iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Know an outstanding PhD student whose thesis work was on Drosophila? If so, please consider nominating them for the Larry Sandler award! The nomination and eligibility information are at genetics-gsa.org/awards/larry.... The deadline is November 12th.

genetics-gsa.org

Larry Sandler Award - Genetics Society of America

The Larry Sandler Award was established in 1988 by the colleagues, friends, and students of Dr. Larry Sandler after his untimely death in 1987. The award serves to honor Dr. Sandler for his many contr...

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Kristyn Lizbinski @kristyn-lizbinski.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

New lab website 😎 lizbinskilab.com

lizbinskilab.com

Lizbinski Lab

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

genetics-gsa.org

Larry Sandler Award - Genetics Society of America

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Samantha Butler @samanthabutler.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Please spread the news - the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA is hiring. This is an open rank search for all and any amazing neuroscientists! Please apply here by Nov 15th, first review end of October : recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF11296

recruit.apo.ucla.edu

Open-rank tenure-track faculty position

University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

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Noah Whiteman @nkwhiteman.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Please consider nominating your finishing or recently finished PhD student for this award in any area of Drosophila research. The winner gives a big talk at the fly meeting and it is quite the feather in their cap!

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Nominations for the GSA Larry Sandler Award are now open! genetics-gsa.org/awards/larry... This award recognizes an outstanding PhD thesis (graduating between 07/2025 and 12/2026) in any area of Drosophila research. Include 1) the thesis abstract, 2) the Nominee's CV and 3) a nomination letter.

genetics-gsa.org

Larry Sandler Award - Genetics Society of America

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Katrin Vogt @katrinvogt.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

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Chris J Dallmann @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

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...

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Jan M. Ache @jan-ache.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Thrilled to start 2026 with our latest preprint, in which we dive into a dedicated forward-walking circuit in the fly brain: doi.org/10.64898/202.... This effort was spearheaded by the fantastic @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social with help from a bunch of talented people in the lab.

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Jan M. Ache @jan-ache.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

Landing and takeoff sensorimotor pathways illustrated alongside fly drawings showing behavioral responses.

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Yvette Fisher @yvetteefisher.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️

Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Drosophila colleagues--Please submit nominations for the Larry Sandler Award. which recognizes excellent recent graduates who have completed a PhD in Drosophila research. Details are below and at this link: genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2...

The Larry Sandler Award recognizes excellent recent graduates who have completed a PhD in Drosophila research. The awardee will receive a fantastic opportunity to present the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture at the 67th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago, IL!

The deadline to nominate is December 15, 2025.

Nominate Here
Eligibility
Any student completing a PhD in an area of Drosophila research between July 2024 and December 2025 is eligible. Students may be nominated by their thesis advisor, department chair, or supervisory committee member.

Nominations
Nominations may be submitted by the student’s thesis advisor, department chair, or supervisory committee member, and should include the following:
Nominee's CV
Nominee's thesis abstract of 1–2 pages
A nomination letter directly answering the following questions:
What are the main discoveries in the nominee's thesis?
What are the intellectual and experimental contributions of the nominee to the project?
How does the thesis work advance what was previously known in the field and to previous work from your lab?

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Jan M. Ache @jan-ache.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Happy to share our current opinion on the insulin and octopamine systems and their role in shaping neuronal circuits, energy homeostasis, and behavior in #Drosophila, other insects, and 🧑‍🦱.

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Genetics Society of America @genetics-gsa.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Calling thesis advisors, department chairs, and supervisory committee members! 📣 Nominate an outstanding PhD/PhD candidate working with Drosophila for the Larry Sandler Award. They'll present at #Dros26. Learn more and submit a nomination: buff.ly/mtfDbBD @peiferlabunc.bsky.social

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Kristyn Lizbinski @kristyn-lizbinski.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Excited to share my most recent postdoctoral work in the Jeanne lab @yaleneuro.bsky.social ! “Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We ask: how is a sensory code transformed across multiple stages of processing to inform behavior?

biorxiv.org

Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics

Extracting relevant features of a complex sensory signal typically involves sequential processing through multiple brain regions. However, identifying the logic and mechanisms of these transformations...

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Olivia Goldman PhD @oliviagoldman.net · 30/10/2025

Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

cell.com

A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito

A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Karla Kaun @karlakaun.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Are flies a good model to discover and investigate mechanisms of treatments for alcohol use disorder? We validated known treatments and suggest a potential new treatment: gamma secretase inhibitors.

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Lucia Prieto Godino @neuroluci.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

We are recruiting PhD students! If you are interested in evolutionary neuroscience, consider applying: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

crick.ac.uk

Prieto Godino Lab | Cellular and molecular bases of neural circuit and behavioural evolution

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Ron Yu @yulab19.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Neuroscience faculty job Alert! We are hiring at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine! Apply at apply.interfolio.com/171533. Please repost.

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Janelia Research Campus @hhmijanelia.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

🪰 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 millions of connections between them. 🔗 hhmi.news/4o3EJnk

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Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Despite These Times...my department is hiring! I really like my department, we have a good mix of disciplines and organisms and we're really low-drama. We also get pizza at faculty meeting. So if you're a computational and structural biologist, join us! 🧪 jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...

jobs.rutgers.edu

Assistant Professor - Tenure Track Faculty

The Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is inviting applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position. The position requires a doc...

