Oded Mayseless

Perfume scientists tweak cells into having ‘sense of smell’ A study could transform the lab study of olfaction—and may challenge a Nobel-winning hypothesis

www.science.org/content/arti...

Family-based selection: an efficient method for increasing phenotypic variability This article introduces a model comparing various selection regimes for increasing phenotypic variability. Individuals with the same genotype, reared in id

Our new study modeling selection for (behavioral) variability has been covered in a lovely @genetics-gsa.bsky.social podcast featuring first author Shraddha Lall and @ecoevogal.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

A GPCR signaling pathway in insect odor detection Odor detection differs fundamentally in vertebrates, which use G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), and insects, which employ ion channels. Here, we report the first evidence for a GPCR defining tunin...

Having personally sworn for years that insects don’t use GPCRs for odour detection, Suguru Takagi (@sugurutakagi.bsky.social) discovers that, in fact, they sometimes do …

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

Mice navigate scent trails using predictive policies Animals actively sense their environment to extract features of interest to guide behaviors. For mammals, odors are prominent environmental features which are sampled by active modulation of sniffing ...

Thrilled to share this work, long time in the making! Carried through creatively by @siddjakes.bsky.social after initial design & piloting by @trackingskills.bsky.social, with help from @trackingactions.bsky.social. Modeling in collaboration with Massimo Vergassola & Nicola Rigolli.

📢We're #hiring Group Leaders!

Apply to lead a lab at Janelia & advance biology using theory, computational modeling & machine learning.

🔹5-year renewable appointment
🔹Pioneer new tools & approaches
🔹Collaborate across disciplines

Apply by Nov. 4👉 https://janelia.link/groupleader

BIG NEWS!! We will be hiring a new professor with 25 years of endowed funding at the @biozentrum.unibas.ch @unibas.ch, focused on using biophysics and structural biology to explore climate-related fundamental science topics. Come start an innovative research cluster with us! 🧪🔬🧶🧬🌾🌍

ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns?
To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠
#preprint thread ⬇️1/8

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

Sensitivity to contamination of food odours depends on hunger and attention Detection of deviant notes in food odours protects against accidental contaminant ingestion, but this risk needs to be weighed against the potential c…

🍲🍲 NEW PAPER 🍰🍰
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Food choices are always a tradeoff between the benefits of energy intake and the risk of accidental contamination. The relative importance of these two varies depending on a person's current metabolic need. (1/3)

Let's share @etlunsford.bsky.social's work : to survive, animals avoid drifting involuntarily in their environment. While humans rely on visual & vestibular cues, birds & fish need to sense complex flow changes of the external fluid (air/water) around them to select motor actions. How do they do?(1)

How we’re rebuilding the Weizmann Institute — and our hopes for a better future Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity.

Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity, says Alon Chen

https://go.nature.com/40wXMx6

Escaping groupthink: What animals’ behavioral quirks reveal about the brain Neuroscientists have long ignored the variability in animals’ behavioral responses in favor of studying differences across groups. But work on the brain differences that underlie that variability is…

ICYMI: Neuroscientists long ignored variability in animals’ behavior in favor of studying differences across groups. But now researchers are studying the brain differences that underlie that variability.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

#neuroethology

www.thetransmitter.org/animal-behav...

Four neurons pattern brain-wide developmental activity through neuropeptide signaling. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661770v1

Call for 20 Assistant Professor positions Karolinska Institutet is a world-leading medical university with a long and proud history of ground-breaking research. We are now recruiting outstanding early-career researchers with particularly exce...

Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages.

ki.se/en/about-ki/...

Especially when it is a shitty process

I stand by it. It is a completely valid past tense of troubleshooting

We are proud to have @maxcapelle.bsky.social's paper out on bioRxiv! He found that phototactic behavior in #zebrafish switches during #ontogeny🐟🔆 Through elegant behavioral dissections, he identifies the navigational strategies related to this transition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread 👇

DaniocellDesktop logo, depicting a fish on a laptop screen.

If you love Daniocell, but wish it could generate analyses specific to YOUR genes & cell types of interest, check out DaniocellDesktop - a new point-and-click app for Mac and Windows that enables reanalysis of the Daniocell data without programming: daniocell.nichd.nih.gov/desktop/ (1/4)

Now published in @plos.org Computational Biology our paper led by @yesthatlindsay.bsky.social on the integration of sensory and motor information in zebrafish thermoregulation. Thanks to the peer reviewers for great suggestions.
dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

I’ve been studying gene regulation in primates for over 20 years, and using RNA-seq since 2008 to compare expression across species. We thought we were being careful. We used curated orthologous exons to minimize alignment bias and focused on biologically meaningful comparisons.

We were wrong.

Congrats to @stednitz.bsky.social and Andrew Lesak on their @currentbiology.bsky.social paper! They use HMM to identify two interaction states in #zebrafish: one visual for long-range interactions and one lateral line for quick, close interactions.

Free link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lCYh3QW8S...

An integrated anatomical, functional and evolutionary view of the Drosophila olfactory system | EMBO reports imageimageIdentification of a new antennal Or and an unusual hybrid Or/Ir neuron “complete” the olfactory map in Drosophila melanogaster. Numerous features of this species’ olfactory system are synthe...

New paper: one-shop stop for the Drosophila olfactory system, a great collaboration with Karen Menuz:
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨
Can mice estimate the distance to an odour source?
New work led by Cristina Marin and colleagues, jointly supervised by @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social at the @crick.ac.uk and myself.

Spoiler alert: Yes, they can!

Read the paper here: bit.ly/43A9tF9
Short 🧵 below

Some exciting news! NCBI has finished the annotation pipeline for our new #zebrafish reference sequence GRCz12tu:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/refseq/annot...

This is a big step up in data depth and quality and should be super helpful going forward.

Introducing warpfield, an open source Python library for GPU-accelerated non-rigid 3D registration. Warps and aligns gigavoxel volumes within seconds (not hours). For 3D microscopy, region-to-region and cell-to-cell matching.
A collaboration with @mh123.bsky.social 🚀
github.com/danionella/w...

🚀🔬🦠 Releasing 🤖Cellpose-SAM🤖, a cellular segmentation algorithm with superhuman generalization 🦸‍♀️. Try it now on 🤗 huggingface.co/spaces/mouse...

paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
w/ @computingnature.bsky.social 1/n

Four images to illustrate some prominent single-gene myths. Top left shows a photograph of a person deftly rolling their tongue into a U-shape. Top right shows a photograph of a person’s ear, highlighting the shape and features of the earlobe and cartilage. Bottom left shows a close-up photograph of a person’s eye, with a vivid blue colouration. Bottom right shows a photograph of a person poised to write with their left hand on the blank white page of a spiral-bound notebook.

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

My PhD project is out as a preprint!
We combined 2P and synchrotron X-ray to understand mouse olfactory bulb circuits, linking physiology to structure in 3 animals!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🙌 @carlesbosch.bsky.social, @apacureanu.bsky.social, @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social, @esrf.fr, @crick.ac.uk

What are neuroscience’s most powerful new tools? We want to hear from you.

We want to hear from you! We’re conducting a survey on the state of neuroscience. This week’s question is: What are the most transformative tools and technologies developed in the last five years and why?

#neuroskyence

thetransmitter.typeform.com/tools?utm_so...

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.