Priscilla Akyaw
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abenaakyaw.bsky.social
Priscilla Akyaw
@abenaakyaw.bsky.social
160 followers 330 following 10 posts
Science apprentice, @IGCiencia ,#Drosophila #infection, #immunity, and #evolution. Saturday is for football ⚽️ Still #MUFC❤
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Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
luismsilva.bsky.social
Interested in #virulence? Not sure what it is - or how to explain it? Just curious? 🧐🦠🧬🦋

@kayla-king.bsky.social and I just wrote a Primer for @currentbiology.bsky.social on the ecology and evolution of virulence!

Check it below and share :)

#MicroSky #EvoSky #pathogens
Ecology and evolution of virulence
Silva and King discuss the concept of virulence and the ecological and evolutionary factors that shape it.
www.cell.com
September 22, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
thetransmitter.bsky.social
New research finds that sleeping fruit fly brains respond to sensory stimuli just like vertebrates, pointing to evolutionarily conserved neural signatures of sleep.

By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/sleep/drosop...
Drosophila, like vertebrates, filter sensory information during sleep
Predictive sensory processing in sleeping Drosophila echoes vertebrate research, establishing an evolutionarily conserved neural signature of sleep.
www.thetransmitter.org
July 8, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
mads100tist.bsky.social
Did you know? 🧪 "The Interactive Fly" is a wonderful website hosted by @socdevbio.bsky.social where you can learn about their development, the history of gene discovery/name, and it is full of super useful resources for the #DevBio community 🪰https://www.sdbonline.org/sites/fly/aimain/1aahome.htm
A screencapture of the page dedicated to the transcription factor isl1/tailup. There is information about the flybase ID, function, classification, keywords, and a very long wall of text under BIOLOGICAL OVERVIEW. Fly people rock tbh The Interactive Fly logo, showing a cartoon of two adult Drosophila melanogaster on a yellow background. There's subtext that reads "A cyberspace guide to Drosophila development and metazoan evolution".
May 27, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
hansonmark.bsky.social
The final piece in a 27-year fly immunity puzzle.

Yao describes "Paillotin" (Pai), the name given to #Drosophila "IM18." With this paper, all 24 Immune-induced Molecules (IMs) from Uttenweiler-Joseph et al. (1998) have been named & characterized. 🎊

Pai is an HDP conserved across fly 🪰 species

1/n
Functional Characterization of Paillotin: An Immune Peptide Regulated by the Imd Pathway with Pathogen-Specific Roles in Drosophila Immunity
Insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, rely on innate immune defenses to combat microbial threats. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) play an important role in limiting pathogen entry and colonization. ...
www.biorxiv.org
May 15, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
symbnet.bsky.social
📢 Meet the speakers of the 2025 SymbNET Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses gimm.idloom.events/phd-summer-s... 👉 Know more about Jewelna: noguchi.ug.edu.gh/fellows/dr-j...

#SymbioSky #MicroSky
Jewelna Akorli is a Principal Investigator and Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow at the University of Ghana. Her work centers on mosquito-associated endosymbionts and variations in vector competence in natural mosquito populations.
March 19, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
lmvteixeira.bsky.social
SymbNET PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses 2025 with great lecturers:
J. Akorli,
@berasymbionts.bsky.social,
M. Blaser,
T. Bosch,
@nicoledubilier.bsky.social,
@fkttkm.bsky.social,
I. Gabanyi,
G. Dominguez-Bello,
and... 1/2

#SymbioSky #MicroSky gimm.idloom.events/phd-summer-s...
PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses 2025
Symbnet PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) & Católica Biomedical Research Centre (CBR) July 06...
gimm.idloom.events
March 17, 2025 at 12:55 PM
abenaakyaw.bsky.social
Time to give an update on the fantastic work by @taniafpaulo.bsky.social during her PhD, now published in @royalsocietypublishing.org on the evolution of resistance and disease tolerance mechanisms to oral infection in #Drosophila
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
#infection #immunity 🤓🎊
Evolution of resistance and disease tolerance mechanisms to oral bacterial infection in Drosophila melanogaster | Open Biology
Pathogens exert strong selection on hosts that evolve and deploy different defensive strategies, namely minimizing pathogen exposure (avoidance), directly promoting pathogen elimination (resistance) a...
royalsocietypublishing.org
March 15, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
hansonmark.bsky.social
This #InternationalWomensDay I want to tell the story of Lilian Vaughan Morgan. I learned of Lilian this past year - what a badass.

Lilian was a leading scientist when women weren't welcome in the lab, nor even the department. But she contributed immensely to the genetics of sex determination

1/n
A photo of a young Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting with a book on her lab staring into the distance. A photo of an older Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting at a lab bench with a microscope and dozens of glass milk bottles bunged with cotton. Lilian is in the middle of applying ether to anaesthetize a bottle of flies.
March 8, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
hansonmark.bsky.social
The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on?

direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A 🧵 1/n
#AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub
November 19, 2024 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
pfvale.bsky.social
PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses. Awesome topic. Unbeatable location.

