Ariel K. Frame

Music by freebeats.io produced by White Hot

Watch this pharate podcast eclose from its concept pupal case and emerge free on any #podcast player. First episode coming soon! Listen for fun #sciencecommunication #brain #science #biology #neuroscience #drosophila #aging and more! linktr.ee/quitecurious

Hi, if you are looking to come to Canada for a post-doc or a PhD, consider my lab to study the genetic basis of social interactions, using the fruit fly! My university (Western University) has a new program to welcome you! See below! #drosophila #postdoc #canada #PhD #social #behaviouralneurogenetic

Why use animals when we have AI and organoids? Among other reasons, “We also do not know enough about biology to know where real breakthroughs will come.” Says @jasonsynaptic.bsky.social in this excellent article.

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

Good Science

xkcd.com/3101/

Drosophila flies with little name tags and coffee conversing at a poster session at a conference

I had a great time at #CANfly2025 @mcgill.ca! Thanks to Vincent Archambault, @emery-lab.bsky.social, David Hipfner, Nam-Sung Moon, Laura Nilson, Frieder Schöck, @biologists.bsky.social @ircm.bsky.social @genomejournal.bsky.social @genetics-gsa.bsky.social @healthcare.nikon.com et al. #drosophila

Towards more sustainable research: reducing the environmental impact when working with #Drosophila. Challiner, Saurya., Patel, Raff, Fostier, Prokop, A. (2025) @genetics-gsa.bsky.social‬, in press -- doi.org/10.1093/gene... - Always happy to discuss and hear your ideas and views!

A Role for Exaptation in Sculpting Sexually Dimorphic Brains from Shared Neural Lineages Sex differences in behaviours arise from variations in female and male nervous systems, yet the cellular and molecular bases of these differences remain poorly defined. Here, we take an unbiased, sing...

New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Sexual dimorphism arises not through wholesale transcriptional reprogramming, but via selective sex-specific survival of neurons defined by birth order and shared developmental programs.

sandy cheeks from spongebob is flexing his muscles in a doorway Alt: sandy cheeks from spongebob is flexing his muscles in a doorway metaphor for the strength of the method and cartoon rodent connects with rodents used in the study discussed

Nice work! Really cool to see how powerful this method is for detecting subtle differences in behaviour!

Offspring longevity for bighorn sheep at Ram Mountain, Alberta, Canada (1971-2013). Solid lines represent model predictions for female offspring under average female density conditions (results for male offspring are reported in Table 1). Shaded bands represent 95% confidence intervals while gray lines are modeled trends for individual mothers. (A) Offspring longevity as a function of maternal age at birth. (B) Offspring longevity as a function of maternal longevity, estimated by the age at last sighting

Marchand: compared to those born to a bighorn ewe when she's young, lambs born when she's old have shorter lives, wean fewer lambs. At any age, ewes that live longer have lambs that live longer and have higher reproductive success. url:https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/36/4/araf046/8126721

SUSTAINABILITY & #DROSOPHILA - If you keep flies & have tried to re-use containers but then given up on it, please could you let us know & tell us the reasons? We urgently need statements for a publication about sustainability in fly labs. Please, contact Andreas.Prokop@manchester.ac.uk

FlyBase funding squashed amid Harvard grant terminations The team behind the Drosophila genetics database is now requesting donations from labs to keep the resource afloat.

FlyBase, a crucial resource for drosophila research, has lost its funding because its grant is awarded to Harvard. The team is scrambling to find other sources of funds, including donations from labs. Read more: www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl... @flybase.bsky.social

The Drosophila adult brain: short overview of structure, function, and resources Graphical Review Paper This short review is targeted at researchers new to the Drosophila model (thereafter: a Drosophilist) in the field of neuroscience. We aim to provide …

"The Drosophila adult brain: short overview of structure, function, and resources Graphical Review Paper": www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@arielframe.bsky.social
@ibangs.bsky.social
@brentsinclair.bsky.social
‪@westernu.bsky.social‬

Do you work in a #Drosophila lab studying #neuroscience? This is for you. We made this overview extra digestible for new people to the field. This #openaccess paper will help all new Drosophilists understand the field and find helpful resources and reviews needed for their burgeoning #brain studies.

PhD: Using APOE-associated AD resilience to identify potential biomarkers PhD at University of Exeter using iPSC models and bioinformatics to study rare APOE variants and extracellular vesicles in Alzheimer’s resilience.

PhD at University of Exeter using iPSC models and bioinformatics to study rare APOE variants and extracellular vesicles in Alzheimer’s resilience. Closing date: 27th May

www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/job/phd-usin...

