We're about to start an exciting new project with generous support from the @erc.europa.eu In SIMBIO, we want to know how bacterial endosymbionts modify neurons on the genetic and functional level and how this shapes the evolution of their host's mating behavior.

Max Planck Institute for Brain Research@mpibrain.bsky.social · 2w ago

How do microbial symbionts shape neural circuits, mating behavior & evolution? With the new #ERC-funded project SIMBIO, Philipp Brand @pbrand.bsky.social and his team @mpibrain.bsky.social will explore how microbes shape brains and behavior. #ERCStG 🔗 brain.mpg.de/brand-erc-st...

We are looking for a research assistant to join our team. brain.mpg.de/brand Apply using the link below if you are interested in doing research on the neural and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. jobs.brain.mpg.de/jobposting/6...

🚨 I AM HIRING a 3-year postdoc & 4-year PhD student 🚨 [PLEASE SHARE WIDELY] My Emmy Noether @dfg.de funded Neural Circuit & Systems Evolution lab (🌟) at the @unimainz.bsky.socialÍ wants to start existing. So..., what do we need? WELL... we need you! APPLY UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER.

ALT:

static.klipy.com

For too long, we have only had 2 sex-specifically spliced genes in the mosquito. Welcome to the world, MOSN! Males: big protein. Females: small protein. Fascinating new domain of unknown function. Congrats Yael Tsitohay + Nipun Basrur. Collab with Sean Eddy + Li Zhao www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Evolution of MOSN, a novel sex-specifically spliced neuronal gene in the Aedes aegypti mosquito

Sex-specific RNA splicing is a conserved mechanism for generating sexual dimorphism in insects, with the best-studied examples being fruitless and doublesex. To ask whether additional sex-specifically...

biorxiv.org

I'll be teaching in a 2-day course at #GhentUniversity: From #EMG signals to #musclesynergies: Theory, methodology, and R workflows Open to PhD candidates, researchers, professionals. With @musclesynergies.bsky.social hands-on! 7-8 Sept 2026 Free, limited seats event.ugent.be/registration...

Thrilled to be co-organising the EMBO Workshop Comparative (neuro)science in insects, 13–16 April 2027, Engelberg 🇨🇭 with @megyounger.bsky.social, @nkonst4.bsky.social, and Yun Ding@UPENN Abstracts due 11 Dec 2026 🔗 meetings.embo.org/event/27-ins... Register and join us! #EMBOneuroInsects

Join us in Oldenburg and study the #SensoryBasis 👀👂👃🤚👅🧭, Mechanisms 🧠🧬🧪, and Impacts of #AnimalNavigation in our Cluster of Excellence "NaviSense" as a PhD student 🎓 👇 In case you would like to discuss project ideas related to #insect #navigation, feel free to contact me 🤗 🐜❤️ #NaviSense #CoE #ExStra

SFB 1372@sfb1372.bsky.social · 4w ago

NaviSense, the Cluster of Excellence on Animal Navigation at the University of Oldenburg, is looking for motivated doctoral researchers to join their interdisciplinary team! Find more details here: 🔗 uol.de/job1191en #DoctoralResearcher #AnimalNavigation #Oldenburg

How do you recognize who’s who when you live mostly in the dark? 👂👃✋ Our review explores how naked mole-rats use sound, smell, and touch to maintain their remarkable social organization! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @garyrlewin.bsky.social, Firdevs Murad, Wenhan Luo, Alison Barker

Read about our latest work here www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... or let Alessandro tell you all about it (link below)!

The sex and reproductive plasticity of intestinal muscles instruct gut size

Adult intestinal size plasticity is driven not only by epithelial stem cells but also by remodeling of the surrounding visceral musculature. Sex- and reproduction-dependent muscle remodeling controls ...

cell.com

The Francis Crick Institute@crick.ac.uk · last mo.

“I believe my findings are just the tip of a bigger iceberg.” Read more about the work from Alessandro, a postdoc in our Organ Development and Physiology Lab led by @irenemiguel-aliaga.bsky.social, who studied changes in the female intestine during and after reproduction: https://bit.ly/4bElX2u

Yahooo 🎉 We got the cover! Meet our cute cover girl 🥰: the naked mole-rat Queen! 👑 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re recruiting postdocs! Join our @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded programme 'Decoding competition in the brain'. How does the brain resolve competing needs and prioritise behaviour? 📅 Deadline: 1 September Apply: rezavallab.org Please share! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSM781/r...

Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) at University of Birmingham

Recruiting now: Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

jobs.ac.uk

@uobles.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Professor Carolina Rezaval has been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award for £2.9 million to investigate how the brain makes decisions under competition. www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2026/2....

Thanks @phiejacobs.bsky.social for featuring our work in @science.org! Why did Apollo astronauts skip on the Moon? Our study shows that reduced gravity reveals a proprioception-dependent mechanism for locomotor state selection. @alesantuz.bsky.social leading the way to the moon 🐭🚀

David Grimm@david-grimm.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The first foot set on the Moon was famously one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But did you know there was a spring in that step? And do you know why? Fun story by @phiejacobs.bsky.social for @science.org

Finally out in @natneuro.nature.com! A forgotten memory isn't always gone. We show that forgotten memories persist as silent memory traces, can be recovered by reminders, and can even be reconstructed into false memories. Excited to finally share this work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Been a good #PainResearch day for our lab in @phar.cam.ac.uk with 2 papers out in Journal of Neuroscience: 1. Led by @mayadannawi.bsky.social focuses on the impact of Prdm12 overexpression in adult sensory neurons www.jneurosci.org/content/earl..., walkthrough 👉 bsky.app/profile/psal...

AAV-mediated overexpression of Prdm12 in knee-innervating afferents reduces inflammatory joint pain and neuronal hyperexcitability in female mice

Inflammatory joint pain features in numerous musculoskeletal disorders that affect millions globally. The Prdm12 gene encodes a conserved zinc finger transcriptional regulator expressed selectively in...

jneurosci.org

Ewan St. John Smith@psalmotoxin.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New pre-print from @phar.cam.ac.uk & Bellefroid lab at ULB! Led by @mayadannawi.bsky.social w support from @interlukein.bsky.social & more! We investigate impact of overexpressing the zinc finger transcriptional regulator Prdm12 on sensory neuron function / joint pain. #neuroskyence #PainResearch

Finally got my Canadian visa sorted (the joys of being a non-EU traveler 😅), so I’m flying out this weekend for the NeuroEthology congress! I’ll be presenting a poster on courtship behaviour and vocalisation in naked mole-rats. If anyone wants to catch up or meet for the first time, let’s chat!

For me this paper is a career highlight..truly astonishing biology! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A queen odour mediates reproductive suppression in a eusocial mammal - Nature

Naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) queens produce isopropyl myristate, a low-volatility ester that high-ranking animals detect and avoid, which alters prolactin and progesterone in other females t...

nature.com

Our new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...

Naked mole-rats are ruled by a queen: this chemical puts her in power

YouTube video by nature video

youtu.be

Lab's latest: sculpting sex-biased metabolic territories in the intestine by tuning ploidy and lipid metabolism. Myc is to blame; Laura, Pedro and Chris found out www.cell.com/developmenta...

Myc sustains sex-biased organ zonation in the Drosophila intestine

Amourda, Blackie, Gaspar, et al. show that sex-biased activity of Dsx and Myc shapes intestinal zonation and lipid metabolism in Drosophila. Elevated Myc activity in female enterocytes increases ploid...

cell.com

We are delighted to announce that Ahmed R. Ismaieel successfully defended his PhD thesis on the olfactory role of mouthparts, legs and genitalia in the hawkmoth Manduca sexta. Congratulations to Ahmed and his supervisors, Sonja Bisch-Knaden, @nmvandam.bsky.social, and Bill Hansson. Well done!

Beautiful work on the evolution of sensory perception. Existing neuronal lineages are often recoded throughout evolution by the expression of novel olfactory receptor genes. The Arguello lab reconstructed all the steps in this sensory neuron recoding. A must-read!

