Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #hhmijanelia, aggregated by home.social.
If interested in this topic, Prof. Bing Brunton gave a talk at #Cosyne2026 which is very much worth watching:
https://youtu.be/yhUBq5R01qA?t=3430
Among other topics, Bing presents the minimal network for the oscillatory behaviour that sustains walking, and also the embodiment of a connectome by plugging it into a virtual mechanical model of the fly, #MuJoCo from the #AnyBrain #HHMIJanelia project team.
Science undergrad research program at HHMI Janelia: "a paid, nine-week summer research" at an outstanding research institute.
Deadline: December 22nd, 2025
Note "HHMI does not sponsor visas for this program" – meaning, largely for US students only.
The much awaited connectome of the male central nervous system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster:
"Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system", Berg et al. 2025 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.09.680999v1
"contains 166,696 neurons spanning the brain and ventral nerve cord, fully proofread and comprehensively annotated including fruitless and doublesex expression and 11,691 cell types."
A collaboration between #HHMIJanelia, #MRCLMB and many others.
Andreas Schoofs and Anton Miroschnikow in Michael Pankratz' lab have done an astonishing amount of work manually mapping the peripheral nervous system of the larval #Drosophila, with #CATMAID, in the STEM volume we imaged and they named "Igor". Congrats on seeing this gargantuan project through!
The whole larval volume of "Igor", including all tissues, is available here, courtesy of the #OpenOrganelle project led by Aubrey Weigel @avweigel at #HHMIJanelia:
https://openorganelle.janelia.org/datasets/jrc_fly-larva-1
See it at 5x5x35 nm resolution in #neuroglancer: https://neuroglancer-demo.appspot.com/#!%7B%22dimensions%22:%7B%22x%22:%5B1e-9%2C%22m%22%5D%2C%22y%22:%5B1e-9%2C%22m%22%5D%2C%22z%22:%5B1e-9%2C%22m%22%5D%7D%2C%22position%22:%5B249600.5%2C79040.5%2C84280.5%5D%2C%22crossSectionOrientation%22:%5B0%2C1%2C0%2C0%5D%2C%22crossSectionScale%22:50%2C%22projectionOrientation%22:%5B0%2C1%2C0%2C0%5D%2C%22projectionScale%22:65536%2C%22layers%22:%5B%7B%22type%22:%22image%22%2C%22source%22:%22n5://s3://janelia-cosem-datasets/jrc_fly-larva-1/jrc_fly-larva-1.n5/em/tem-uint8%22%2C%22tab%22:%22rendering%22%2C%22opacity%22:1%2C%22blend%22:%22additive%22%2C%22shader%22:%22#uicontrol%20invlerp%20normalized%28range=%5B0%2C%20255%5D%2C%20window=%5B0%2C%20255%5D%29%5Cn#uicontrol%20vec3%20color%20color%28default=%5C%22white%5C%22%29%5Cnvoid%20main%28%29%7BemitRGB%28color%20%2A%20normalized%28%29%29%3B%7D%22%2C%22name%22:%22tem-uint8%22%7D%5D%2C%22selectedLayer%22:%7B%22visible%22:true%2C%22layer%22:%22tem-uint8%22%7D%2C%22crossSectionBackgroundColor%22:%22#000000%22%2C%22layout%22:%224panel%22%7D (control-minus and control-plus to zoom; mouse click to pan, scroll wheel to browse in Z).
Will appear at the #VirtualFlyBrain website soon as well.
There are many more peripheral nervous system components mapped, yet to be published.
This paper is open access:
"Serotonergic modulation of swallowing in a complete fly vagus nerve connectome", Schoofs et al. 2024 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)01137-0?rss=yes&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
Neuroscientist Nelson Spruston named new executive director of #HHMIJanelia, replacing cell biologist Ron Vale.
