Go vote! Go vote!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from my non-Black friends about how to be a better ally to Black people. I suggest unlearning and relearning through literature as just one good jumping off point, and have broken up my anti-racist reading list into sections:

"As yet another Black man suffocates under a policeman’s knee, cities burn, and the coronavirus spreads a disproportionate burden of suffering and death to communities of color, we are in a moment that calls for action." genestogenomes.org/racism-is-ever…

Excited to share my first corresponding author paper now out Neuron Two Brain Pathways Initiate Distinct Forward Walking Programs in Drosophila. see preview thread.. cell.com/neuron/fulltex…

Congratulations to Catherine Dulac - awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for identifying brain circuits that control parenting behavior Harvard University HHMI Catherine Dulac breakthroughprize.org/News/60

Angelika Amon passed away this morning. She was the greatest scientist I’ve ever met. This is a huge loss for her family, her friends, and for every biologist.

I really can’t stress how badly I need the full story, in detail, about the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference.

Amazing work by @Elles8belles to generate a collection of exquisite SEZ split Gal4s. If you study fly feeding, grooming or locomotion, you need this library.

How sweet and bitter tastes and hunger are integrated into a sensorimotor circuit to drive fruit flies to want to feed. elifesciences.org/articles/79887…

By combining connectomic analysis with evaluation of feeding initiation behavior, Philip Shiu and Gabriella Sterne, Ph.D. identify a 5-layer feeding initiation circuit, and find a node where sweet vs. bitter inputs are integrated. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.…

Cool preprint alert: Philip Shiu et al simulate a fly brain using the FlyWire community connectome. Marta Costa Greg Jefferis Alexander Bates Nils Eckstein Jan Funke Salil S Bidaye Stefanie Hampel Andrew Seeds Gabriella Sterne, Ph.D. ++ biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Can brain function be simulated using just the connectome? We show in a new study led by Philip Shiu that a leaky integrate-and-fire model based on the FlyWire connectome and neurotransmitter identity accurately predicts complete sensorimotor transformations.

We are releasing a whole-brain connectome of the fruit fly, including ~130k annotated neurons and tens of millions of typed synapses! Explore the connectome: codex.flywire.ai Reconstruction paper: biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Annotation paper: biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 1/6

Excited to share the first preprint from my lab. A connectome guided effort spanning modeling, behavior and functional imaging that led to uncovering fundamental circuit mechanisms for implementing halting in flies. doi.org/10.1101/2023.0…

Just in time for #cshldros23, we have a new preprint on how sweet taste elicits different behavioral responses. Are different behaviors coordinately regulated? At what point does the sweet-sensing circuit diverge into different behavioral pathways? biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Masterpiece Cakeshop Case Declared Mistrial After Clarence Thomas Tampers With Evidence trib.al/BQ4Zbbq

A friend just showed me this chart from her 8th grade science project and I don't think I've ever loved anything more.