iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Happy to be hosting my post-doc advisor for a seminar @uwmedicine.bsky.social tomorrow. Rachel gives a damn fine seminar, not to be missed.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

such an amazing story, i got a legit tingly feeling when i first saw kathy present a much earlier version

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David Schoppik @schoppik.com · 07/10/2026

If you've ever wondered how the brain *really* keeps things in mind, come let Aaron, Nick & their colleagues in the Nagel lab tell you how the fly does it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

A split attractor design for rapidly writing a navigational goal - Nature

The recurrent h∆K–PFG neural circuit generates persistent heading memories through slow excitation, fast inhibition and a disinhibitory gate, where disinhibition controls the functional...

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Maitreya Dunham @maitreya.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Here's the ad for the Genome Sciences faculty positions ap.washington.edu/ahr/position...

ap.washington.edu

Position Details - Academic Personnel & Faculty

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

you can browse the EM data here: spelunker.cave-explorer.org#!middleauth+...

spelunker.cave-explorer.org

neuroglancer

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

two new preprints from Wangchu Xiang (@darbly.bsky.social, Ginty labs) about connectomic reconstruction from electron microscopy of somatosensory afferents and projection neurons in the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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K. VijayRaghavan @kvijayraghavan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I am in Delhi, visiting only thankfully, and walked into a library before dinner 10 minutes ago, and from the shelf picked a copy of the @lrb.co.uk I always read the letters first, hoping to find interesting humans who write interesting letters (most fume).

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Matt Lovett-Barron @mlovettbarron.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

New lab preprint: @grace-padilla.bsky.social studied how zebrafish respond to chemical cues of death and decay. Brief exposure initiated a persistent state, but not through olfaction. Instead, these cues' basic pH was detected by trigeminal neurons and TrpA1 channels www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Decay chemicals activate a pH-sensing pathway to initiate a persistent state

Animals use multiple sensory systems to identify signs of danger, including dead conspecifics. Fish can identify decaying conspecifics from chemosensory cues, which prompt a long-lasting avoidance; th...

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The legend Heiner Römer, who was among the first to do intracellular electrophysiological recordings in the field. His work showed that auditory tuning curves measured in the lab poorly predict communication outdoors. link.springer.com/article/10.1... At the sensory ecology course in Lund.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

this story about @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social captures science at its best: a scrappy team, a homemade microscope in a motel room, working under funding duress, pursuing a fundamental question about the evolution of photosynthetic organelles. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/s...

nytimes.com

In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life

A scrappy science project led to a significant discovery: two new species of a rare organism that could elucidate a fundamental transition in the history of life on our planet.

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Sven Dorkenwald @sdorkenw.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Applications are now open for the San Juan Winter School 2027 on Connectomics and Brain Simulation! Join us to learn how to analyze and simulate connectomes. sjcabs.com

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Davi Bock @dddavi.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This stuff may be fun, but sorry to say, it is thin soup, scientifically. See: www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur... for a readable description of the issue.

thetransmitter.org

‘Digital sphinx’ raises questions about connectome models

The sphinx, with a worm’s brain and a fly’s body, illustrates the potential pitfalls of using deep-learning techniques to model biological processes.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

could be, maybe i just never read the language carefully in the past and took it for granted. but our grant admins seem to think it is different and substantially more risky

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

supposedly, NIH study section members can still submit grants a couple weeks late if the panel meets within four weeks of the deadline. but the language is vaguely ominous. has anyone actually done this successfully? grants.nih.gov/grants-proce...

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Sweta Agrawal @hokuba.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The Agrawal lab has published its first paper! "Sticking the landing: leg mechanosensory feedback coordinates the transition from flight to landing" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... This project was led by a technician in the lab, Tse-Wei (Wayne) Kuo. Brief 🧵on what we found

agrawal-lab-workspace.slack.com

Slack

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

A bit of imitation learning with these data might help improve the realism and dexterity of all the flies out there striving to beat Wolfenstein 3D.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

We just updated our preprint. A few new analyses, but biggest change is a much larger, well-curated, freely available dataset: 3D keypoints from 75 flies across a range of behaviors (including courtship), ~24h of tracked video at 800 Hz. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

oof, this article is disappointing

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

good clarification. what i should have said is that reconstruction (e.g., synapse detection) noise is high enough that we can't effectively compute synapse count variability for many connections.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

yes, we can recognize pretty much all the same cell types across the existing fly connectomes. the new male CNS pape quantifies this. network topology between cell types is highly conserved, but synapse counts vary across datasets, likely due to reconstruction noise.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

a good summary of how we got here and what it means. i would add is that everyone who works with the fly connectome datasets knows that they all far from "complete". each one, though monumental, has major reconstruction/annotation issues, not to mention the lack of a peripheral nervous system.

