Gaspar Jekely @jekely@qoto.org
- Platynereis connectome
- https://catmaid.jekelylab.ex.ac.uk
Professor at Centre for Organismal Studies (COS), University of Heidelberg, Germany
and
Living Systems Institute (LSI), University of Exeter, UK.
#neuroscience of marine larvae, #connectomics, #cilia, ciliary swimming, cell and nervous system #evolution, #GPCR, #neuropeptides, #Platynereis, #Trichoplax, #Nematostella, #Schistosoma, #coral #neuroscience #rstat #evolution
Joined Nov 2022
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
"Phylogenetic tracing of midbrain-specific regulatory sequences suggests single origin of eubilaterian brains", by Schuster and Hirth, 2023 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade8259
A genetic signature of bilateral animals with brains, including "a genetic boundary separating the rostral from caudal nervous systems, demonstrated for the metameric brains of annelids, arthropods, and chordates and the asegmental cycloneuralian and urochordate brain"
In other words, the genetic toolkit of the ancestor of both protostomes (arthropods, nematodes, molluscs and annelids) and deuterostomes (echinoderms and vertebrates) – the eubilaterian.
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
Could this be the paradigm shift all of #OpenScience has been waiting for?
Council of the EU adopts new principles:
"interoperable, not-for-profit infrastructures for publishing
based on open source software and open standards"
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8827-2023-INIT/en/pdf
and now ten major research organizations support the proposal:
https://www.coalition-s.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/JointResponse2CouncilScholCommConclusions.pdf
What they propose is nearly identical to our proposal:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5526634
Does this now get the ball rolling, or is it just words on paper?
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
Wow, now that's some fascienating #neuroscience: "the unique insect-specific oskar gene plays a role in long-term memory through expression in adult neural stem cells. We show that oskar is expressed and required in stem cells of the adult cricket brain for long-term memory. Further, we provide evidence that oskar’s role in long-term memory involves regulation by the transcription factor Creb"
Consider organising a Royal Society scientific meeting (fully funded) and guest-edit a RS journal #royalsociety #conference
https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/07/organise-a-scientific-meeting-and-guest-edit-a-theme-issue/
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
Hi Mastodon folks. Twitter is getting quieter so I've clearly lost my previous @scotttishwaddell twitterverse. I'll start posting occasional lab news here too (instead) so please follow if that's of interest. We've lots in the pipeline and I'm missing learning about the other cool science out there that used to flash by my eyes on Twitter. Cheers, Scott. #Introduction #neuroscience #drosophila #dopamine
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
It's actually happening! As part of the EMBL's TREC expedition, the collection of samples along the first land-sea transects around Roscoff, France, have started.
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
GCaMP8 is out!
"Fast and sensitive GCaMP calcium indicators for imaging neural populations", by Y. Zhang, M. Rózsa, et al. 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05828-9
"‘jGCaMP8’ sensors, based on the calcium-binding protein calmodulin and a fragment of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, have ultra-fast kinetics (half-rise times of 2 ms) and the highest sensitivity for neural activity reported for a protein-based calcium sensor."
Tested in both larva and adult #Drosophila, and in mouse.
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
Today the peer-reviewed version of our preprint is out:
"The #connectome of an insect brain"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330
Congrats to co-first authors Michael Winding and Benjamin Pedigo, and to all our lab members and collaborators who made this work possible over the years. A journey that started over 10 years ago–and yet this is but a new beginning. So much more to come.
See my #tootprint on the preprint from back in the Autumn: https://mathstodon.xyz/@albertcardona/109422190525090990
The data is available both as supplements and directly via #CATMAID thanks to hosting by the #VirtualFlyBrain:
https://l1em.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/?pid=1&zp=108250&yp=82961.59999999999&xp=54210.799999999996&tool=tracingtool&sid0=1&s0=2.4999999999999996&help=true&layout=h(XY,%20%7B%20type:%20%22neuron-search%22,%20id:%20%22neuron-search-1%22,%20options:%20%7B%22annotation-name%22:%20%22papers%22%7D%7D,%200.6)
(The "Winding, Pedigo et al. 2023" annotation listing all included neurons will appear very soon in an upcoming update.)
For #neuropeptide afficionados:
Interesting new paper from James Checco's lab on two #Aplysia #allatotropin / #orexin receptors, one activated by a D-peptide the other one by an L-peptide.
Conversion of an L-stereoisomer to a D-stereoisomer is a big mystery in peptide biology - but it matters for rec specificity and lifetime.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217604120
Gaspar Jekely
boosted
The new tool MorphoFeatures allows researchers to automatically assign cell types and tissues in electron microscopy images, a step which is critical for understanding complex organisms. https://elifesciences.org/articles/86172?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic_insights
For this paper, all analyses, plots, code, figures, text and references were made in R (with some analyses in #Fiji)
and are all available on #github
https://github.com/JekelyLab/Bezares_et_al_2023_Pressure
you can clone the entire repo and open the .rproj R project
#rstats #openscience
10/9+1
Currently we are trying to understand what underlies the extreme sensitivity of the ciliary photoreceptors to pressure Stay tuned.
9/9
We propose a model for a pressure gauge in zooplankton, including ciliary photoreceptos as sensors and a circuit linking these to the ciliary band cells, leading to increased beating through the action of serotonin, driving faster upward swimming.
8/9
By #connectome analysis, we previously showed that the ciliary photoreceptors synaptically connect through interneurons to the head serotonergic ciliomotor neurons (Ser-h1). Serotonin increases ciliary beating and genetic inhibition of these cells blocked the effect of pressure on cilia, confirming that the pressure signal reaches the ciliated cells via the mapped circuit.
#connectomics
7/9
To identify the #neuronal mechanisms, Luis carried out #calcium #imaging experiments and found that the brain ciliary #photoreceptor cells showed graded activation by pressure stimuli.
4/9
Luis Bezares, the first author of the study, built custom pressure chambers where he could precisely control pressure levels while imaging the swimming activity of the #larvae.
Larvae showed graded and adaptable responses to relative changes in pressure. Increased pressure led to faster beating of locomotor cilia.
The larvae were extremely sensitive to pressure changes, reacting already to 10-20 mbar increase in pressure, corresponding to 10-20 cm water depth.
3/9
Hydrostatic pressure is a dominant cue in the sea and many aquatic organisms are known to respond to changes in pressure, however the neuronal mechanisms have remained unclear.
We studied the larvae of the marine #annelid #Platynereis and found that they respond to increases in pressure by increased upward swimming.
#neuroscience
2/9
We published a new preprint on the mechanism of hydrostatic pressure sensation in marine #zooplankton.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.28.530398v1?ct=ct
Click on the toot to see a thread about our findings. 1/9
- Platynereis connectome
- https://catmaid.jekelylab.ex.ac.uk
Professor at Centre for Organismal Studies (COS), University of Heidelberg, Germany
and
Living Systems Institute (LSI), University of Exeter, UK.
#neuroscience of marine larvae, #connectomics, #cilia, ciliary swimming, cell and nervous system #evolution, #GPCR, #neuropeptides, #Platynereis, #Trichoplax, #Nematostella, #Schistosoma, #coral #neuroscience #rstat #evolution
Joined Nov 2022
