Topic: Drosophila

This two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Yuri Schwartz’s molecular epigenetics laboratory investigates MLL1-driven leukaemia. The project examines how MLL1 fusions affect epigenetic repression and alternative gene-expression programmes, and whether methyltransferase activity and particular substrates are essential to oncogenic transformation. The laboratory combines Drosophila and human-cell models with genetics, genomics and numerical simulation to study Polycomb and Trithorax regulation. The proposed start is 1 January 2027 or by agreement.

Three-year training and development position in Dr Greg Jefferis's group in the Neurobiology Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, within a programme on molecular connectomics in Drosophila. The programme develops methods to map neuronal gene and protein expression onto reference electron microscopy connectomes and uses them to study the development and organisation of sexually dimorphic circuits. The postdoc researches the development and function of neural circuits, develops and applies techniques, presents work at seminars and meetings, drafts papers and helps train PhD stude

Research support position using Drosophila genetics, molecular biology and live imaging to examine microtubule organisation in developing and mature neurons. The role includes laboratory support and collaborative experiments. The contract ends on 31 March 2027; the proposed start is 1 October 2026, negotiable. Hourly pay is JPY 1,750–2,200. Applications remain open until filled; submit the documents specified on the employer page.

Hokto Kazama’s Laboratory for Circuit Mechanisms of Sensory Perception studies how Drosophila neural circuits process sensory information and generate behavior. The part-time researcher will support genetic crosses, experiments and analysis involving anatomy, in-vivo physiology and behavior. Employment begins 1 April 2027, negotiable. The Wako-based appointment pays JPY 1,600–2,200 per hour, with negotiable weekday hours and renewable one-year contracts. Applications are open until filled. Upload the documents through the official link and notify the laboratory as its instructions require.

Suhrid Ghosh will present work on how cell mechanics and cytoskeletal dynamics shape the evolution of reproductive structures in Drosophila ovaries. Cross-species morphology, ex-vivo live imaging, perturbations of cortical tension, and newly isolated terminal-filament cells reveal how somatic-cell deformability can alter ovariole architecture and reproductive fitness.

All animal locomotion is rhythmic,whether it is achieved through undulatory movement of the whole body or the coordination of articulated limbs. Neurobiologists have long studied locomotor circuits that produce rhythmic activity with non-rhythmic input, also called central pattern generators (CPGs). However, the cellular and microcircuit implementation of a walking CPG has not been described for any limbed animal. New comprehensive connectomes of the fruit fly ventral nerve cord (VNC) provide an opportunity to study rhythmogenic walking circuits at a synaptic scale.We use a data-driven network

The adult intestine is a major barrier epithelium and coordinator of multi-organ functions. Stem cells constantly repair the intestinal epithelium by adjusting their proliferation and differentiation to tissue intrinsic as well as micro- and macro-environmental signals. How these signals integrate to control intestinal and whole-body homeostasis is largely unknown. Addressing this gap in knowledge is central to an improved understanding of intestinal pathophysiology and its systemic consequences. Combining Drosophila and mammalian model systems my laboratory has discovered fundamental mechanis

Detecting the direction of image motion is important for visual navigation, predator avoidance and prey capture, and thus essential for the survival of all animals that have eyes. However, the direction of motion is not explicitly represented at the level of the photoreceptors: it rather needs to be computed by subsequent neural circuits, involving a comparison of the signals from neighboring photoreceptors over time. The exact nature of this process represents a classic example of neural computation and has been a longstanding question in the field. Much progress has been made in recent years

To navigate in a natural environment, a flying fly must estimate and contend with external forces such as wind. Estimating wind direction is difficult because the fly cannot directly sense ambient wind in flight. Instead, the fly experiences a vector sum of self-generated motion and the motion imposed by wind, which produces both mechanosensory (airflow) and visual (optic flow) experience. How the fly brain integrates these sensory inputs to estimate ambient wind direction is not known. Here we explore how a circuit in the Drosophila Central Complex (CX) might integrate airflow and optic flow

In nature, diverse sensory signals fluctuate in time and in space. Odors, for example, are distorted by wind into narrow filaments. When multiple spatially distinct odor sources exist, these filaments interleave but do not intermix. Such odor landscapes pose complementary challenges to animals – such as the fruit fly – that depend on olfaction to find food or mating partners. First, to select the best odor to track back to its source, the olfactory system must compare information from different filaments over relatively long timescales. Second, to remain on high alert to unexpected changes, su

To understand how the brain controls behavior, we need to understand the neural code for movement. Descending neurons (DNs) represent a bottleneck for motor control signals, and so provide an opportunity to study neural coding in a compact form. In Drosophila, almost all DNs are uniquely identifiable in the connectome of the central nervous system and targetable with specific genetic drivers, allowing us to study their connectivity and physiology in parallel. Previous studies have concluded that these DNs generate high-level motor commands, such as “stop” or “turn”, leaving the detailed implem

Across species, many navigational spatial representations, including those of head direction and traveling direction, require the integration of changes in sensory information induced by self-motion. In Drosophila, connectomic analysis points to a variety of so-called LNO neurons as key inputs for this information to the central complex (CX), a navigational center of insect brains. Recent studies have reported that the responses of several of these neurons correlate with self-motion and with optic flow resulting from rotations and translations in 2D. However, flying animals, like bats and inse