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Corinna Gebehart @corinnagebehart.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This article is so frustrating to read. First, this is not just “google’s brain” - there has been so much effort made by scientists around the world to get these connectomes to where they are today, and none of that is recognized here, instead it’s all turned into “big tech company 👍🏻”. And second -

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The sphinxes are multiplying! I can't believe our preprint didn't solve this issue.

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Biologists have tried to uncover the mechanism behind the magnetic sense of animals for so long that some call it a holy grail. New work in insects offers fresh leads. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/sensory-syst...

thetransmitter.org

Finally, a new route for the magnetic-sense field

Researchers have dueled for years over how the magnetic sense works. New data from monarch butterflies could finally help settle the debate.

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In his essay, Auke Ijspeert discusses why physics-based simulators and robotics models are particularly useful for demonstrating the sufficiency of specific mechanisms of motor control as opposed to just their necessity. www.thetransmitter.org/motor-behavi...

thetransmitter.org

Neuromechanical models help explain animal motor control

Progress in physics-based simulators and robotics makes it easier to use neuromechanical modeling to test hypotheses about animal movement.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

i heard from @hokuba.bsky.social that it was back-ordered at sigma, but we just ordered from santa cruz to check and it came pretty quickly

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

When fruit flies catch a whiff of apple cider vinegar, they zigzag along the edge of the odor plume rather than traveling through the middle, new work shows. #neuroskyence By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/olfaction/fr...

thetransmitter.org

Fruit flies use memory to track odors

When flies encounter a tasty smell, they stroll in and out of the odor plume to keep track of it, encoding a memory of the angle they need to travel.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Surprisingly wide range of prey of the extinct "American cheetah": "Yukon population occupying an elevated trophic position consistent with exploitation of anadromous fish, while the Wyoming population functioned as a generalist terrestrial predator." cell.com/current-biol... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Geographic distribution and sample localities for M. trumani

Miracinonyx catching salmon. Artwork by Hodari Nundu.

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MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology @mrclmb.ac.uk · 03/09/2026

The complete #connectome of the adult Drosophila male CNS has allowed researchers, inc @jefferis.bsky.social’s group, to compare male & female brains at synaptic-resolution for the first time. Read more here: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBResearch 1/2

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A working scientist in the Massachusetts state legislature. Congrats to @benforward3.bsky.social!

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

longtime reader, first time writer to @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Letter to the LRB correcting James Wood's account of his father's 1957 PhD thesis, which was on stick insect legs rather than wings.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

NSF just announced its GRFP solicitation due in October - deadline varies by field: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... Now for the bad news... * NSF estimates they will issue 1,500 awards, down from 2,500+ last year. * NSF removed STEM Education and Learning Research as a Major Field.

nsf.gov

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

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Sue Biggins @suebiggins.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Junior faculty position in Basic Sciences @fredhutch.org! Please repost!

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

New story in the Wall Street Journal highlighting some of the investigators and their research disrupted by all of the chaos. nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

Scientists Scramble for Private Cash in Response to Fresh Funding Turbulence

Additional changes are looming, prompting more researchers to downsize labs or pursue money outside government.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Our digital sphinx, a cautionary tale about the interpretation of connectome-body models, is now a reviewed preprint at @elife.bsky.social. We are grateful to the reviewers for engaging seriously with what we hope is a useful (if absurd) demonstration. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

elifesciences.org

The digital sphinx: Can a worm brain control a fly body?

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Duncan Leitch @polyodon.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Check out our newest research paper! We looked at touch in Surinam toads (Pipa pipa), showing huge neural representation of and reliance upon their unusual fingertips. rdcu.be/fy3SE

Illustration of brown frog with large, elaborate branching fingertips

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Jasmine Stone @jasmine-stone.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Thank you to @annmclemens.bsky.social and Michael Brecht for their support and mentorship as we brought this project that started @mblscience.bsky.social @nsb-mbl.bsky.social this summer from idea to paper form, it was so much fun to work with Sandra, @simonerencken.bsky.social, Adam, Tom and Pam.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

this would be a huge blow to US biomedical science. the K99/R00 program has historically played a key role in recruiting top international post-docs to stay in the US to start their own labs.

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

great interview with the always thoughtful and lucid @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

grateful for friends who immediately share any and all new fly content with me, @bhbradlow.bsky.social

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MM... A King just wiped one of your folks from his face Well I guess you all just own the place House fly, house fly You’re sitting by the phone in the back on a keg With your see through wings and your strange little legs

youtube.com

Tom Waits - "The Fly" (Lyric Video)

YouTube video by Tom Waits

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John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

When you start running, your breathing speeds up before your body needs the oxygen. Turns out flies do the same thing and @camellyc.bsky.social worked out the circuit that makes it happen. Check out our new preprint on how the nervous system coordinates breathing with movement.

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