Edanur Şen Atıcı

Should biology put complexity first? The dictum “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” poses a problem for biology. How simply can it be told without doing dama…

Should biology put complexity first? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - excellent essay by @philipcball.bsky.social. I would add epistasis to polygenicity and pleiotropy as a ubiquitous and fundamental phenomenon, not some optional complication that we can try to account for afterwards

The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here:
rdcu.be/e5EgU
#EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

Time-calibrated phylogeny of the family Drosophilidae showing major species groups, surrounded by representative adult flies that highlight the remarkable morphological diversity of this model insect group. The composite image was created using Microsoft PowerPoint. Fly photographs were taken by Darren J. Obbard and are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License with permission.

The #fly community aims to achieve a comprehensive genomic study of the Drosophilidae family. @pankajd.bsky.social @bernardkim.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social @darrenobbard.bsky.social present a comparative gene annotation for 301 #Drosophilidae species @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c3pyrI

After decades of debating the “scientific publishing crisis”, the time as come to decide.

This is an English translation of my original German contribution to the Merkur Blog in response to the contributions by Gehring and Tautz. “Scientific publishing” may sound like a minor rung in the ivory […]

How do busy bees avoid overheating from flying? New measurements could help predict pollinators’ ability to withstand climate change

How do busy bees avoid overheating from flying? The breeze that bumble bees generate by flapping their wings stops them from overheating as they hover in place. www.science.org/content/arti... #biology #Entomology #science #SciChat

Using our bee-tracking drone, we discovered that honey bees 🐝 have highly precise and individual routes. Now published at @currentbiology.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Relative value learning in Drosophila melanogaster larvae Abstract. The ability to learn from past experiences to inform future decision making is crucial for humans and animals alike. One question with important

It is not only about "reward" or "punishment" when insects learn. A new study @royalsocietypublishing.org shows that Drosophila larvae learn relative values to a set of odors, i.e., less or more rewarding than other odors. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Identification of an engram ensemble mediating memory forgetting in the dentate gyrus Hu et al. show that the dentate gyrus engram comprises two neuronal ensembles: one supports remembering, and the other promotes forgetting. By shifting the balance between these ensembles via Rac1 sig...

Identification of an engram ensemble mediating memory forgetting in the dentate gyrus www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... - paper claims we make two engrams - one for remembering and one for forgetting! 😮

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

Neuronal networks in the dorsal hippocampus causally regulate rescue behavior in mice dos Santos Correa et al. show that exposure to a stressful context promotes the acquisition of rescue behavior in mice and that the dorsal hippocampus is required for this learning. Calcium imaging re...

Thrilled to share that our first study on the hippocampus’ role in helping behavior in mice is now published in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social! This work was driven by an amazing team in my lab, and marks an important milestone for more exciting studies to come!
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Hogwarts Express 💨

Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended ou...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason
💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters A small team of volunteers is tracking thousands of falsified studies, including cases of bribery, fraud and plagiarism

‘Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters.
A small team of volunteers is tracking thousands of falsified studies, including cases of bribery, fraud and plagiarism’

Ivan Oransky @retractionwatch.com, @alicedreger.bsky.social @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...

How do our senses control movement?
Janelle Pakan @linmd.bsky.social examines how sensory and motor neural circuits in the brain work together. Understanding these processes could revolutionize therapies for movement disorders like Parkinson's.
👉 www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/research/...

Several fly larvae are crawling on an agar surface.

The second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉

Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill?
Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes.
Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain Allen et al. leverage a high-resolution single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila central brain to map sexual dimorphism. They show that dimorphic neuronal types correlate with the expr...

Our follow up paper on Sex: Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

This bobtail squid burrowing into the sand is already adorable, but please watch till the very end!

It sticks out its little arms and earnestly sprinkles sand over itself 🦑𓂃◌𓈒𓐍

Daily cat limit? Exceeded.

How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Comparative connectomics of Drosophila descending and ascending neurons - Nature Three electron microscopy datasets are combined to provide a complete connectomic description of the neural circuitry that makes up the neck connective in Drosophila, including the descendin...

Sturner, T., Brooks, P., Serratosa Capdevila, L., Morris, B., ...., Tuthill, J. C., Lee, W. A., Card, G. M., Costa, M., Jefferis, G., Eichler, K. (2025). Comparative connectomics of Drosophila descending and ascending neurons. Nature, 643(8070):158-172 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prolonged starvation deepens quiescence in Vasa2/Piwi1-expressing cells of a sea anemone Animals with lifelong growth modulate cell proliferation in response to nutrient availability, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. This study shows that starvation induces a revers...

💡How does nutrition regulate cell cycle in stem cells? Check out our new paper from @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social lab & @msarscentre.bsky.social, out now in
@plosbiology.org (plos.io/48J2o6P)
#SeaAnemone #Nematostella #StemCell #CellCycle #Quiescence #TORsignalling 1/12

Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️

Neuronal fatty acid oxidation fuels memory after intensive learning in Drosophila - Nature Metabolism Neurons are shown to use fatty acid β-oxidation as a fuel source for memory formation upon intensive learning in Drosophila, challenging the view that neurons are unable to use fatty acids for energy ...

Textbooks said neurons don’t burn fatty acids for energy🤔. Our study delivers the first in vivo demonstration that fatty acid oxidation in defined memory neurons fuels memory formation.

Closing chapter of my PhD 🥳, out today in Nature Metabolism💥 @natmetabolism.nature.com

Come to Konstanz next summer and learn everything about collective behavior!!!🌅🪰🐜🐟🦗

A striking Gothic silhouette: Magdeburg Cathedral ✨

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

Thrilled to share our new paper!
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The cognitive ecology of wild bumblebees

New #PhD ad alert!
Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England?

Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information.

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Understanding how the brain represents experienced time and how representations of space and time are integrated to form episodic memories has been a goal of much neuroscientific research. In this Per...

Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Dual roles of Drosophila reward-encoding dopamine neurons in regulating innate and learned behaviors Neuroscience; Behavioral neuroscience

Our paper on the counterintuitive effects of activating dopamine "reward" neurons is out now!

Props to all the trainees, especially Fio Lozada-Perdomo and Yuzhen Chen who did most of the work. Yuzhen is applying for PhD programs now and you'd be lucky to get her!

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...