Excited to announce that I defended my PhD last week and am now officially Dr. Sophie Dvali! Thank you to my adviser @andrewleifer.bsky.social, my labmates, colleagues, friends and family and everyone else who supported me through this journey! 🎓🪱🔬

First whole-brain recording of social sound processing in a vertebrate. Surprises start in the hindbrain; thalamus gates conspecific calls; male and female brains diverge downstream. Work by @joerghenninger.bsky.social, @mh123.bsky.social sky.social and team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#C.elegans is about to join the 'centriolar satellites' club. Check out our new preprint #centriolarsatellites: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hierarchical Community Structure of the Adult Drosophila Connectome Reveals Conserved Circuit Archetypes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.689094v1

🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding. How is this massive network organized? Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/

Rick Betzel@richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 8mo ago

New lab paper - will say more about this in a little while

Our paper on PCMD-1 and centrosome stability is finally online! Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉 to Alina and the entire team! Very proud and grateful - it was an incredible teamwork @zaninlab.bsky.social! @lifescimunich.bsky.social. If you want to read more check it out on JCB! rupress.org/jcb/article-...

PCMD-1 stabilizes the PCM scaffold and facilitates centriole separation

Centrosome stability is essential for spindle bipolarity. Schreiner et al. show that CDK-1 primes PCMD-1 for PLK-1 phosphorylation. Mutations in PLK-1 dock

rupress.org

biophysics.princeton.edu/opportunities

Congratulations Kelsey!!!

@cpbf.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Congratulations Kelsey Hallinen, who is starting a new position as Assistant Physics Professor at University of Oregon!

New findings help to explain why it has been so challenging to predict brain signaling from the connectome alone. By Holly Barker #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/w...

Worms help untangle brain structure/function mystery

The synaptic connectome of most animals bears little resemblance to functional brain maps, but it can still predict neuronal activity, according to two preprints that tackle the puzzle in C. elegans.

thetransmitter.org

So stoked to see this in press! Diverging network architecture of the C. elegans connectome and signaling network journal: journals.aps.org/prxlife/acce... preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2412.14498 1/3

Plugging invisible gaps in the synaptic connectome By @elissawelle.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/p...

Plugging invisible gaps in the synaptic connectome

Two new maps of the roundworm nervous system detail how neurons communicate with short proteins called neuropeptides outside synapses.

thetransmitter.org

How do worms navigate based on learned experience? @andrewleifer.bsky.social @jpillowtime.bsky.social &co reveal flexible behavioral strategies & distributed neural computations underlying learning-dependent odor #navigation in #Celegans @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4bYZs7c

p.s. the raw data from the signal propagation paper is public... so have fun exploring! dandiarchive.org/dandiset/001...

Neural signal propagation atlas of C. elegans

Data from Randi et al. Hosted on the Open Science Framework

osf.io

Super excited to have gotten to delve in to network science and work on this with Caio Seguin, @richardfbetzel.bsky.social and @andrewleifer.bsky.social !!

Rick Betzel@richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 2y ago

So excited to share this preprint, led by Sophie Dvali and Andy Leifer, along with Caio Seguin and myself. Diverging network architecture of the C. elegans connectome and signaling network. arxiv.org/abs/2412.14498

Congrats to Alina and the team 🎉🎉🎉!!!!! @zaninlab.bsky.social Check out our latest manuscript -> PCMD-1 stabilizes the PCM scaffold and facilitates centriole separation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PCMD-1 stabilizes the PCM scaffold and facilitates centriole separation

Centrosomes are highly dynamic organelles, and maintaining their stability is crucial for spindle pole integrity and bipolar spindle formation. Centrosomes consist of a pair of centrioles surrounded b...

biorxiv.org