#HHMI president's words are as transparent as it gets:
"Erin O’Shea, President of HHMI, said, “Nelson is the right leader at the right time in this next chapter for Janelia. With his deep knowledge about what makes the Janelia model conducive to doing great science, he can help guide Janelia both strategically and operationally to pursue important questions in the life sciences.”"
https://www.janelia.org/news/janelia-names-nelson-spruston-its-third-executive-director
@tmalsburg At #HHMIJanelia, we recognize this. We have professional software developers in our labs, project teams, and facilities. We support junior and senior scientists to publish and maintain their software as open source, and to go the extra mile to make them user friendly with propper installers and docs. E.g. https://janeliascicomp.github.io/ossi-website/projects/
Junior Scientist Workshop on Theoretical Neuroscience at #HHMIJanelia
November 17 - 22, 2024
The latest call for imaging proposals for the Advanced Imaging Center (AIC at #HHMIJanelia) is open.
Deadline is Feb. 1, 2024.
Get to use #HHMIJanelia imaging technology and expertise for free.
Visit http://aicjanelia.org/apply to schedule a technical consultation.
#HHMIJanelia is looking for help to lead diverse annotation projects: https://hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External/job/Scientific-Operations-Manager--PTR-Bioimage-Annotations-and-Analysis_R-2361?locationRegionStateProvince=e0889a76c58d4fff9b54b80dadc49000
We just opened a new call for #HHMIJanelia Theory Fellowships:
https://www.janelia.org/our-research/overview/theory-fellows
Join us and become part of our highly collaborative research community of experimentalists, theorists, computational scientists, and engineers. 3 years fully funded, independently managed budget for research and travel, mentored by Janelia group leaders.
Only two weeks left before our 2023 Group Leader call is closing. Join us at #HHMIJanelia! https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders
Interestingly, that's what Rex Kerr @ichoran did for #Celegans at #HHMIJanelia: keep strains frozen to be able to compare behavioral responses to the same stimuli across generations.
@jenbussell #HHMIJanelia is looking for group leaders https://mastodon.social/@herrsaalfeld/110816555839550349
"Learning produces a hippocampal cognitive map in the form of an orthogonalized state machine" by Sun et al. 2023 (Nelston Spruston lab at #HHMIJanelia) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.03.551900v2
"We show that a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and a biologically plausible recurrent neural network trained using Hebbian learning can both capture core aspects of the learning dynamics and the orthogonalized representational structure in neural activity. In contrast, we show that gradient-based learning of sequence models such as Long Short-Term Memory networks (LSTMs) and Transformers do not naturally produce such representations."
Dissecting neural circuits for cold nociception in the #Drosophila larva, by Atit Patel in D. Cox lab: http://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.31.551339v1
Atit was a visitor of my former lab at #HHMIJanelia. Took years to map the circuit, identify GAL4 lines, design and run behavioral assays and make sense of it all. Atit, a PhD student, did all the mapping and all the experiments and wrote most of the paper, and did a great job at it.
For the insiders: this is about class III md (multidendritic) somatosensory neurons in the fly larva, and their synaptic connectivity, primarily onto various Basin neurons (Ohyama, Schneider-Mizell et al. 2015 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14297 , Jovanic, Schneider-Mizell et al. et al. 2016 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867416312429 ) but also other neurons such as Down-and-Back (Burgos et al. 2018 https://elifesciences.org/articles/26016 ) and PNs of the class IV mds (Gerhard et al. 2017 https://elifesciences.org/articles/29089 ).
In other words, how somatosensoty neurons for cold nociception (class III mds) feed into the local circuits that process nociception (class IV mds) and mechanoreception (chordotonals).
