Andrew Dacks

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

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 🧪

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

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. 🧵..

Come join the Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University! case.edu/academic-car...

Congratulations Stephane!

Jonaitis, J., Hibbard, K. L., McCaffertY, ..., Cardona, A., Truman, J. W., Nose, A., Zwart, M. F., Pulver, S. R. (2024). STEERING FROM THE REAR: COORDINATION OF CENTRAL PATTERN GENERATORS UNDERLYING NAVIGATION BY ASCENDING INTERNEURONS. bioRxiv, www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thoughts Fly | UVM Magazine | The University of Vermont

nice writeup at UVM magazine on my Drosophila connectomics work out here in rural Vermont:
www.uvm.edu/magazine/new...

(Notably the author compares our now-standard fly connectome visualizations to "Princess Leia's hairdo on LSD" 😀)

Die neue Würzburger Professorin Silke Sachse. (Foto: Nives Kramberger)

Wir begrüßen Professorin @silkesachse.bsky.social‬ als neue Leiterin des Lehrstuhls für #Neurobiologie und #Genetik! Sie kommt aus Jena zu uns (@mpi-ce.bsky.social) und erforscht den Geruchssinn von #Insekten.
➡️ www.uni-wuerzburg.de/aktuelles/ei...

Together with our collaborators at UNR, my mentor Kathy Nagel and I are happy to announce my first manuscript from the Nagel Lab is on its way to publication! We used Ca2+ imaging and modeling to explore the neural activity patterns that may compute wind direction in flying insects. Take a look ⬇️

How can a tiny fruit fly help diagnose human disease? 🪰 2025 GSA Early Career Medal recipient Shinya Yamamoto’s lab “humanizes” flies to study rare variants linked to autism, Alzheimer’s, even COVID-19, bringing real answers to patients. Read more: buff.ly/aOtCX29

I'm thrilled to see the latest work from the lab published today @currentbiology.bsky.social. This project was carried by PhD student Jinfang Li, who combined the Flywire connectome with functional experiments to examine the principles of taste circuits in the fly brain. (Image by Jacelyn Shu)

Excited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky!
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...

Divergent neural circuits for proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing of the Drosophila leg Nature Communications - Determining whether somatosensory neurons are involved in internal or external sensing remains a challenge. Here, the authors show that analyzing connectivity is a powerful...

Happy to announce that our paper examining the function of leg mechanosensory neurons by way of their connectivity is finally officially published! rdcu.be/ekqVt

Olfactory projection neuron rewiring in the brain of an ecological specialist Dürr et al. develop advanced genetic tools in the host specialist D. sechellia to study its olfactory system neuroanatomy. They show via single-cell labeling, tracing, and quantitative comparison of o...

Happy to see this out now:
Olfactory projection neuron rewiring in the brain of an ecological specialist: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

In a team effort with @bentonlab.bsky.social 's lab we establish new genetic tools in #drosophila sechellia and compare single central brain neurons.

🎈Our latest 🪅

We know that in addition to exteroceptive mechanisms, interoceptive chemosensation is also critical for regulating physiology/behavior.

We find that an enteric neuron in worms senses ingested salts via a variant ionotropic receptor (IR like the fly IRs) to regulate salt stress. 1/n

FlyBase.org release FB2025_02 is now live!

To my fellow #Drosophila colleagues & friends...

As you know @flybase.bsky.social has been under financial pressure due to #NIH cuts for several years.

With the threats Harvard is currently facing, supporting FlyBase is even more essential. If you have the means, make a tax-deductible donation.

Carolyn Elya Named a 2025 Searle Scholar - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology The MCB Department is delighted to announce that MCB Assistant Professor Carolyn Elya has been selected as a 2025 Searle Scholar. This prestigious award recognizes exceptional young faculty […]

Carolyn Elya Named a 2025 Searle Scholar #academicsky #SciComm 🧬 🧪
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @zombiflied.bsky.social @fleshball.bsky.social @hekstralab.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @microbiometcell.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social

Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nonlinear high-activity neuronal excitation enhances odor discrimination Discrimination between different signals is crucial for animals’ survival. Inhibition that suppresses weak neural activity is crucial for pattern deco…

1/ Check out our Juila Manoim, Tal Camchy, @eyalrozenfeld.bsky.social, Hadas Lerner, Hao-Hsin Chang, Ran Darshan, and Ya-Hui Chou new study in @currentbiology.bsky.social. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Neuroscientists need to do better at explaining basic mental health research The knowledge gap between scientists, health-care professionals, policymakers and people with mental health conditions is growing, slowing the translation of basic science to new treatments.

Neuroscientists need to do better at explaining basic #MentalHealthResearch. Opening lines of communication will help us understand people’s needs & identify barriers @ericjnestler.bsky.social @karlakaun.bsky.social Omar Abubaker via @thetransmitter.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/addiction/ne...

Evolution of temperature preference in flies of the genus Drosophila - Nature A study using flies of the genus Drosophila adapted to life in diverse thermal environments shows how evolution has shaped temperature preference by acting on both molecular heat receptors and th...

My BFFL Marco Gallio, @mlcapek.bsky.social, and colleagues just dropped an absolute banger of a paper in @nature.com! The Evanston flylords reveal the molecular and neuronal basis of thermal niche adaptation in drosophilid flies. A must-read! 🔥🔥
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Photos of Aedes aegypti female (left) and male (right). Numbers indicate location of collected tissues (listed in legend boxes). Photos by Alex Wild.

I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research.

Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/n

Congratulations Andy!

The Roles of Discrete Populations of Neurons Expressing Short Neuropeptide F in Sleep Induction in Drosophila melanogaster It is critical to understand how sleep is regulated. Short neuropeptide F (sNPF) neurons have been shown to regulate sleep in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In this study, we found that a su....

New collaborative study led by Chris Vecsey's lab! Distinct sets of sNPF releasing neurons impact different aspects of sleep in Drosophila;
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

To all parents of school age kids: University labs train nearly all people going into science in the US, which is about 25% of the US workforce. These budget cuts to the NIH and NSF means your kids won’t be able to get trained to be scientists. This crisis is putting your kids’ future in peril.

Odour representations supporting ethology-relevant categorisation and discrimination in the Drosophila mushroom body Neural representations of sensory stimuli serve multiple distinct purposes, from the rapid recognition of familiar environments, to the precise identification of individual salient cues. In the insect...

Excited to share our new preprint: How does the fly mushroom body support odour categorisation and discrimination? 🧠✨ Dive into Ivy Chan's @ivychanchiwai.bsky.social findings on how neural circuits enable complex olfactory processing in flies. Check it out here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm thrilled to be opening my own lab this Fall at the @maxplanck.de MPI for Brain Research in Frankfurt. The lab is going to investigate the neuronal and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. We are hiring on all levels. Don't hesitate to share widely and reach out if interested.

Conspecific sociability is regulated by associative learning circuits Sociability, an animal's ease and propensity to interact with members of its own species, is a prerequisite for many important social interactions including courtship, mating, brood rearing, and colle...

Excited to read the new preprint from the Ramdya lab about social behavior in fruit flies:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Andrew Dacks with the grand entrance! :)