The Dog Aging Institute is looking to hire an Executive Director to help grow this non-profit, whose mission is to support research on improving healthy #aging in #dogs. Interested? You can apply here: www.idealist.org/en/nonprofit...
@dogaginginst.bsky.social

Register to attend by Zoom: washington.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Dr. Mitchell Lee (recording available) @orabiomedical.bsky.social
Dr. Shelly Erickson (recording available)
Dr. Aimee Kao (will not be recorded)
Dr. Matt Yousefzadeh @mattyousefzadeh.bsky.social
D. Peter Sudmant @psudmant.bsky.social

Dissecting dFB regulation of sleep in Drosophila. Left: The commonly used 23E10 GAL4 drives expression in the green cells located in the brain and the ventral nerve cord. Jones and colleagues have obtained a refined split-GAL4 line that limits expression in the brain cells only, excluding the peripheral VNC-SP cells. Top right: Optogenetic stimulation of the dFBsplit cells at frequencies higher than 10 Hz for 24 h leads to an increase in baseline sleep and promotes long-term memory consolidation. Chronic inactivation also paradoxically leads to an increase in baseline sleep and mildly affects sleep homeostasis. Bottom right: Optogenetics activation of cholinergic neurons also leads to an increase in baseline sleep, while inactivation leads to a decrease in sleep rebound but only in stronger regimes of thermogenetic silencing.

The fly as a model for unravelling the mechanisms of #sleep regulation. @giorgio.gilest.ro explores a @plosbiology.org study which refines the key neuronal circuits involved in the regulation of sleep in fruit flies #Drosophila 🧪 Paper: plos.io/42uPczp Primer: plos.io/4iVHgxR

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We have open PhD positions in the lab to work in the Neuroscience of #Cephalopods #Cnidaria and #Drosophila-
please RT

www.sprecherlab.com

Canfly2025 registration is open! #Drosophila #Dros25 Curly logo event.fourwaves.com/canfly2025/p...

Hello 🦋 world, Posted a preprint this week, advocating tardigrades as a new model for systems-level neuroscience! 🧠🐻💧 Synthesizing physiology, neuroanatomy, genomics & behavior was no small feat—feedback is welcome with all 8 arms! 💌 My email for contact is on the PDF 🌟 arxiv.org/abs/2501.06606

Great argument for developing #tardigrades water bears into a powerful neuroscience model! arxiv.org/abs/2501.06606 they “exhibit complex behaviors, including multi-limbed walking gaits, individual limb grasping, phototaxis, and transitions between active and dormant states” @tardi-neuro.bsky.social

Oh! Awesome!

Maybe set up a form for people to sign themselves up? If it catches on and the list is public, maybe it could be a great way for fly labs to seek collaborations and for students and postdocs to find potential labs to join?

Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behavior Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

Excited to serve as co-director of the CSHL Drosophila Neurobiology course with Tania Reis and Robert Carrillo! 🧪
Deadline: March 15
meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx...
#cshlflycourse
#scicomm
#drosophila

a cartoon of a mosquito with a website named ayamurata.com Alt: a cartoon of a mosquito with a website named ayamurata.com

New preprint out with @megyounger.bsky.social and @gkocker.bsky.social: "When non-canonical olfaction is optimal"

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The aging human brain exhibits reduced cerebrospinal fluid flow during sleep due to both neural and vascular factors

When is the correct time to diagnose dementia? Pin-prick blood tests that detect possible precursors of Alzheimer’s disease are becoming available – but is it right to label people who will never develop the disease?

When is the correct time to diagnose dementia?

Pin-prick blood tests that detect possible precursors of Alzheimer’s disease are becoming available – but is it right to label people who will never develop the disease? 🧪🧠
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Amazingly diverse outputs! All over the place. Nice video!

Here's an example of what's at stake for those of us interested in longevity research. The recent $7 million dollar grant to Univ. of Texas (UT) from NIH for the TRIAD study (Rapamycin in dogs) that was just awarded would still receive its $7M funding to do the direct work of the proposal. This goes to the Principal Investigators (Professors and MDs). However, the university, UT would no longer receive all the indirect funding (so called indirects) that they would have used to support the clinical trial. The current UT indirect rate is 58.5% and that would be cut to 15%. So for a $7M dollar grant, the university, UT, would lose approximately $3.1 million per year in indirects used to support the clinical trial and so UT administrators would likely have to curtail the study. Indirects have been used and in place since the 1947 when research started to really grow in the US.

The @dogagingproject.bsky.social is working on keeping dogs healthier for longer. The Trump/Musk cuts are going to make this harder.

Did anyone vote for shorter, more miserable lives for our pets?

DOGE is even *named after a dog* FFS!

(via @rapanews.bsky.social)