@tomtom-auer.bsky.social · 3mo ago

How do duplicated receptor genes "find a home" in olfactory circuits? Great study by the Arguello lab shows the re-coding of olfactory channels across species. Neat combination of phylogenetic reconstruction, sc-transcriptomics and more. Check out the pre-print: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do duplicated receptor genes "find a home" in olfactory circuits? Great study by the Arguello lab shows the re-coding of olfactory channels across species. Neat combination of phylogenetic reconstruction, sc-transcriptomics and more. Check out the pre-print: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Evolutionary Recoding of Olfactory Sensory Neurons

Odorant receptors ( Or s) are the interface between an animal’s nervous system and its olfactory environment. In insect genomes, the Or s are often the largest gene family, and their rapid duplication...

biorxiv.org

Happy to share this amazing work! We found lactase!? activity in birds, re-gaining of sweet-taste among other adaptations to frugivory in Manakins. This helped these birds evolve complicated and energetic mating behaviors! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Genomic and physiological changes in a sexually selected and frugivorous bird radiation

Balakrishnan et al. take an integrative approach to explore the evolution of manakins, a frugivorous bird lineage with elaborate courtship displays. They detect genome-wide signatures related to sexua...

cell.com

Come and join us @phar.cam.ac.uk for a PhD with Maxion Therapeutics www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Deadline: July 30th Funding: Home Fee status only

Regulation of neuronal excitability using IgG targeting of ion channels and GPCRs at Babraham Institute (Cambridge) on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Regulation of neuronal excitability using IgG targeting of ion channels and GPCRs at Babraham Institute (Cambridge), listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨 How does the olfactory bulb transform overlapping sensory inputs into representations that are easier to distinguish? New study by Sina Tootoonian, Yikai Yang, @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk and myself.‬ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short 🧵 below

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Excited to have this #PainResearch paper out from our @phar.cam.ac.uk lab: "Monoclonal antibody inhibition of PAR2 reduces phenotype severity and pain in murine inflammatory bowel disease" journals.lww.com/painrpts/ful...

Monoclonal antibody inhibition of PAR2 reduces phenotype... : PAIN Reports

mising therapeutic target for visceral pain management in IBD. Objectives: We set out to determine signaling mechanisms deployed by PAR2 in the lumbar splanchnic nerve and whether inhibiting PAR2 with the mouse monoclonal antibody (mAb), PAR650097 (mPAR650097) provided therapeutic benefit in dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis. Methods: We first used ex vivo electrophysiological recordings of mouse lumbar splanchnic nerve to determine how stimulation of PAR2 alters afferent activity and the intracellular signaling mechanisms involved. Second, we used the DSS model of colitis in mice and determined how mPAR650097 altered disease activity, behavior, colon histology, and the activity of nociceptive circuitry. Results: Protease-activated receptor 2 stimulation in the colon activated visceral afferent fibers and sensitized them to mechanical and chemical stimuli. We found that endosomal internalization and protein kinase A/C signaling mediate both activating and sensitizing effects of PAR2 in visceral pain. We further show that inhibiting PAR2 with the mAb mPAR650097 reduces DSS-induced colitis severity and pain. mPAR650097 also reduced several colitis-induced pain correlates at key points along the pain-signaling axis, including peripheral nociceptive neuron signaling and sensitivity, expression of proinflammatory mediators, spinal cord signaling, and, fundamentally, behavior. Conclusion: These findings illustrate that mAb inhibition of PAR2 represents a promising approach to provide relief from abdominal pain in those living with IBD....

journals.lww.com

Great!😂 @cellpress.bsky.social Garlic inhibits mating and egg laying in Aedes vector mosquitoes

And another great paper in Cell from the best ever behavioralist, Dr. Shimaa Ebrahim!!!

@shimaaebrahim.bsky.social · 5mo ago

nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A... I’m thrilled to share my journey from the kitchen to the lab, which has ultimately led me to publish in Cell Journals. I hope you enjoy reading my latest paper:

nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A... I’m thrilled to share my journey from the kitchen to the lab, which has ultimately led me to publish in Cell Journals. I hope you enjoy reading my latest paper:

We are looking for a postdoctoral scientist to work on challenging and exciting neuroproteomics problems. Close collaboration with @coscialab.bsky.social Apply: jobs.helmholtz-hzi.de/job/Braunsch...