Scientists, artists, and educators now have free access to more than 2000 high-resolution 3D ant models covering most ant genera, created from micro-CT scans. Read more about the revolutionary Antscan project in a new @natmethods.nature.com study @economo.bsky.social www.oist.jp/news-center/...
#Dros26 Day 2
What antibodies do you wish we had? Comment below your antibody wishlist!
📸 Drosophila egg chamber labeled with DSHB anti-hts in yellow
🧫 dshb.biology.uiowa.edu/hts-RC
Woohoo 🎉🎉 congratulations
Quick plug for our new resource, the Drosophila Species Stock Exchange. This is a database and mailing list that documents species currently in culture and the labs holding them. If you want to know more or sign up then please get in touch. See attached for more info and please share!
Picture of Sarah
Talk slide title with images of testis defects
If you're at #Dros26 and are interested in how cells change shape & move during morphogenesis & how different classic cadherins influence different cell behaviors, check out the talk by @saraheclark.bsky.social in Cell Biology: Cytoskeleton, Organelles, & Trafficking II Sat 9:15 🧪
A phylogenetic tree of insects is shown annotating the presence or absence of a an antimicrobial peptide gene across winged insects
Various phylogenetic secondary loss events are mapped to a tree of insects to explain the parsimony calculations necessary to explain the diversity of insect Drosomycin antimicrobial peptide genes
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are key defence molecules of the innate immune system of plants and animals. Understanding the evolutionary origins of AMPs can help to explain how immune systems acquire novelty and vary in their defensive capabilities. However, AMPs evolve rapidly, and so the origins of similar AMPs across organisms is often unclear. Furthermore, false negatives due to low search sensitivity are common and can hinder confident annotations about true absences. Due to these difficulties, understanding whether similar AMP genes found in diverse organisms represent ancestral molecules or evolutionary novelties has been challenging. In this report, we present evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin across insects. We show that in Diptera, the presence of Drosomycin is restricted to the Melanogaster group and additionally the distant relative Drosophila busckii. We go on to recover Drosomycin genes in cockroaches (Blattodea), mantises (Mantodea), one katydid (Orthoptera), various beetles (Coleoptera), and a recently acquired pseudogenized Drosomycin locus in Liposcelis booklice (Psocodea), but no other insects. Explaining this diversity through shared ancestry requires at least 50 independent loss events, or just seven HGT events. Previous studies have suggested that similar AMPs found across divergent species reflect conservation from a common ancestor, or due to their small size, that they arose via convergent evolution resulting from pathogen-imposed selection. Our findings suggest horizontal gene transfer can be responsible for the presence of some AMP genes found scattered across the tree of life. By presenting a mechanism through which immune systems can acquire novelty, our study also suggests a possible explanation for certain lineage-specific competencies for defence against infectious disease. While loss of AMP genes is common in certain lineages, here we suggest gain of AMPs can occur just as suddenly.
Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23
@cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun).
Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects
bit.ly/DrsHGT
1/🧵
Léa Marpeaux, Claire Baudouin, Gregory Emery @emery-lab.bsky.social and colleagues @umontreal.ca identify an apical supracellular actin network in epithelial cells that acts as a long-range force transmission device.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
reason #753 why the FLY community is THE BEST! #FlyCROSS is the initiative of grad student Shefali @iamshef.bsky.social to match early stage fly researchers with experienced scientists aligned to their interests and goals. nearly 200 mentors and mentees signed up this year! see you all at #Dros26 🪰💪
So the war that does not have congressional approval, already has Canadian approval? Are we just going to knock over liquor stores with Trump next?
Terrible headline (this is NOT what the new research - link below - shows!), terrible AI image! Argh!
Here’s the actual research:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Where do I start?! 1/4
Highly recommend all Nova Scotians read this article by @timbousquet.bsky.social @halifaxexaminer.ca for a clear-eyed analysis of what’s happening here. Link in next post.
its going to be fun and the venue is fancy. A student in my lab is bringing a poster
Looking forward to the Brain Repair Centre at Dalhousie University Research Day this Friday Feb 27. Special guests are Dr. Stephanie Borgland @borglandlab.bsky.social and Dr. Pete Chipman.
#Neuroscience 🧪
@brchfx.bsky.social @dalhousie.bsky.social
FREE PUBLIC LECTURE: Monday, March 2 (2026) at 7:30 PM (Atlantic Time)
How Humans Unintentionally Affect Wildlife Evolution
This lecture can be accessed via Zoom at our website: nsis1862.ca/public-lectu... or in-person at Dalhousie University Killam Library room 2622.
Join us for a day of talks, posters, and discussions, featuring a morning joint lecture with Nobel Laureates Eric F. Wieschaus and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard!
Date: Monday, May 4th, 2026
Location: University of Copenhagen, Mærsk Tower
sites.google.com/view/emergin...
Free to participate
Check out our new publication @dev-journal.bsky.social! If you thought that cell divisions challenge tissue boundaries ... you got half of the story! Using in vivo quantitative microscopy and math. modelling we show that divisions fluidize tissues and facilitate boundary refinement. 🧪 #drosophila
REMINDER: The deadline to apply for Fly School is 28 Feb.
Visit dipterists.org/fly_school.h... for info & application.
Photo by @bertonemyia.bsky.social
Our latest preprint list is up on FocalPlane.
This list is focussed on new tools and techniques in imaging. Let us know if you have any recommendations for us to add.
focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/20/m...
Drosophila folks! We just shared a new protocol for surgical preparation that enables long-term imaging in adult flies. It’s low-cost, simple, and highly repeatable. For demonstration, we show a 10-day voltage imaging and a 1-week population calcium imaging results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Time-calibrated phylogeny of the family Drosophilidae showing major species groups, surrounded by representative adult flies that highlight the remarkable morphological diversity of this model insect group. The composite image was created using Microsoft PowerPoint. Fly photographs were taken by Darren J. Obbard and are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License with permission.
The #fly community aims to achieve a comprehensive genomic study of the Drosophilidae family. @pankajd.bsky.social @bernardkim.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social @darrenobbard.bsky.social present a comparative gene annotation for 301 #Drosophilidae species @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c3pyrI
You need to hear the goal call in Inuktitut.
Wilfrid Laurier Contract Faculty may be on strike as soon as this Mon, Feb 23. They teach ~40% of undergraduate courses at Laurier, yet account for less than 6% of the university's operating budget. Support their efforts and join this letter writing campaign: actionnetwork.org/letters/4dea...
Are you a Drosophila researcher & member of @genetics-gsa.bsky.social (at any level of training)?
Please vote in the Flyboard elections (we have an amazing slate of candidates) before Feb 20, 2026. Please check your email or go to this website to vote: genetics-gsa.org/2026-fly-boa...
Pl repost.
Our take on a really interesting new study by the Franz lab at UCL, a version of epithelial polarity where you would not expect it! Read our Spotlight and the original paper!
i don't know. I'm just surprised it changed so drastically in one year.
its depressing to see how little this conversation has moved toward a real solution
Maybe they changed the reviewing guidelines
Transit advocates decry Halifax mayor's autocentric plan to address traffic congestion by providing more space for cars
"If transit is to work it must be freed from having to compete with cars for existing road space. That means bus lanes or other forms of separated rights of way"
– February 1974
yes we should! The bottleneck is probably drawing
This graph basically shows that the MSCA are, as of now, useless unless the EU governance does something about it 🧪