Sensory inputs available to animals are often open to multiple interpretations. When evaluating the likelihood of a certain interpretation, it is important that they consider not only evidence confirming that interpretation, but also evidence against it. Human reasoning often fails to appropriately weigh negative evidence, a phenomenon termed confirmation bias. However, since behaving based on false beliefs is costly, animals may detect negative evidence better in the context of innate, naturalistic behaviors. An example of such behaviors is visual course stabilization. Existing models assume

To navigate, we must continuously estimate the direction we are headed in, and we must use this information to guide our path toward our goal (Schöne, 2014). Direction estimation is accomplished by ring attractor networks in the head direction system (Knierim et al., 2012, Hulse et al., 2020). However, we do not understand how the sense of direction is used to guide action. Drosophila connectome analyses (Rayshubskiy et al., 2020, Hulse et al., 2021) recently revealed two cell types (PFL2 and PFL3) that connect the head direction system to the locomotor system. These populations also receive a

Gut-derived signals regulate metabolism, appetite, and behaviors important for mental health. We have performed a large-scale multidimensional screen to identify gut hormones and nutrient-sensing mechanisms in the intestine that regulate metabolism and behavior in the fruit fly Drosophila. We identified several gut hormones that affect fecundity, stress responses, metabolism, feeding, and sleep behaviors, many of which seem to act sex-specifically. We show that in response to nutrient intake, the enteroendocrine cells (EECs) of the adult Drosophila midgut release hormones that act via inter-or

Detecting the direction of image motion is important for visual navigation, predator avoidance and prey capture, and thus essential for the survival of all animals that have eyes. However, the direction of motion is not explicitly represented at the level of the photoreceptors: it rather needs to be computed by subsequent neural circuits. The exact nature of this process represents a classic example of neural computation and has been a longstanding question in the field. Our results obtained in the fruit fly Drosophila demonstrate that the local direction of motion is computed in two parallel

It is critical for all animals to make appropriate, but also flexible, foraging decisions, especially when facing starvation. Sensing olfactory information is essential to evaluate food quality before ingestion. Previously, we found that Drosophila larvae switch their response to certain odors from aversion to attraction when food deprived. The neural mechanism underlying this switch in behavior involves serotonergic modulation and reconfiguration of odor processing in the early olfactory sensory system. We now investigate if a change in hunger state also influences other behavioral dec

Chronic exercise is a powerful intervention that lowers the incidence of most age-related diseases while promoting healthy metabolism in humans. However, illness, injury or age prevent many humans from consistently exercising. Thus, identification of molecular targets that can mimic the benefits of exercise would be a valuable tool to improve health outcomes of humans with neurodegenerative or mitochondrial diseases, or those with enforced sedentary lifestyles. Using a novel exercise platform for Drosophila, we have identified octopaminergic neurons as a key subset of neurons that are critical

Efficient navigation requires animals to track their position, velocity and heading direction (HD). Some animals’ behavior suggests that they also track uncertainties about these navigational variables, and make strategic use of these uncertainties, in line with a Bayesian computation. Ring-attractor networks have been proposed to estimate and track these navigational variables, for instance in the HD system of the fruit fly Drosophila. However, such networks are not designed to incorporate a notion of uncertainty, and therefore seem unsuited to implement dynamic Bayesian inference. Here, we c

To move efficiently, animals must continuously work out their x,y,z positions with respect to real-world objects, and many animals have a pair of eyes to achieve this. How photoreceptors actively sample the eyes’ optical image disparity is not understood because this fundamental information-limiting step has not been investigated in vivo over the eyes’ whole sampling matrix. This integrative multiscale study will advance our current understanding of stereopsis from static image disparity comparison to a morphodynamic active sampling theory. It shows how photomechanical photoreceptor microsacca

Fly Escape Behaviors: Flexible and Modular We have identified a set of escape maneuvers performed by a fly when confronted by a looming object. These escape responses can be divided into distinct behavioral modules. Some of the modules are very stereotyped, as when the fly rapidly extends its middle legs to jump off the ground. Other modules are more complex and require the fly to combine information about both the location of the threat and its own body posture. In response to an approaching object, a fly chooses some varying subset of these behaviors to perform. We would like to understand t

Early in development the nervous system is constructed with far too many neurons that make an excessive number of synaptic connections. Later, a wave of neuronal remodeling radically reshapes nervous system wiring and cell numbers through the selective elimination of excess synapses, axons and dendrites, and even whole neurons. This remodeling is widespread across the nervous system, extensive in terms of how much individual brain regions can change (e.g. in some cases 50% of neurons integrated into a brain circuit are eliminated), and thought to be essential for optimizing nervous system fu

Nonlinear, multiplication-like operations carried out by individual nerve cells greatly enhance the computational power of a neural system, but our understanding of their biophysical nature is scant. We pursue this problem in the Drosophila ON motion vision circuit, where we record the membrane potentials of direction-selective T4 neurons and of all their columnar input elements in response to visual and pharmacological stimuli in vivo. Our electrophysiological measurements and conductance-based simulations suggest a passive supralinear interaction between two distinct types of synapse on T4 d

Animals learn when punishment or reward is predicted by neutral stimuli like tones or odors. Synaptic plasticity maps the predictor to the appropriate behavioral drive, forming a memory trace. But if the predictor is presented as one of two options, the optimal response is uncertain and depends on the alternative. Can a single memory trace evoke different behaviors, depending on stimulus context? We used optogenetics in Drosophila to form an odor-punishment association restricted to a single set of synapses, ie. a single memory trace. These flies showed flexible behavioral responses to a given