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Come join the Neuroscience community as Case Western!

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Reposted by Andrew Dacks

Hany K. M. Dweck (هاني دويك) @dwecklab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

A revised version of our preprint now includes results from D. biarmipes Or67a paralogs, data from a second D. suzukii Or67a4 mutant, and a model describing how Or67a paralogs are expressed in two distinct neuronal types in D. suzukii. Stay www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Case Western Reserve Department of Biology is hiring! We're recruiting for a tenure-track position focusing on eukaryotic microbiology, especially microbial/environment interactions. Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/174456

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

new pape from our lab, led by the indefatigable @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social. i am very proud of this one.

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Chris J Dallmann @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

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...

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Emmanuel Perisse @manuperisse.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

You just finished your PhD and you are looking for a postdoc to study stress-dependent modulation of learning. We are using the powerful fly model to understand the underlying circuits and mechanisms. You can apply here: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

emploi.cnrs.fr

Portail Emploi CNRS - Offre d'emploi - Postdoc position (M/F) in Neuroscience, stress modulation of learning (H/F)

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Rory Coleman @rorycoleman.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

I am thrilled to announce that I just opened my lab at New York University in @nyucns.bsky.social and Biology! Our work will explore the richness of animal behavior, dissecting the genetic and circuit mechanisms that shape its evolution.

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Greg Jefferis @jefferis.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns? To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠 #preprint thread ⬇️1/8

ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.

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Jeff Riffell @riffelllab.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Happy to announce that @ajblake05.bsky.social’s JEB paper was selected as this month’s Editors Choice article. This article discovered that mosquito color/wavelength preferences shift depending on the odor they experience.

Adam’s paper selected as the Editors’s Choice for August/September.

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Andrew Lin @andrewclin.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Excited to share our latest work - expressing the bacterial sodium channel in fly Kenyon cells surprisingly *decreases* their excitability, thanks partly to decreased endogenous sodium channels. This prevents learning and decreases odor-evoked calcium influx doi.org/10.1113/JP28...

doi.org

Ectopic sodium channel expression decreases excitability of Drosophila Kenyon cells

Abstract figure legend: We tested the effects of expressing the bacterial voltage-gated sodium channel NaChBac in the Kenyon cells of the Drosophila memory centre, the mushroom body. NaChBac expressi...

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

If you are a researcher whose lab uses FlyBase, consider a tax-deductible personal contribution. A lot of $100 contributions would help bridge the gap until we can set up a user fee system, and even $10 donations send the folks there the message we're behind them. Please share

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Daniel Kronauer @danielkronauer.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants

Communication is crucial to social life, and in ants, it is mediated primarily through olfaction. Ants have more odorant receptor (OR) genes than any other group of insects, generated through tandem d...

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Ann Kennedy @antihebbiann.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Can't wait to read this preprint from Misha Ahrens and team. Calcium imaging in larval zebrafish, in every cell in the body! Amazing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Elizabeth Rideout @ejrideout.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I watched the video and donated - it was super easy! Please donate if you’re able, and help spread the word so that we can keep this essential resource going.

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Josh Dubnau @joshdubnau.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Fly folk: The Amazing and essential @flybase.bsky.social is in existential need due to Trump termination of the grant that supports this vital resource. Please donate to help keep Flybase alive. I just did. Info here on how to make a tax deductible donation: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

wiki.flybase.org

FlyBase:Contribute to FlyBase - FlyBase Wiki

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

Dear Fly Community,

In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled.

The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC).

Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options.

To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum).

To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…

https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase

Our immediate goals are:

1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online

2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance).

Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data.

At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise.

Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028.

We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide.

Sincerely,
The FlyBase Team

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Tim Mosca (he/him) @drosophilosophy.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Please please please, if you are able, consider supporting Flybase fiscally. They need our help! I donated this evening. They are in danger of closing and any amount will help. We cannot allow this critical pillar of science to collapse!

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Andrew Dacks @adacks.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

I just donated as well. This is a critical resource that is essential for all of us.

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FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

wiki.flybase.org

FlyBase:Contribute to FlyBase - FlyBase Wiki

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Wei-Chung Allen Lee @darbly.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

How is the nervous system organized to coordinate behavior? To approach this massive question, a team led by @asbates.bsky.social, @jasper-tms.bsky.social, @mindyisminsu.bsky.social, & Helen Yang present the BANC: a Brain and Nerve Cord connectome. Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧪#Neuroskyence

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Wei-Chung Allen Lee @darbly.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

With @megyounger.bsky.social's lab, et al., we present the first connectomics work in the disease-vector mosquito Aedes aegypti, revealing how its brain is wired to detect host cues. Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... #Neuroscience #Connectomics #vEM #VectorBiology 🧪

Diagrams (top-left) of an adult female Ae. aegypti head and (bottom) a basiconic sensillum on maxillary palp (gray) which contain dendritic processes of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), including CO2-sensitive Gr3-expressing OSNs. OSN axons project centrally to the antennal lobes in the brain. On the right is a volumetric rendering of the mosquito brain neuropils including the antennal lobes (light blue) (Heinze et al., 2021; Matthews et al., 2019). Scale bar 100 μm.

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Jan M. Ache @jan-ache.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

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. 🧵..

media.tenor.com

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

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