#symbiosky #microsky #evobio

gimm.idloom.events/phd-summer-s...
PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses 2025
PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) & Católica Biomedical Research Centre (CBR) July 06 -19, 202...
gimm.idloom.events
February 6, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
blongdon.bsky.social
Workshop on ecological & evolutionary immunology/insect immunity. 15-19th Sept 2025 - Werbellinsee, Germany, organised by Sophie Armitage and Jens Rolff. Abstract deadline start of March www.bcp.fu-berlin.de/en/biologie/...
Home
www.bcp.fu-berlin.de
January 28, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
plantevolution.bsky.social
To US colleagues who have lost or are in imminent danger of losing their jobs: please DM whether we can accommodate your research.
German and US flags
February 15, 2025 at 1:18 PM
abenaakyaw.bsky.social
I am very happy to see this first part of my PhD work go online now! 💃🏾 We explored alternative strategies to elicit #diseasetolerance in #Drosophila melanogaster in response to oral #infection with a natural bacterial #pathogen, #Pseudomonas entomophila. (Thread)
biorxivpreprint.bsky.social bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · Feb 5
Pathogen-Induced Damage in Drosophila: Uncoupling Disease Tolerance from Resistance https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.31.635923v1
February 6, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
cyrilpedia.bsky.social
'The problem is compounded by the matter of communication. Science is nuanced. New evidence often complicates established research findings, experts disagree over what lessons to draw from the evidence, and news outlets favor eye-catching studies over rigorous methodology.'
The dangers of keeping epidemiology the “hidden science”
Caitlin Rivers wants to tell the story of epidemiology and the public health heroes who keep the world safe and healthy.
bigthink.com
January 10, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social
Experimental evolution of a pathogen confronted with innate immune memory increases variation in virulence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.20.629598v1
December 23, 2024 at 12:32 AM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
boghuma.bsky.social
Is it more than malaria?
Hemorrhagic fever concerns resurface in panzi, DRC outbreak.
apnews.com/article/cong...
Congo man dies with hemorrhagic fever, indicating mystery outbreak could be more than just malaria
A man in western Congo has died with hemorrhagic fever symptoms. Health authorities say that has led them to suspect that a still-unidentified virus may be involved alongside malaria in a mysterious o...
apnews.com
December 21, 2024 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
pfvale.bsky.social
"What makes a super-spreader? Unravelling the genetics of host infectiousness"

Funded #PhD position in my lab exploring the drivers of host heterogeneity in pathogen transmission. Get in touch if interested. Deadline 17 Jan 2025.

#HostPathogen #DiseaseEcology

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
EastBio: What makes a super-spreader? Unravelling the genetics of host infectiousness. at University of Edinburgh on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - EastBio: What makes a super-spreader? Unravelling the genetics of host infectiousness. at University of Edinburgh, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
December 11, 2024 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
joelmarthelot.bsky.social
Fresh off the press, our work on wing deployment in Drosophila 🪰:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Work by: Simon Hadjaje, Ignacio Andrade-Silva, Marie-Julie Dalbe and Raphaël Clément
December 11, 2024 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
interactivefly.bsky.social
Grmai, L., Michaca, M., Lackner, E., Nampoothiri, V. P. N., Vasudevan, D. (2024). Integrated stress response signaling acts as a metabolic sensor in fat tissues to regulate oocyte maturation and ovulation. Cell Rep, 43(3):113863 www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Integrated stress response signaling acts as a metabolic sensor in fat tissues to regulate oocyte maturation and ovulation
Across phyla, female reproduction is intimately tied to nutrient availability. Here, Grmai et al. demonstrate that the evolutionarily conserved integrated stress response acts a nutrient sensor in Drosophila fat tissues to regulate female reproduction via two ways: by regulating yolk production and by modulating neurons responsible for egg laying.
www.cell.com
December 13, 2024 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
loicaroyer.bsky.social
The birth of fruit fly's central nervous system imaged with multicolor #adaptive #lightsheet microscopy. The microscope self-aligns to a signal that appears during imaging.

www.nature.com/articles/nbt...
December 11, 2024 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
brockhurstlab.bsky.social
Keeping your symbiosis genes on a plasmid is a smart move if you have multiple potential hosts. Here a gut bacterial symbiont, but same is true for N-fixing Rhizobia.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity
Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...
www.science.org
December 7, 2024 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
francoisleulier.bsky.social
Drosophila and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in the spotlight (again), what a wonderful model (disclaimer I am biased ;-) ).

Congrats Will and team!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity
Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...
www.science.org
December 6, 2024 at 3:22 PM
abenaakyaw.bsky.social
Remind me again, why are there no emojis for the fruity? 😟 #drosophila #modelorganism #Nobelprize
November 29, 2024 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Priscilla Akyaw
tiandonaldson.bsky.social
Dear grad students,

Don’t go into the lab tomorrow. Put the thesis away. That data analysis can wait too. Spend time with your loved ones/take a day of rest. The science will be there when you get back.

Sincerely,
A retired grad student
November 27, 2024 at 6:13 PM
abenaakyaw.bsky.social
This is so cool!🤩
rister.bsky.social Jens Rister @rister.bsky.social · Nov 26
🧪Party on the left, business on the right! 😎 Graduate student Heena Khurana found this interesting mutant:
#Science
#Drosophila
#scicomm
#Flyeyes
November 27, 2024 at 10:17 AM