Come join the @socialfluids.bsky.social lab in Cambridge to study the evolution of Socially Transferred Materials! Fun new HFSP project btwn UK, NL and Costa Rica! Deadline September 7th #Postdoc #JobAlert #Evolution #Bioinformatics #STM #socialfluids www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... leboeuflab.com

New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Nearly a decade after starting the project, the first major results from our comparative connectomics work is online! Comparing the head direction circuits of the central complex in bees, ants and flies, recapitulating >300million years of evolution.

Biology is once again full of surprises most if us couldn’t dream up if we tried.

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How does the brain know where the body has been touched? In our new eLife paper, we map how touch-sensitive bristles on the fruit fly head connect to circuits that guide precisely aimed grooming, revealing how brain maps turn touch into action. (elifesciences.org/articles/108...)

A comprehensive mechanosensory connectome reveals a somatotopically organized neural circuit architecture controlling stimulus-aimed grooming of the Drosophila head

A synaptic-resolution map reveals how spatially organized touch pathways in the fly brain shape aimed head grooming through parallel excitatory circuits and inhibitory control.

elifesciences.org

Do #tintinnids dream of electric sheep? 🤯 Here is a single cell capable of building a lorica and living inside it for protection... it also swims, feeds, hunts Can even detect and habituate to mechanical cues! #celllearning #protistsonsky #cilia Read more in our preprint doi.org/10.64898/202...

The cell that wasn't there grist.org/science/nitr...

The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

It took two scientists decades to find a new nitrogen-fixing organelle. It could change the future of sustainable agriculture.

grist.org

This profile of the artist on the Challenger expedition and his contributions to protistology was a very nice Saturday morning read. Though with some irksome bits...

John Dolan@tintinnman.bsky.social · 4w ago

On the artist of the iconic sketch of Globigerina: J.J.W. Article in free access for 50 days at authors.elsevier.com/a/1nPdH56A9x... #protistsonsky

"This is the soundest idea you've floated in the whole thread — and I mean that as a real assessment, not a nicety." Wow, thanks Claude! 🙄 In other news, in the next few days I plan to try GPT5.6 Sol. Fable is completely off-limits for biologists, even for totally innocuous work.

Revised preprint on mitochondria in central brain of Drosophila now online: much new analysis + details of largest resource for analyzing neuronal mitochondria generated so far, with ~6M mitochondria, >20k neurons, >5k cell types. Much thanks to all coauthors, enjoy! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Connectomic Analysis of Mitochondria in the Central Brain of Drosophila

Mitochondria are integral to the metabolism and cell biology of a neuron. Electron microscopy images of fly brain volumes, taken for connectomics, can be analyzed for mitochondria as well as the cells...

biorxiv.org

Here are my slides for #fens2026 “A versatile and affordable array tomography workflow” https://jekelylab.codeberg.page/FENS_Array_Tomography_Barcelona_July2026.html#/title-slide for the 'Expanding Horizons: Array Tomography in Neuroscience for All' […] [Original post on biologists.social]

SHOW US YOUR BRAINS! Enter your beautiful brain images and videos into the Annual BRAIN Initiative Photo and Video Contest! Submission closes soon, and all are eligible to enter! 🧪🧠🎨 www.2026brainconference.com/event/44a17f...

Annual killifish continue to surprise us: they make neutrophils before almost every other cell type, even before gastrulation. Neutrophils usually arise from the lateral plate mesoderm (forming in cyan), but in killifish they are already patrolling around the embryo in gold. tinyurl.com/killiphil

My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735

Terrible news. The need for independent, non-profit science journalism only ever seems to grow.

Dan Vergano@danvergano.bsky.social · last mo.

Scientific American is being sold to LabX Media, publisher of Discover: group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... They've fired me and other union staff, ahead of June 26 vote ratification. My rates are suddenly more reasonable, if you need editing or reporting - Argonaut2026@gmail.com

Job alerts! Senior Image Data Scientist (x2!) and Senior Scientific Software Developer - Bioimage Informatics at the Center for Bioimage Informatics at St Jude Children's Research Hospital. These seem pretty nice. forum.image.sc/t/opportunit...

Opportunities @ St Jude Children's Research Hospital

The Center for Bioimage Informatics (CBI) at St Jude is expanding rapidly and looking for talented individuals. We’re looking for someone who wants to bring rigor, creativity, and modern computational...

forum.image.sc

The Battle over the Constitution Has Spread to American Science. I'm out in the @theatlantic.com today about the new OMB proposed rule. It's just the longtime agenda of the the Supreme Court. US science and cancer cures now all depend on us picking up a fight with the Roberts Court.

