Rory Coleman

a group of Drosophila erecta fruit flies on a small food patch. flies on white background

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint

We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion.

Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit

shorturl.at/gGYm7

Ichetucknee Springs State Park, a short drive from Gainesville, FL

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

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

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint:
“Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social.
Deadline to apply September 30.
Reach out if you have questions.

apply.interfolio.com/172496

Changes in cell type composition, including cell expansions, cell losses, and novel cell gains, are associated with the evolution of specific behaviors. Figure credit: Matteo Farinella.

New review on how changes in cell type composition in and outside the brain contribute to the evolution of behavior. 🧪

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lihM,LqAZ...

Evolution of Cajal-Retzius Cells in Vertebrates from an Ancient Class of Tp73+ Neurons In the developing cerebral cortex, Cajal Retzius (CR) cells are early-born neurons that orchestrate the development of mammalian-specific cortical features. However, this cell type has not been conclu...

Excited to share our latest work on brain evolution, where we dive into the evolution of Cajal-Retzius cells! If you are interested in cell type evolution and cerebral cortex evo-devo, please read on… www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/7

Thanks a lot Max, I hope we can connect in person sometime!

Thanks!

Thanks Anurag! Hope you’re doing well!

Thanks Noam! Hope your own transition is going smoothly 🌱

Preprint for my PhD. Thanks to Dr. Bai for letting me merge my interests in neuroscience with lab focus on peroxisome. We discover unexpectedly cell type specific peroxisomal import in subset of glia under autonomous circadian regulations. Gratitude to Dr. John Vaughen for his support. Thread soon.

Finally, I would never be here without so many incredible people. Special thanks to my family as well as my amazing mentors, Vanessa Ruta and Gary Struhl, for their endless support, wisdom, and encouragement.

I’m on the lookout for talented and enthusiastic scientists to join our team. If you have a deep curiosity about the evolutionary toolkit underlying behavioral diversity, I’d love to hear from you!

I am thrilled to announce that I just opened my lab at New York University in @nyucns.bsky.social and Biology! Our work will explore the richness of animal behavior, dissecting the genetic and circuit mechanisms that shape its evolution.

Harvard University lays off fly database team The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.

FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

The Mount Sinai Neuroscience seminars (MSNseminars) committee is now actively accepting applications from postdocs! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

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.

Postdoctoral Scientist - Vosshall Lab Primary Work Address: 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY, 10065 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. We have an outstanding opportunity for a Postdoctoral Scientist to joi...

Join the #VosshallLab as a postdoctoral scientist. Fully funded, right here in New York City @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

My ongoing request:

If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.

NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...

NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...

Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

Happy to share my narrative research on young women's experiences of sexual desire has now been published! Findings highlight the strategies women use to navigate desire within inequitable social systems and relationships and embodied desire as a form of resistance @qualpsy.bsky.social

A spatial code governs olfactory receptor choice and aligns sensory maps in the nose and brain Although topographical maps organize many peripheral sensory systems, it remains unclear whether olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) choose which of the ~1100 odor receptors (ORs) to express based upon t...

Maps are everywhere in the brain...and finally we've discovered one in the nose! Led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social, we uncovered the logic that specifies the positions of each of the 1,000 sensory neuron subtypes in the nose and aligns their projections to the brain.👇👃see more details below👃👇

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.

Evolutionary dynamics of FoxQ2 transcription factors across metazoans: A tale of three ancient paralogs FoxQ2 is a highly conserved class of Forkhead-box transcription factors expressed on the anterior side of the body in cnidarians and bilaterians. Despite this conserved expression pattern, recent phyl...

New preprint from my PhD in @amphispacelab.bsky.social is out! 🥳

We investigated the evolution of my favorite gene FoxQ2 across 21 animal phyla, and found three ancient paralogs with a very dynamic history.

More on phylogeny, synteny, and comparative in situs in the 🧵 below!

tinyurl.com/2j96px45

✨🦟✨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...

1/ H3K27me3 mimicry has repeatedly emerged through evolution, but what's the physiological relevance?

We show that JARID2 and PALI1 mimic H3K27me3 to antagonise PRC2 in vivo and restrict the spread of Polycomb domains.
🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very cool results and model!

Mosquito larvae saying "Join Us!"

The Sorrells Lab is hiring a recent college graduate interested in neurobiology of mosquitoes! The position is ideal for someone interested in gaining skills for graduate school. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/164849