Note this work is unrelated to how the larva senses and responds to cold and warm stimuli (Hernandez-Nunez et al. 2021 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/sciadv.abg6707 )
#HHMIJanelia is looking for new Group Leaders in all research areas! 5+5y 100% internal funding, small labs, time and resources to deeply think and work, wonderful colleagues, highly collaborative, amazing facilities: https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders
The connectome of the adult female fly brain, Drosophila melanogaster:
“Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain” by Dorkenwald et al. 2023 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546656v1
A project that started with Davi Bock and Wei Lee developing the TEMCA for the mouse visual cortex in Clay Reid’s lab (Bock et al. 2011 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09802), then Bock moving to #HHMIJanelia and developing the instrument much further to deliver the #FAFB volume (Zheng et al. 2018 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867418307876 ), and then the Seung, Murthy and Jefferis labs automatically re-registering, segmenting and annotating the whole volume via #FlyWire and more.
Extraordinary!
"Systematic annotation of a complete adult male Drosophila nerve cord connectome reveals principles of functional organisation", by Marin et al. 2023 (Greg Jefferis lab at #MRCLMB in collaboration with #HHMIJanelia and others).
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543407v1
On the analysis of the #Drosophila male adult nerve cord (#MANC), reconstructed from #VolumeEM by Takemura et al. 2023 (preprint still pending to come out).
Experimental instrumentation doesn't have to be expensive: Frank Loesche @fra_loe in the Reiser lab at #HHMIJanelia build "a complete ~$300 system, including a cold-anesthesia tethering stage, that is ideal for hands-on teaching laboratories." And released all the CAD files and software as open source. How cool is that:
"We replaced expensive optomechanical and custom machined components with off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts, and built the system around a low-cost camera that achieves 180 Hz imaging and an inexpensive tablet computer to present view-angle-corrected stimuli updated through a local network."
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.689573/full
Could easily be put to good use to modernize hands-on labs at the undergrad level, perhaps also at the senior high school level.
Ep, catalans! Taller de biofísica teòrica a #HHMIJanelia (prop de Washington DC), amb totes les despeses pagades.
Del 1 al 6 d'octubre d'enguany.
Envieu sol·licituds en anglès fins el 21 de juny, aquí: https://janelia.org/you-janelia/conferences/junior-scientist-workshop-on-theoretical-biophysics
Organitzat per na Ann Hermunstad, en James Fitzgerald i na Allyson Sgro.
#ciència #neurobiologia #biofísica #matemàtiques #modelització
Junior Scientist Workshop on Theoretical Biophysics at #HHMIJanelia
October 1-6, 2023
Apply by June 21st at https://janelia.org/you-janelia/conferences/junior-scientist-workshop-on-theoretical-biophysics
Hotel, food and travel expenses all covered.
Organised by Ann Hermunstad, James Fitzgerald and Allyson Sgro.
Imaging experts: #HHMIJanelia is hiring:
https://www.janelia.org/careers/scientific-imaging-careers-available-at-janelia
Openings in imaging, instrumentation development, sample preparation & biology, and image analysis & software development.
HHMI is raising the entry-level postdoc salary to $70,000.
See the new salary scales: https://hhmi.org/sites/default/files/hhmi-postdoctoral-associate-scale.pdf
I hope the UK takes note. Presently it's about 50% of that figure, despite costs of living being about the same, particularly child care and housing.
But HHMI goes beyond that: there's flexibility to bring in entry-level postdocs at $91,000 when under heavy competition from industry (i.e., computer scientists).
#HHMIJanelia has had this flexibility–using fancy alternative job descriptions–since at least 2012 and likely earlier. I know first hand, from having run a lab there.
#HHMI #postdoc #academia #UK #USA
https://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmi-announces-postdoc-salary-changes
Harald Hess awarded the 2023 James Prize in Science and Technology Integration by the US National Academy of Sciences: https://www.nasonline.org/programs/awards/2023-awards/Hess.html
At #HHMIJanelia, the lab of Harald Hess revolutionized electron microscopy with enhanced FIBSEM (C. Shan Xu et al. 2017 @eLife https://elifesciences.org/articles/25916 ) –now in use by us at #MRCLMB, and applied to #Drosophila #connectomics; built an automated STEM to image the whole #Drosophila larval body at 5x5x35 nm; and so much more. Hats off! Congratulations!