Joseph D. Zak

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com!

We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Some campus brutalism to accompany this brutal heatwave.

Good thought, but I don’t know for sure about lipofuscin. I’m not surprised in the least that you see them at 8w. They can be apparent even in juveniles.

These are super common especially in the glomerular layer. Tons of autofluorescent accumulation in both red and green. They are aggregations of some sort and often increase with the age of the animal. I assume they are extracellular plaques.

Going green: Recycling transcriptomes to infer evolutionary relationships, gene duplication, gene tree conflict, and patterns of molecular evolution in the Apocynaceae Background and Aims: The flowering plant family Apocynaceae exhibits diverse adaptations with biological and pharmaceutical significance, many of which have been studied with RNA-seq. However, despite...

@shawn-anthony.bsky.social helped ~20 undergrads learn transcriptomics in this budget friendly investigation into the dogbane family. A fun way to investigate the molecular evolution of the group. Also, a chance to collaborate with @phylonatworks.bsky.social and Jarrad! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

That lab space looks awfully familiar 🤔

Decoding olfactory bulb output: A behavioral assessment of rate, synchrony, and respiratory phase coding Neurogenetics; Behavioral neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience

Animals’ sniffing drives rhythmic input to the olfactory system.

How does this timing contribute to perception, especially beyond first steps of olfactory processing?

We tested this using simple closed-loop optogenetics in our new paper: www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Congrats, Paul! This is fantastic!

What a special place. So grateful for all the friendships, learning, and science that fullfilled my time @harvard.edu.

Proud of @nervenkidd.bsky.social (Zach Fyke), a graduate student in our group, for being recognized by @uicbios.bsky.social for both his research AND teaching over the past academic year.

Here are links to some of his recent work:

tinyurl.com/37vw5s5f

tinyurl.com/23zu458t

tinyurl.com/3mmjvw83

Congrats, Rachel! Well-deserved.

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👃👇

One of our new favorite images for #fluoresencefriday. Graduate student, Lindsay Vivona, labeled fibers from each anterior olfactory nucleus hemisphere as they bidirectionally pass through the anterior commissure. #neuroskyence #olfaction

This NOFO seems to active: grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

#preprint:

We mapped the structure and function of olfactory bulb circuits with in vivo 2-photon microscopy and synchrotron #Xray holographic nanotomography.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

@yuxinzhang.bsky.social @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social @apacureanu.bsky.social
@crick.ac.uk @esrf.fr

Amplification of Olfactory Transduction Currents Implements Sparse Stimulus Encoding Sensory systems must perform the dual and opposing tasks of being sensitive to weak stimuli while also maintaining information content in dense and variable sensory landscapes. This occurs in the olfa...

Now in its final form, our recent work on how olfactory transduction currents help ensure sparse sensory coding. Led by a post-bac Kai Clane Belonio and a graduate student, Eyerusalem Haile, this was a group effort by the entire laboratory.

www.jneurosci.org/content/45/1...

My lab has several postdoctoral fellow and software engineering positions available. Please email me if you’re interested.

Smell studies often use unnaturally high odor concentrations, analysis reveals It’s time to fashion olfactory neuroscience stimuli based on odor concentrations in the wild, say study investigators Elizabeth Hong and Matt Wachowiak.

Olfactory neuroscientists have known for a while that their stimuli stink. A new analysis illuminates the extent of the problem.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/olfaction/sm...

Ca2+-Activated Ion Channels Exert Opposite Effects in Different Signaling Compartments of Vomeronasal Sensory Neurons In most mammals, conspecific chemical cues that drive innate social and sexual behavior are detected by the vomeronasal organ (VNO) and processed in the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). Chemosensory st...

Now out in @sfnjournals.bsky.socialjournals.bsky.social : bit.ly/3YzVjRv. In VSNs, Ca²⁺ doesn’t tell a 'simple' story. Ca²⁺ at the knob excites, while at the soma it can activate K⁺ channels, dampening excitability. This channel diversity and compartmentalization refine vomeronasal sensory output-

Thanks, Izumi!

Commute home

The cingulate cortex facilitates auditory perception under challenging listening conditions | PNAS We often exert greater cognitive resources (i.e., listening effort) to understand speech under challenging acoustic conditions. This mechanism can ...

Excited to share my latest work just out in @pnas.org! This NIH MOSAIC K99-funded project identifies a top-down cortical circuit—from cingulate to auditory cortex—that supports auditory perceptual performance in challenging listening conditions: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 Job alert! 🚨
The Chung Lab @ Yale seeks a motivated, creative postdoc to examine tissue remodeling in health and disease. We study ovarian aging and cardiovascular disease in human samples and animal models. Passionate about single-cell, spatial genomics, machine learning & therapeutics? Join us!

Reminder: apply for our research assistant position!

Evolution of temperature preference in flies of the genus Drosophila - Nature A study using flies of the genus Drosophila adapted to life in diverse thermal environments shows how evolution has shaped temperature preference by acting on both molecular heat receptors and th...

🎉 so excited to share my first first-author paper is out in @Nature.com, from my PhD work in the Gallio Lab! we uncover the neurobiological mechanisms that drive the evolution of temperature preference behavior in flies of the genus Drosophila 👇

go.nature.com/4i1VQn9

Our first “Icelandic” paper is out 🥳🌋
Led by our country-hopping, cold-adapted patcher extraordinaire @neurosana.bsky.social and done between Cambridge & the Petersen lab in Reykjavík, here’s our offering on the mitral vs tufted cell debate in the olfactory bulb
www.eneuro.org/content/12/3...
1/🧵

Our paper @dulaclab.bsky.social on social homeostasis is online today! We characterized “social rebound” behavior after social isolation in multiple mouse strains and revealed its neural basis. Intriguingly, soft touch plays a key role in satisfying social need!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Honoured to have been selected as a #SloanFellow
Thankful for all the support from family, mentors, collaborators, colleagues and students along the way!
@sloanfoundation.bsky.social

Happy to share our latest preprint! Very thankful of this project that have allowed me to (1) learn a lot, (2) work with very talented and rigorous people, and (3) capitalize 1 and 2 for delving into how mice olfactory system deals with very brief, intermittent odor stimuli.

Asked by non-scientists about the ICR cuts, a point I emphasized is that doing it overnight serves no reasonable objective. Good people could disagree on ICR levels, but a cut so deep and abrupt saves less than what you lose in damage to what you've already invested.