Krishna Melnattur

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

2 legs, 4 legs 🤷 6 legs - now we're talking!

Congrats!!

Visceral signaling of post-ingestive malaise directs memory updating in Drosophila Consolidation is a time when labile memories transition to a stable form. Malaise learning in Drosophila reveals consolidation to also permit memory updating. Flies taught to associate one of two odor...

@senapati.bsky.social latest and greatest! Charly Treiber on board too. Over and out.

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

The Origin of the Research University Universities have existed for more than a thousand years — and for almost all of that time, they weren’t centers of research. What changed in 19th century Germany?

"Universities have existed for more than a thousand years — and for almost all of that time, they weren’t centers of research. What changed in 19th century Germany?" asteriskmag.substack.com/p/the-origin...

Just seeing this, looks terrific even to my currently jet-lagged brain, congrats Abhilasha!

Thanks, Caro! I see you’re going to be at CSHL next week. Will be there too, look fwd!

Thanks Mark! The mutants have been super helpful, thanks so much ! Re: axenic, yeah a student in Paul Shaw's lab at WashU had tried this experiment some years back when I was there, and didn't see anything for sleep then (in wild type flies).

More in the preprint – do check it out! Would love feedback. Didn’t think we would be doing classical neurogenetics tbh, but here we are! These genes are cool, lots to mine here (fini)

This expt I really like. We used @kayserlab.bsky.social’s sleep restriction protocol to enhance sleep behaviorally and saw improvements in memory! This comes straight from human psychology – cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) amazing that it works in the fly! (12/n)

Finally, we asked if the memory defects of some AMP mutants could be reversed by enhancing sleep. We find that enhancing sleep of Bomanin mutants using the GABA agonist Gaboxadol robustly increased sleep and improved memory (11/n)

So these ‘immune effectors’ seem to act in glia to modulate sleep and memory. Indeed expression profiling suggests that glial might express many AMPs – cool! (10/n)

Group C are doubly mutant for the anti-fungal peptides Metchnikowin (mtk) and Drosomycin (Drs). We knocked down Mtk and Drs in different tissues and saw that glial knockdown mimicked the deletion mutants. (9/n).

The Group C mutants seem to be able to carry out (some) sleep functions sans much sleep. Very cool! But how do they do it? We first thought maybe the microbiome is messed up, so we eliminated the microbiome. And saw.. .. crickets (8/n)

Sleep in strongly associated with learning and memory. We find that most AMP mutants are impaired in learning and memory using @alexckeene.bsky.social’s gustatory assay. Counter-intuitively Group C mutants that sleep the least uniquely retained normal learning and memory (7/n)

We next evaluated sleep functions. As per the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, extended waking upscales synapses. The Group C mutants that slept the least surprisingly showed lower synapse abundance (6/n)

Evaluating baseline sleep is ok, but sleep is also known to be plastic to environmental changes and ecological changes. We find that specific AMPs are required for context dep changes e.g. socialization and rocking induced sleep (5/n)

We next evaluated sleep homeostasis reasoning that low sleep might be a result of inability to generate needed sleep. Most mutants were unaffected, Group C mutants that sleep the least uniquely showed an exaggerated rebound. (4/n)

AMP mutants sleep less, with a longer latency i.e. they take longer to fall asleep. Sleep regulation by AMPs might be common (3/n)

Sleep and immunity are linked. But just how deeply is unclear. Here we obtained mutants in different antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), effectors of fly innate immunity, and characterized their roles in sleep and plasticity (2/n)

Mutations in antimicrobial peptides differently affect sleep and plasticity Molecules implicated in host defense can, independent of their roles as immune mediators, regulate sleep. In mammals, cytokines such as Tumor Necrosis Factor α (TNF α) and Interleukin 1β (IL1 β) promo...

Happy to share our lab’s first preprint! ‘Mutations in antimicrobial peptides differently affect sleep and plasticity’. Led by @rahulkumar211.bsky.social, with help from many in the lab. In collaboration with @evoimmunoimroze A thread 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Out today in @nature.com: Together with the Honigmann, Shevchenko, Drobot and Hof labs, we present a general workflow for imaging the localization and transport of individual lipids in cells and mapping their metabolism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

REM Sleep Misfires: Intruding Delta Waves Forecast Tau, Amyloid, and Forgetting in Aging Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep degrades with age, and more severely in Alzheimer's disease (AD). REM sleep comprises about twenty percent of adult sleep, alternates between phasic and tonic periods, a...

Fresh results now in bioRxiv! 🎉 We know about the function of NREM sleep for overnight memory consolidation. But what about REM sleep? We found that in aging, slow delta waves can intrude phasic REM periods, and this, is associated with worse overnight consolidation 🧠 (1/5) doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We are still accepting applications for the #postdoc opportunity in the lab 🕵‍♀️ 🧠

More details 👇
Postdoctoral position: lnkd.in/g4TkRxpM
Research directions: lnkd.in/eV2iMKGf
Our team and philosophy: lnkd.in/eh3nnNgq

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"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error.”

- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo

More new science from the lab! Led by @nathancsharris.bsky.social (now at GA State) and PD Priya Dutta.

We describe how experience tunes the ratios of functional receptors in a single sensory neuron via coordinating transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms to drive response plasticity.

So sorry to see this Sian

Thanks for making it out, Anya! We loved hosting, it was a fun meeting!

This effort to write up the Meeting Review was led entirely by PhD students! Couldn’t be happier for you all! Hope you all go on to great things!
@rahulkumar211.bsky.social @ritikamukherji.bsky.social
Kamakshi Singh
@embo.org @biologists.bsky.social

Reflections on the EMBO Workshop: Neuroscience of Sleep 2025 Summary: The inaugural EMBO workshop on the neuroscience of sleep brought together a global sleep research community to discuss recent advances across species, scales and systems. The meeting explored...

Happy to share a wonderful Meeting Review of our @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social
meeting in March! #EMBONeuroSleep

shorturl.at/bFxPl