Yichen Luo 骆奕辰
@camellyc.bsky.social
I study how flies breathe. NINDS K99 Postdoc, John Tuthill lab. Ph.D., John Carlson lab. Undergraduate, Yulong Li lab.
1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
MCB Junior Fellow Wins Two Prestigious Evolutionary Science Awards— First Dual Honor in 25 Years 🧪 🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @wendyssae.bsky.social @nbellono.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @harvard.edu @sse-evolution.bsky.social @eseb.bsky.social
MCB Junior Fellow Wins Two Prestigious Evolutionary Science Awards— First Dual Honor in 25 Years - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology
Wendy Valencia-Montoya, a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows affiliated with the lab of MCB Professor Nick Bellono, has been awarded two of the most coveted […]
mcb.harvard.edu
We noticed these fruit flies are behaving like tiny big horn sheep of fly world so we went back today to see if I could get some photos of the action. Here you have it, a play in 4 acts! Make me wonder if they evolved the elongated eyes for this purpose. Zygothrica sp. Intag Refugio, Ecuador
I’m very excited to share that I’ll be opening my lab and starting as a tenure track assistant professor and Simons Empire Faculty Fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences at University at Albany (SUNY) this Fall 2026.
Researchers have long searched for the neural circuit underlying locomotion. Now they’ve found it in flies. By @natmesanash.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
Long-sought walking circuit found in fruit flies
The neuronal circuit controlling repetitive locomotion patterns in any animal has been a mystery until now.
thetransmitter.org
New paper from Brandon Pratt, @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social, and colleagues on how hair plate proprioceptors sense joint limits and contribute to sensorimotor control of walking. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I am very happy to share that the latest work from the lab, led by Dr. Qi Xue, has been published in PNAS and is now online: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Receptor sequence divergence, gain, loss, duplication, and neofunctionalization drive olfactory adaptation in Drosophila suzukii | PNAS
Shifts in ecological niches are often driven by evolutionary changes in the olfactory system, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understoo...
pnas.org
So grateful for this even if the reward prediction error had almost gone extinct (look at my happysad face). Thank you John and everyone who supported my proposal, Nino Ramirez, @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @darbly.bsky.social, Rui Chang, and the NIH reviewers and program officers!
John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · 4mo agoCongrats to post-doc Yichen Luo (@camellyc.bsky.social) for receiving a K99 award from NIH! Yichen is investigating the neural control of respiration.
🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Sometimes failed experiments reveal gaps in how we are thinking about a problem, and digging into why an experiment didn't work can lead to discovery. This new preprint by Anne Sustar, in collaboration with Dion Dickman's lab, is one of those gratifying instances.🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I am thrilled to be able to work with @kemarshall.bsky.social (Canada), Sebastian Brauchi (Chile), and Xubiao Peng (China) to understand biophysical mechanisms of neuromuscular function in the cold. Science transcends borders. I love that HFSP makes that a requirement for these grants. 🌍
Human Frontier Science Program@hfspo.bsky.social · 5mo agoAttention scientists from all over the world🙃 The 2026 #HFSPResearchGrants are out! 🥳 117 scientists from 31 countries will pursue bold, interdisciplinary research, from #neuroscience to #ecology and beyond! 🧪 Are you one of the new #HFSPAwardees? 🔗https://bit.ly/4uGmMQ3 #sts #HFSP
Serious question… is this is a real fly? A startup thinks it's a "real uploaded animal". What do you think? for @theverge.com with @shahabbakht.bsky.social @asbates.bsky.social @anayebi.bsky.social @birchlse.bsky.social @tom-mcclelland.bsky.social www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
This is not a fly uploaded to a computer
Ceci n’est pas une fly.
theverge.com
This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen
How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...
0.00003 foot tall xmas tree from a Drosophila flight steering muscle 🎄 image by @anne-sustar.bsky.social
How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...
(1/3)Excited to share PKU tags—our lab’s latest contribution expanding the toolkit for cell-type labeling with a new shape dimension! Developed at PKU, these genetically encoded tools enable multiplex cell-type labeling compatible with both light and electron microscopy.
How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm? Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg. w @bingbrunton.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Excited to share my most recent postdoctoral work in the Jeanne lab @yaleneuro.bsky.social ! “Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We ask: how is a sensory code transformed across multiple stages of processing to inform behavior?
Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics
Extracting relevant features of a complex sensory signal typically involves sequential processing through multiple brain regions. However, identifying the logic and mechanisms of these transformations...
biorxiv.org
🚀 New paper alert! Thrilled to share our latest study led by postdoc @gera_jayati published in eLife. 👉 doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Continue reading for a summary. 🧵
Anti-diuretic hormone ITP signals via a guanylate cyclase receptor to modulate systemic homeostasis in Drosophila
A multi-pronged approach reveals that ion transport peptide neuropeptide acts through the guanylate cyclase receptor Gyc76C to coordinate osmotic and metabolic homeostasis across multiple tissues in D...
doi.org
My thesis work is out! 🪰 We often link pain to mammals—sometimes exclusively humans—but what about flies? Thanks to @tuthill.bsky.social for supporting a funky, fun project, and to @NIH & @hhmi.org for funding over the past half decade!
John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · 9mo agoDo flies feel pain? Spooky new preprint from our lab on the cells and circuits that mediate nociceptive behaviors in adult Drosophila, led by graduate student (and newly minted PhD!) @jonesjes.bsky.social. 🪰⚡👻🎃 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Do flies feel pain? Spooky new preprint from our lab on the cells and circuits that mediate nociceptive behaviors in adult Drosophila, led by graduate student (and newly minted PhD!) @jonesjes.bsky.social. 🪰⚡👻🎃 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🪰 folks! I spoke to the Transmitter about FlyBase. As noted at flybase.org, bridge $ ran out and many staff were laid off. Good news is stopgap contributions will keep core FlyBase operations active. But community support remains essential. Please donate @FlyBase and share! 1/2 tinyurl.com/FlyBase
FlyBase secures funding for year, but future still uncertain
The FlyBase team’s fundraising efforts have proven successful in the short term, but restoration of its federal grant remains uncertain.
tinyurl.com
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
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
Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
congratulations to our own Juan Ispizua on being selected as a pew latin american postdoctoral fellow www.pew.org/en/projects/...
Pew Latin American Fellows
The Pew Latin American Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences provides support for young scientists from Latin America to receive postdoctoral training in the United States. The program gives thes...
pew.org
new preprint, led by @ellenlesser.bsky.social, on proprioceptive sensing of the Drosophila wing. tldr, there are a lot of proprioceptors out in the wing and they are wildly diverse and complex (eg, compared to the fly leg). just one example in this image...(1/4) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Public access to the first fly connectome that spans the whole CNS - BANC!: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc Different from prior connectomes - it is brain + cord (think spinal cord) We use it to ‘embody’ the system and find it resembles ‘subsumption architecture’ doi.org/10.1101/2025...
