Giorgio Gilestro
boosted
multiple #drosophila #sleep #PhD opportunities at @giorgiogilestro lab https://lab.gilest.ro/jobs/
multiple #drosophila #sleep #PhD opportunities at @giorgiogilestro lab https://lab.gilest.ro/jobs/
jonny (good kind)
boosted
Axons and dendrites are fundamentally different. An example from #Drosophila:
"axons and dendrites can accumulate different microtubule-binding proteins; protein synthesis machinery is concentrated in the cell body; pre- and post-synaptic sites localize to distinct regions of the neuron; and specializations similar to the initial segment are present. In addition, we track EB1-GFP dynamics and determine microtubules in axons and dendrites have opposite polarity."
"Polarity and intracellular compartmentalization of Drosophila neurons", Rolls et al. 2007
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1749-8104-2-7
To collapse axons and dendrites into point neurons in a simulation of neural circuits is, at this point, malpractice.
Axons and dendrites are fundamentally different. An example from #Drosophila:
"axons and dendrites can accumulate different microtubule-binding proteins; protein synthesis machinery is concentrated in the cell body; pre- and post-synaptic sites localize to distinct regions of the neuron; and specializations similar to the initial segment are present. In addition, we track EB1-GFP dynamics and determine microtubules in axons and dendrites have opposite polarity."
"Polarity and intracellular compartmentalization of Drosophila neurons", Rolls et al. 2007
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1749-8104-2-7
To collapse axons and dendrites into point neurons in a simulation of neural circuits is, at this point, malpractice.
How do we make sense of the body of scientific literature that is growing explosively to the point where no individual could read all the relevant papers, and is contaminated with fraudulent and LLM-generated papers? I think that science is not currently equipped to deal with this, and we need to.
I think a critical part will be post-publication peer review. With such rapid growth and time pressure on scientists, pre-publication PR cannot maintain sufficient standards so we need a way to make the informal networked review (journal clubs, conference chats etc.) more transparent and shared.
We also need ways to summarise and make connections between many related papers. I know that many people are hoping that LLMs will step up into this role, but right now that seems very risky and I don't see that changing any time soon.
LLMs are too distracted by surface level presentation, and can be manipulated at scale by iterating over multiple presentations until the LLM summarises it in the way you want it to. In addition, they're known to have problematic biases, and it's unclear if this can be fixed.
I think we need to be experimenting with ways to distribute the work of summarising and making connections between papers, and aggregating that into a collective understanding. An individual can't read all the papers, but collectively we can and already are. We just need ways to integrate that.
In principle we could do this with a post-publication peer review system that allows reviewers to annotate with connections, e.g. in reviewing paper X you create a formal link saying that part of this paper is similar to paper Y, or uses the same technique, etc.
One issue is that these annotations might become corrupted or manipulated in the same way that papers, journals and peer review have been. How do we fix that? It's not ideal, but one option might be some form of trust network: I trust X, they trust Y and thereore I (to a lesser extent) trust Y.
This would mean our summary or evaluation of the literature would depend on our individual trust network. But, this isn't a bad thing in principle. Diversity of opinion is good: there shouldn't be one definitive reference summary because that's a single point of failure and target for manipulation.
All these ideas require experimentation, and both technology development and a cultural shift towards collectively taking responsibility for doing this work. I think we need to do it and would love to hear others' ideas about how to do it and how to convince everyone that we need to.
@neuralreckoning it is perhaps very niche thing but @FlyBase is doing some part of this connection thing at least for researchers using #drosophila, they have a team dedicated to read every @flypapers and manually note down the phenotype and the genotypes it related in a database and the end user can very easily see all this compiled together, and you would very clearly see the consensus impact or "function" of a gene, and also some odd finding.
Note: Flybase is under threat!!
Ulrike Hahn
boosted
Hello #Neuroscience mastodon,
we have a BBSRC funded #Phd position open!
A cool project utilise #Drosophila transcriptome and connectome to map out the novel #sleep controlling visual pathway!
see details here:
https://www.kofanchenlab.net/come-join-us
please boost and spread the words!
* same research theme is also eligible for CSC funding
manisha
boosted
📰 "Nighttime sleep modulates mechanosensory habituation in Drosophila"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688779v1?rss=1
#Drosophila #Sensory
#Sleep
#Adult
RE: https://biologists.social/@flypapers/115569259745171322
I am very happy to be part of this work with my old UCL mate Simon Lowe and James Jepson, showing that sleep and habituation are linked! #drosophila #sleep #habituation
📰 "Nighttime sleep modulates mechanosensory habituation in Drosophila"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688779v1?rss=1
#Drosophila #Sensory
#Sleep
#Adult
RE: https://biologists.social/@flypapers/115569259745171322
I am very happy to be part of this work with my old UCL mate Simon Lowe and James Jepson, showing that sleep and habituation are linked! #drosophila #sleep #habituation
📰 "Nighttime sleep modulates mechanosensory habituation in Drosophila"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688779v1?rss=1
#Drosophila #Sensory
#Sleep
#Adult
Fabrizio Musacchio
and 2 others
boosted
I am glad to say that the first manuscript from the lab is now available on BioRxiv
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685496v1
We set out to answer a simple question:
If the fruit fly #Drosophila cannot see clearly, how would they #sleep ?
