Nadav Shai

FERAL: A Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping Animal behavior unfolds continuously in time, yet quantitative analyses often require segmenting it into discrete, interpretable states. Although manual annotation can achieve this, it remains slow, s...

Our preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required.
It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)

I'm happy that I could contribute even a small part to this fantastic and monumental study! Huge shoutout to @oliviagoldman.net @nadavshai.bsky.social and @leslievosshall.bsky.social for their incredible leadership in organizing this massive project!

Researchers release the world’s first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito - News The atlas makes the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day.

The world’s “most dangerous animal” just got easier to study 🦟

HHMI’s @leslievosshall.bsky.social & #VosshallLab at @rockefeller.edu have built the 1st cellular atlas of Aedes aegypti, mapping everything from legs to antennae. Available now to all researchers, & the public: bit.ly/4oO4MzB

Great to see that our mosquito cell atlas is now out in Cell. Amazing work from @oliviagoldman.net and @nadavshai.bsky.social to organise so much data and so many interesting stories into a single paper!

🦟 The mosquito is the most deadly animal in the world. The Mosquito Cell Atlas is an incredible new resource to help us understand more about their ability to transmit pathogens to humans.

Data is available on the UC Santa Cruz @genomebrowser.bsky.social at mosquito.cells.ucsc.edu

A real game-changer for the mosquito community - all packed in a beautiful paper!!!!

Researchers release the world’s first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito - News The atlas makes the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day.

A global effort, led by @leslievosshall.bsky.social and @nadavshai.bsky.social, just made the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day.

Learn more about the first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito, published in @cellpress.bsky.social, below.

A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...

Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸

There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Congratulations to all authors and collaborators
@oliviagoldman.net @leslievosshall.bsky.social

A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...

🦟 We've just published the world's first head-to-toe single-cell atlas of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in @cp-cell.bsky.social!
The #MosquitoCellAtlas maps 69 cell types across 19 tissues, revealing surprising biology. Read it here:
shorturl.at/dJWT3

A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...

Mosquito cell atlas is now published! Congratulations to @nadavshai.bsky.social and @oliviagoldman.net and the many other collaborators that contributed to this resource. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

The male genitalia of an 𝘈𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘣𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘴 mosquito

What does mating look like when you only have a single shot at getting it right?

Very excited to share our work on an almost-invisible female control, rapidly evolving mating recognition systems, and species that break the rules and take over the world. IN MOSQUITOES>

The first detailed look at how mosquitoes mate from @leslievosshall.bsky.social's lab reverses the assumption that male mosquitoes control the process, finding that a subtle female behavior dictates whether mating will take place or not. @currentbiology.bsky.social

More here: https://bit.ly/4huwEpL

A rapidly evolving female-controlled lock-and-key mechanism determines Aedes mosquito mating success Houri-Zeevi et al. uncover a lock-and-key mating system in mosquitoes, where females control mating through genital responses to rapidly evolving male structures. Males of the invasive Asian tiger mos...

New
@currentbiology.bsky.social paper from @leslievosshall.bsky.social&@leahhouri.bsky.social: FEMALE mosquitoes control mating, not males, by special genital movement. No elongation = no mating! Plus: male asian tiger mosquitoes can bypass the yellow fever mosquito female control shorturl.at/tsIWH

Meet Gaby Maimon, Director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute (@rockefelleruniv.bsky.social‬).

In his lab, he aims to push the boundaries of brain research.🧠 At the institute, he creates opportunities to support early career researchers.

Learn more: bit.ly/3ZwId8h.
 
#KavliNeuro #KavliInstitute

A covalent recognition strategy enables conspecific mate identification The olfactory system can detect an uncountable number of volatile molecules while retaining the ability to discriminate amongst very similar ones. We identified a unique mechanism employed by insect o...

New preprint in the lab combining what we like best: insects, love, chemistry and the olfactory system! 1/8
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans Mosquitoes enhance sensitivity to human body heat by a sensory compensation mechanism when their sense of smell is disrupted.

Takeshi Morita: When mosquitoes lose their sense of smell, they become better human-hunters by enhancing their heat-seeking abilities. Sensory compensation = deadlier predators.
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Mosquito Cell Atlas: A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito The female mosquito’s remarkable ability to hunt humans and transmit pathogens relies on her unique biology. Here, we present the Mosquito Cell Atlas (MCA), a comprehensive single-nucleus RNA sequenci...

@oliviagoldman.net (and I) published the first comprehensive Mosquito Single Cell Atlas. Analyzing 367,000+ cells! We found some cool stuff about sexual dimorphism and blood feeding.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@leahhouri.bsky.social : Female mosquitoes actively control mating via genital "lock-and-key" mechanics! Asian tiger mosquitoes can "pick the lock" of yellow fever mosquitoes, driving extinctions.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🦟 Join us at the #VosshallLab @RockefellerUniv
and @HHMI as a postdoctoral scientist! We're seeking a creative individual who is enthusiastic about our research in mosquito neurogenetics.
Apply: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Some of our 2025 cool science>

Promotional image for the BBC podcast "Curious Cases," featuring two hosts wearing 3D glasses and looking at a glowing object, alongside a portrait of Leslie Vosshall, HHMI Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer.

“Okay, they're terrible and they're beautiful, right? It’s like a three-dimensional chess game — and they are 50K steps ahead of us. Everything about them is perfectly designed to get our blood.”— @leslievosshall.bsky.social, HHMI VP & Chief Scientific Officer

🎧 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

NYC Postdocs! Join us for Night Science at the New York Genome Center on June 2nd for a discussion on the creative process of finding novel questions. This time we hit the bar after! Register: docs.google.com/forms/d/1s9W...
@stearnslab.bsky.social @kelseymonson.bsky.social @rmassonix.bsky.social

✨🦟✨HOW DO MOSQUITOES HAVE SEX? ✨🦟✨

Join us for a wild journey into hidden female control, rapidly evolving stimulation devices, fierce species competition, and DEADLY MOSQUITOES!

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

Congratulations Maya!

Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇

Science delivers! Time & time again scientists make unexpected & important discoveries when following their curiousity! That's why we're organizing Woodstock Night Science, a reimagined conference to inspire us to new ideas.
June 10-13 woodstock.img.cas.cz
Join us! #TheConferenceToEndAllConferences

Leslie Vosshall awarded the 2025 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience - MIT McGovern Institute Today the McGovern Institute at MIT announces that the 2025 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience will be awarded to Leslie Vosshall, the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor at The Rockefeller Univers...

Kavli NSI @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social member & former Director Leslie Vosshall has been awarded the 2025 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience for her groundbreaking work on the neural mechanisms of mosquito behavior. 🦟🔬

Congrats, Dr. Vosshall! 🎉 #Neuroscience #KavliNeuro
mcgovern.mit.edu/2025/03/03/l...

Thanks Naama!

Mosquito cell atlas! Congratulations on an incredibly ambitious and well executed project @oliviagoldman.net @nadavshai.bsky.social @leslievosshall.bsky.social et al !!!