Nadav Shai
@nadavshai.bsky.social
Cell and Molecular Neurobiologist of Mosquitoes | Senior Scientist at Vosshall lab HHMI/RockefellerUniv | PhD WeizmannScience
🩸🩸🩸TODAY WE SHARE TWO MAJOR DISCOVERIES🩸🩸🩸 1. We peered into genomes and brains of the rare mosquitoes that QUIT feeding on blood and found what biting is built from 2. Humans got rid of isoleucine in their blood, malaria suffers from it, and mosquito proteomes budget for it THREADS>
What happens in a mosquito's brain when it's infected with dengue? Almost nothing! 🦟🧠 We show DENV actively replicates in the brain, yet triggers virtually no transcriptional response. a striking case of neural tolerance ⬇️ New preprint by Umberto Palatini #Vosshalllab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Dengue virus infection in Aedes aegypti mosquito brains elicits minimal transcriptional response
Billions of people each year are at risk from infection by dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya viruses, which are transmitted by female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Mosquitoes themselves are infe...
biorxiv.org
@annaryba.bsky.social's paper on the neural underpinnings of intraspecific behavioral variation is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social Highly recommend! -> Paper identifies neural substrate for variation in promiscuity among Drosophila melanogaster strains🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Strain variation identifies a neural substrate for behavioral evolution in Drosophila
Sexual selection acts on heritable differences within species, driving the parallel diversification of signal production in one sex and behavioral res…
sciencedirect.com
Philipp Brand@pbrand.bsky.social · last yr.Exciting new Ruta lab preprint by @annaryba.bsky.social et al. on the neural underpinnings of intraspecific behavioral variation: Strain variation identifies a neural substrate for behavioral evolution Drosophila www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The first detailed look at how mosquitoes mate from the Vosshall lab reversed the assumption that male mosquitoes control the process, finding that a subtle female behavior dictates if mating will take place or not. #RockefellerScience #YearInReview 🔗: https://bit.ly/4huwEpL
🎉 Thrilled to see our #MosquitoCellAtlas featured on the cover of @cp-cell.bsky.social ! This mosaic represents 367K cells across 19 tissues, unveiling the complex biology that makes mosquitoes the world's deadliest animals. Beautiful art by @somedonkey.bsky.social meets the #Vosshalllab science! 🦟🎨
Cell - a Cell Press journal@cp-cell.bsky.social · 10mo agoNew issue alert! 👉 cell.com/cell/current On the cover: The mosquito mosaic represents the tissues of the atlas presented by Goldman et al. The atlas reveals the complex diversity underlying the mosquito’s remarkable ability to locate human hosts and transmit deadly pathogens
Our preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required. It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
FERAL: A Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping
Animal behavior unfolds continuously in time, yet quantitative analyses often require segmenting it into discrete, interpretable states. Although manual annotation can achieve this, it remains slow, s...
biorxiv.org
I'm happy that I could contribute even a small part to this fantastic and monumental study! Huge shoutout to @oliviagoldman.net @nadavshai.bsky.social and @leslievosshall.bsky.social for their incredible leadership in organizing this massive project!
Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 12mo agoExcited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
The world’s “most dangerous animal” just got easier to study 🦟 HHMI’s @leslievosshall.bsky.social & #VosshallLab at @rockefeller.edu have built the 1st cellular atlas of Aedes aegypti, mapping everything from legs to antennae. Available now to all researchers, & the public: bit.ly/4oO4MzB
Researchers release the world’s first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito - News
The atlas makes the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day.
bit.ly
Great to see that our mosquito cell atlas is now out in Cell. Amazing work from @oliviagoldman.net and @nadavshai.bsky.social to organise so much data and so many interesting stories into a single paper!
Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 12mo agoExcited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
🦟 The mosquito is the most deadly animal in the world. The Mosquito Cell Atlas is an incredible new resource to help us understand more about their ability to transmit pathogens to humans. Data is available on the UC Santa Cruz @genomebrowser.bsky.social at mosquito.cells.ucsc.edu
UCSC Cell Browser
mosquito.cells.ucsc.edu
Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 12mo agoExcited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A real game-changer for the mosquito community - all packed in a beautiful paper!!!!
Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 12mo agoExcited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A global effort, led by @leslievosshall.bsky.social and @nadavshai.bsky.social, just made the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day. Learn more about the first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito, published in @cellpress.bsky.social, below.