1/8
I am glad to say that the first manuscript from the lab is now available on BioRxiv
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685496v1
We set out to answer a simple question:
If the fruit fly #Drosophila cannot see clearly, how would they #sleep ?
1/8
Hello #Neuroscience mastodon,
we have a BBSRC funded #Phd position open!
A cool project utilise #Drosophila transcriptome and connectome to map out the novel #sleep controlling visual pathway!
see details here:
https://www.kofanchenlab.net/come-join-us
please boost and spread the words!
* same research theme is also eligible for CSC funding
Björn Brembs
and 1 other
boosted
@alex_p_roe Speaking of fruit fly research, you'd be amused or surprised to learn that the original U-net architecture (which today powers stable diffusion, among many other machine learning techniques) introduced in a paper by Ronneberger et al. (2015; https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04597 ) was developed to perform image segmentation of fly neural tissue as imaged with electron microscopy, to reconstruct neurons and therefore map the brain connectome.
So all those "wasteful" research funding grants to fruit fly research motivated and led to the biggest discovery fueling the whole of the modern "AI" boom. One never knows where basic research will lead, it's impossible to predict. Hence basic research is not at all wasteful, on the contrary, it's essential, it's the foundation of a rich, wealthy, creative society. And also very cheap, comparatively: https://albert.rierol.net/tell/20160601_Unintended_consequences_of_untimely_research.html
Search also for the returns on the human genome project, or on the humble origins of DNA sequencing, to name just two among many.
@alex_p_roe Speaking of fruit fly research, you'd be amused or surprised to learn that the original U-net architecture (which today powers stable diffusion, among many other machine learning techniques) introduced in a paper by Ronneberger et al. (2015; https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04597 ) was developed to perform image segmentation of fly neural tissue as imaged with electron microscopy, to reconstruct neurons and therefore map the brain connectome.
So all those "wasteful" research funding grants to fruit fly research motivated and led to the biggest discovery fueling the whole of the modern "AI" boom. One never knows where basic research will lead, it's impossible to predict. Hence basic research is not at all wasteful, on the contrary, it's essential, it's the foundation of a rich, wealthy, creative society. And also very cheap, comparatively: https://albert.rierol.net/tell/20160601_Unintended_consequences_of_untimely_research.html
Search also for the returns on the human genome project, or on the humble origins of DNA sequencing, to name just two among many.
100 years of #quantummechanics this year! Werner Heisenberg introduced fundamental uncertainty into physics and demolished Newtons clockwork.
Few people know that Werner Heisenberg's youngest son Martin spent his career introducing uncertainty into #neuroscience studying #drosophila fruit flies.
His experiments can tell us a lot about how human brains work. I think we ought to embrace the uncertainty!
Julio J.
boosted
Hacer un doctorado en ciencias tiene un poco de apostolado.
Hoy, como #orientadororgulloso me doy el gusto de compartir el #preprint del segundo artículo del doctorado de Cristina Parada. 
Poco se sabe del gen Ptr, aunque perderlo es, casi seguro, una condena a muerte antes de nacer (afecta seriamente los músculos, y probablemente el desarrollo del sistema nervioso entre otras cosas).
Usando moscas de la fruta, un bichito conveniente y barato, Cristina y un gran equipo descubrieron que una mutación en Ptr altera la maduración y dinámica de las células del sistema inmunitario.
Cuánto pueda decirnos esto de alteraciones más profundas del sistema inmunitario está por verse, pero es sin duda un hallazgo importante.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.03.662979v1
@constanzasilvera
#pedeciba #biologia #phd #doctorado #ciencias #drosophila #drosophilamelanogaster #iibce #biorxivpreprint @biorxiv_devbio @flypapers #udelar #posgrado #mujeresenciencias#biologíadeldesarrollo #development #biologiacelular #madeinuruguay#Uruguay
Hacer un doctorado en ciencias tiene un poco de apostolado.
Hoy, como #orientadororgulloso me doy el gusto de compartir el #preprint del segundo artículo del doctorado de Cristina Parada.
Poco se sabe del gen Ptr, aunque perderlo es, casi seguro, una condena a muerte antes de nacer (afecta seriamente los músculos, y probablemente el desarrollo del sistema nervioso entre otras cosas).
Usando moscas de la fruta, un bichito conveniente y barato, Cristina y un gran equipo descubrieron que una mutación en Ptr altera la maduración y dinámica de las células del sistema inmunitario.
Cuánto pueda decirnos esto de alteraciones más profundas del sistema inmunitario está por verse, pero es sin duda un hallazgo importante.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.03.662979v1
@constanzasilvera
#pedeciba #biologia #phd #doctorado #ciencias #drosophila #drosophilamelanogaster #iibce #biorxivpreprint @biorxiv_devbio @flypapers #udelar #posgrado #mujeresenciencias#biologíadeldesarrollo #development #biologiacelular #madeinuruguay#Uruguay