @salehlabparis.bsky.social share #ForAllWomenAndGirls:
We celebrate women’s strength, resilience, and achievements. Let’s honor those who fight every day, and stand united against discrimination and violence—equality is a right, and together we can build a fairer world.

Check out our paper, co-authored by @akhorramnejad.bsky.social and me. Published in @commsbio.bsky.social

We explore how global change will affect mosquito-virus interaction. We use single or multi-generational exposure to heat to address this.
A 🧵 with our results (1/5)
rdcu.be/d8wse

A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...

Drosophila and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in the spotlight (again), what a wonderful model (disclaimer I am biased ;-) ).

Congrats Will and team!

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

A big thank you to Stencey Fontenelle, Gabrielle Georgeon, Emmanuel Sechet and the whole Vectopole @Institut Pasteur de la Guyane. We would like to dedicate a special thought to our dear colleague Jean-Géraud Issaly, who passed away in 2022, leaving a profound void at the Vectopole. Ciao! (13/13)

Thank you to all the people involved in the study, to the funding agencies @agencerecherche.bsky.social, @ibeidlabex.bsky.social, to Eric Marois for providing the Aaeg-M strain, and to @sigientist.bsky.social for providing the auxotrophic E. coli strain. (12/13)

This suggests a general model for mosquito development, where male mosquitoes require fewer microbiota-derived metabolites to complete their development and are more susceptible to lower doses of toxic compounds. (11/13)

We observed that low bacteria loads favored the development of male mosquitoes. The same results were obtained using with two different slow-growing E. coli strains. (10/13)