The Unitary Executive Takes Over New Territory

The Trump administration’s theory of how the federal government should work is a threat to American science.

theatlantic.com

I am a neurodivergent neuroscientist. My bipolar brain brings struggle but it also helps me think off-the-map ideas. To help others who are similarly different, I co-founded the Neurodiversity Innovation Center for Excellence in Neuroscience (niceinneuro.org) with Leah Blankenship and Lila Kaye.

Looking for folks to study skilled movement across neurotypical/disease models (inc. autism), circuit resilience, smart closed-loop neuromodulation, or deer mice. We use high-density recordings, optogenetics, & dynamical systems analysis in a well-resourced, collaborative environment. DM or email.

Meet Eyewire II: a new connectomic resource for the mouse retina. ~1 mm² of retina at nanometer resolution, with synapses and circuits of ca. 100,000 neurons, plus visual responses from the ~400 neurons shown in the video! Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... Data: eyewire.ai 🧠📈 🧠💻🧪 #VisionScience

Now published - the #BANC! A full central nervous system (CNS) connectome of a limbed animal at single-synapse resolution, enabling us to follow sensory-motor arcs and understand how the CNS controls the body. rdcu.be/fncjS. #neuroscience. Video by @quorumetrix.bsky.social 1/18

Better vitrification = better cryo-ET. We've opened an RFA for two-year grants to advance vitrification techniques for biological samples—welcoming applications from researchers in heat transfer, cryogenics, and materials science. Apply here: bit.ly/4uip6eJ

Tend to agree. Work by us & @kdmicheva.bsky.social showed that a strangely high fraction (~50%) of myelin in upper layers of cortex wraps short lengths of fast-spiking, parvalbumin-positive basket cells. We suggested it was to support their axons, rather than to speed up spike time arrival.

A large fraction of neocortical myelin ensheathes axons of local inhibitory neurons

Parvalbumin-positive inhibitory neurons in the cortex have insulating myelin sheathes, despite forming only short-range connections.

elifesciences.org

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Recent findings suggest that myelin may serve as an energy reserve for the brain. In his essay, Carlos Matute argues that this should prompt neuroscientists to rethink how the brain stores, shares and protects energy in health and disease. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/metabolism/b...

Nice piece in @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social about our @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social! I say a few things in it.

Harvard's Kempner Institute Bet Big on AI. Now It Has to Prove Itself. | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard’s Kempner Institute made an early bet on owning its own AI computing cluster — a gamble that has quickly made it a rare academic hub for artificial intelligence research, even as private indus...

thecrimson.com

We want to hear from you about your experience using the OME-Zarr ecosystem and how we can improve it! We are joining the upcoming OME-NGFF community call to introduce ourselves to the community and to collect your feedback (May 26, 9AM and 5PM CET). See you there! forum.image.sc/t/join-us-fo...

Join us for the next OME-NGFF Community Call on Tuesday May 26, 2026 9:00 CET and 17:00 CET!

Dear all, We are delighted to announce our Q2 OME-NGFF Community Call to be held on Tuesday May 26! As usual, we will repeat the agenda over two time slots to welcome participants from everywhere aro...

forum.image.sc

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

Ben Larson@blarson.bsky.social · 11mo ago

What could be more exciting than watching Euplotes scurry around under the microscope? How about adding some raptorial predation by supergiant cannibal cells? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Video by Vittorio Boscaro. 1/n

I'm looking forward to this upcoming "Wild Thinking" workshop, organized by @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy and colleagues! www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/en/wild-thin...

Great opportunity: The Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology @linmd.bsky.social + University @uni-magdeburg.de Magdeburg are hiring a Full Professor/Research Group Head in Integrative Neurobiology, especially computation, theory neurotech! Apply by 29 May 2026 ncloud.lin-magdeburg.de/s/cnSj2Ys5YE...

Ausschreibung W3 Integrative Neurobiology E.pdf

LIN-Nextcloud v2.0 - Datenaustausch leicht gemacht

ncloud.lin-magdeburg.de

If you're still a connectome-hater, I suggest you consider this work. (converted me from connectome-agnostic to connectome-curious)

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 3mo ago

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...

Heartbreaking to hear Sean Eddy (@cryptogenomicon.bsky.social) talk about how arbitrary cuts to his lab's NIH funding have decimated his lab Sean's lab has built computational tools that enable so much important biology research also quotes by @jeremymberg.bsky.social www.npr.org/2026/05/11/n...

Some researchers say restored federal funding is too little, too late

The Trump administration restored some of the billions of dollars previously frozen or withheld from research institutions and agencies. Some researchers say it's too late to save their work.

npr.org

We still have a few places to register for our "Heidelberg Wild Thinking Workshop - The organism, its self and its environment: from philosophy to physics." 19-20 May 2026, Heidelberg https://www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/en/wild-thinking-workshop-1 […] [Original post on biologists.social]