Researchers release the world’s first head-to-toe cellular atlas of the mosquito - News
The atlas makes the most dangerous animal in the world a lot easier to study—and perhaps defeat one day.
rockefeller.edu
Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito
A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...
cell.com
🦟 We've just published the world's first head-to-toe single-cell atlas of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in @cp-cell.bsky.social! The #MosquitoCellAtlas maps 69 cell types across 19 tissues, revealing surprising biology. Read it here: shorturl.at/dJWT3
A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito
A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...
cell.com
Mosquito cell atlas is now published! Congratulations to @nadavshai.bsky.social and @oliviagoldman.net and the many other collaborators that contributed to this resource. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito
A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...
cell.com
What does mating look like when you only have a single shot at getting it right? Very excited to share our work on an almost-invisible female control, rapidly evolving mating recognition systems, and species that break the rules and take over the world. IN MOSQUITOES>
The first detailed look at how mosquitoes mate from @leslievosshall.bsky.social's lab reverses the assumption that male mosquitoes control the process, finding that a subtle female behavior dictates whether mating will take place or not. @currentbiology.bsky.social More here: https://bit.ly/4huwEpL
New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from @leslievosshall.bsky.social&@leahhouri.bsky.social: FEMALE mosquitoes control mating, not males, by special genital movement. No elongation = no mating! Plus: male asian tiger mosquitoes can bypass the yellow fever mosquito female control shorturl.at/tsIWH
A rapidly evolving female-controlled lock-and-key mechanism determines Aedes mosquito mating success
Houri-Zeevi et al. uncover a lock-and-key mating system in mosquitoes, where females control mating through genital responses to rapidly evolving male structures. Males of the invasive Asian tiger mos...
cell.com
Meet Gaby Maimon, Director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute (@rockefelleruniv.bsky.social). In his lab, he aims to push the boundaries of brain research.🧠 At the institute, he creates opportunities to support early career researchers. Learn more: bit.ly/3ZwId8h. #KavliNeuro #KavliInstitute
New preprint in the lab combining what we like best: insects, love, chemistry and the olfactory system! 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A covalent recognition strategy enables conspecific mate identification
The olfactory system can detect an uncountable number of volatile molecules while retaining the ability to discriminate amongst very similar ones. We identified a unique mechanism employed by insect o...
biorxiv.org
🦟 Join us at the #VosshallLab @RockefellerUniv and @HHMI as a postdoctoral scientist! We're seeking a creative individual who is enthusiastic about our research in mosquito neurogenetics. Apply: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern... Some of our 2025 cool science>
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
“Okay, they're terrible and they're beautiful, right? It’s like a three-dimensional chess game — and they are 50K steps ahead of us. Everything about them is perfectly designed to get our blood.”— @leslievosshall.bsky.social, HHMI VP & Chief Scientific Officer 🎧 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
NYC Postdocs! Join us for Night Science at the New York Genome Center on June 2nd for a discussion on the creative process of finding novel questions. This time we hit the bar after! Register: docs.google.com/forms/d/1s9W... @stearnslab.bsky.social @kelseymonson.bsky.social @rmassonix.bsky.social
✨🦟✨HOW DO MOSQUITOES HAVE SEX? ✨🦟✨ Join us for a wild journey into hidden female control, rapidly evolving stimulation devices, fierce species competition, and DEADLY MOSQUITOES! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬 But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯 Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread 🧵👇
Science delivers! Time & time again scientists make unexpected & important discoveries when following their curiousity! That's why we're organizing Woodstock Night Science, a reimagined conference to inspire us to new ideas. June 10-13 woodstock.img.cas.cz Join us! #TheConferenceToEndAllConferences
Kavli NSI @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social member & former Director Leslie Vosshall has been awarded the 2025 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience for her groundbreaking work on the neural mechanisms of mosquito behavior. 🦟🔬 Congrats, Dr. Vosshall! 🎉 #Neuroscience #KavliNeuro mcgovern.mit.edu/2025/03/03/l...
Leslie Vosshall awarded the 2025 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience - MIT McGovern Institute
Today the McGovern Institute at MIT announces that the 2025 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience will be awarded to Leslie Vosshall, the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor at The Rockefeller Univers...
mcgovern.mit.edu
Mosquito cell atlas! Congratulations on an incredibly ambitious and well executed project @oliviagoldman.net @nadavshai.bsky.social @leslievosshall.bsky.social et al !!!
Nadav Shai@nadavshai.bsky.social · 2y agoBIG NEWS! The Mosquito Cell Atlas preprint is live! 🦟🧬 My first senior author paper! Massive and accessible snRNA-seq dataset and a lot of cool mosquito biology. A true collaborative achievement! #MCA biorxiv.org/content/10.1... See @oliviagoldman.net thread here
BIG NEWS! The Mosquito Cell Atlas preprint is live! 🦟🧬 My first senior author paper! Massive and accessible snRNA-seq dataset and a lot of cool mosquito biology. A true collaborative achievement! #MCA biorxiv.org/content/10.1... See @oliviagoldman.net thread here
Mosquito Cell Atlas: A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito
The female mosquito’s remarkable ability to hunt humans and transmit pathogens relies on her unique biology. Here, we present the Mosquito Cell Atlas (MCA), a comprehensive single-nucleus RNA sequenci...
biorxiv.org
Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 2y agoI am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research. Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n
