AI-generated image of a lightsaber-wielding figure conquering Portugal.
Preparations for the next JEDI meeting are underway! The upcoming Junior European #Drosophila Investigator / #NewPI meeting is planned for Portugal in June. Final dates and additional details will be announced soon - stay tuned for updates!
Dear JEDIs,
as we are self-organizing using the #EDRC as a nucleator we decided it is time for a JEDI database to boost our network! If you identify as a JEDI, please contact us here or send a mail to katja.rust@uni-marburg.de to be added to our database.
#Drosophila
@fly-eds.bsky.social
Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…
https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share
Devastating loss for one of the most important research model system
If you're into neurodevelopment, neural function and behaviour, this is a fantastic opportunity grounded in solid, impactful previous work!
#Drosophila @flybase.bsky.social requires emergency funding:
"As it stands, by the end of July, 2025, there will be no future updates to #FlyBase, and in the worst case scenario access to the website will also be lost". Please help if you can!
If using Bloomigton #Drosophila Stock Center stocks, pls. acknowledge them & their NIH funding (P40 OD018537). Papers listing this no. are being harvested as evidence. We massively depend on the @bdsc.bsky.social & they need our support in these dire times! @flybase.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social
Last few days to apply!
Post-doctoral position 3 years Wellcome funded in UK
To investigate how experience shapes the brain
Drosophila neurogenetics, imaging, behaviour
Deadline 19/3/25
Pls RP.
#drosophila
#postdoc
#jobs
Apply here
edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
And none of this (with more to come this year! :)) would be possible without the awesome support of Fondation Bettencourt Schueller!
There has never been a better time to study neural circuit development! Are you passionate about the mechanisms underlying wiring specificity? We have exciting projects in the pipeline and are looking for talented colleagues to join our team! Drop me a line if you’re interested!
Thanks to our reviewers whose input helped us significantly improve the manuscript, and to @cellpress.bsky.social for the great experience with the Cell Press Multi-Journal Submission!
In this context, biased adjacency is a contributor in the developmental timeline of synaptic specificity by bringing together the right neurons at the right time and location, thereby restricting partner availability before synaptogenesis. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Given neurons’ intrinsic drive to form synapses, perhaps the establishment of synaptic specificity is best understood as a continuous process of developmental choices where neurons are prevented from connecting with the wrong partners.
Instead, they contribute to synaptic specificity by biasing cellular adjacency—causing neurons to segregate into discrete physical domains and restricting partner availability before synaptogenesis.
We demonstrate that receptor-ligand pairs of the Beat and Side families of cell adhesion molecules, expressed between synaptic partners, are not required for synapse formation.
We now provide a mechanistic understanding of how these interactions shape neural circuit formation, linking these molecules to the cellular interactions they support.
Our study follows Yoo et al. www.cell.com/current-biol..., which first showed that Beat/Side, cell surface adhesion molecules, contribute to synaptic specificity—helping neurons form precise connections with the right partners
In this work, we studied how neurons are organized into layers during development and how this process influences the connections (synapses) they form with each other.
Thrilled to share our lab's first manuscript—now in print! 🎉 This was a true team effort led by two outstanding scientists, Yannick Carrier and Laura Quintana Rio.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....
👋
