The full connectome of the fruit fly is slowly being mapped out.
But how do we make sense of it? Sometimes the anatomy is highly suggestive of a function, but more often than not there are much more connections than we expect and the interpretation is complicated.
I've been slowly collecting papers that try to link a simulation of the connectome with a fly behavior.
Here, I'd like to share one such paper, which uses modeling and connectomics to study the link between development and fly preferences for a particular odor.
The paper is:
"Neural correlates of individual odor preference in Drosophila"
Churgin & Lavrentovich et al
(senior author @debivort )
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.24.474127v1
I presented the paper in the @tuthill journal club this week and wanted to share it here while it's still in my head! 🧵
#modeling #connectomics #Drosophila #neuroscience #PaperThread #JournalClub
Parisian street 1935. Strada parigina 1935. Photo: Gilbert de Chambertrand. #BlackAndWhitePhotography.
Every time someone says they did a GWAS for a complex trait, my eyes roll so hard you can *hear* them. But every now and again, people do serious validation! A PA-TX collab finds GPI anchor biosynthesis as a regulator of sleep in flies and fish. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abq0844
PHOTO BLOG: Earlier this month, a storm chaser from the Netherlands took a wonderful photo showing several textbook ice halos, including a 46-degree halo, a 22-degree halo with parhelion (sun dogs), and an upper tangent arc. https://www.accuweather.com/en/leisure-recreation/live-news/weather-permitting-photo-blog/933860
135 years ago, James Blyth dreamed of a future in which every house would be lit by a wind turbine, and argued that wind power was good for the environment and cheaper than fossil fuels.
Blyth was ahead of his time but, unfortunately, not on the money:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/22/james-blyth-scottish-engineer-wind-power
#JamesBlyth #ClimateCrisis #RenewableEnergy #WindPower #renewables #wind
Registration is open for the Mushroom Body Meeting 2023 in Göttingen, organized by André Fiala, Ilona Grunwald Kadow, and Yoshi Aso.
Meeting site and registration:
https://mushroom-body-meeting.org/
3,013 neurons, half a million synapses: the complete #connectome of the whole #Drosophila larval brain!
Winding, Pedigo et al. 2022. "The connectome of an insect brain" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.516756v1
We’ve mapped and analysed its circuit architecture, from sensory neurons to brain output neurons, as reconstructed from volume electron microscopy, and here is what we found. 1/
I wrote a piece for the New York Times about how scientists used Twitter during the Covid pandemic and about what comes next.
Mastodon Day
Friday November 18, 2022 - An Incredible Day In Internet History
You were here.
It started with the Twitter lockout. 10,000 new users an hour. Almost a quarter million migrated to Mastodon in one day. The servers struggled. Remarkably, admins all over the world built up capacity in real time. New users were patient. The system held.
It's running better now. There will be more hard days ahead, but people powered social media has arrived.
My very first "tootorial", we have a new preprint out, so here goes nothing!
Here's the thing about benign tumors. While they may not spread and metastasize, they still can bring about substantial, and sometimes unappreciated, health issues, particularly when they number in the hundreds, or more. In our latest work, we focus on cutaneous neurofibromas in Neurofibromatosis type 1 syndrome
PSA and reminder: abstract submission deadline for #Dros23 in Chicago is November 17:
https://genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2023/abstract-submission/
Reminder for those in the US to vote today!
You can look up your polling location and sample ballot here: https://www.vote.org/ .
20 states + DC allow you to register and vote at the same time: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/same-day-registration.aspx
Bonus! You get a sticker. My county has stickers with a cow and grapes and Dulles airport and an artichoke (I think??)!
Don't forget to bring your iD!
Are you in the U.S.? get out to vote today. Your vote matters, and could even help swing a race. In just one example, the election in our congressional district came down to *SIX VOTES* in the last election.
Neuroscientist / learning and memory, nf1, metabolism