Jan M. Ache
@jan-ache.bsky.social
Happy to share our current opinion on the insulin and octopamine systems and their role in shaping neuronal circuits, energy homeostasis, and behavior in #Drosophila, other insects, and 🧑🦱.
Just out: Our review on how insulin and octopamine tune locomotion and feeding in insects. We cover conserved mechanisms and present new insights showing how emerging datasets connect circuit dynamics across timescales.
It was a fun process and I learnt a ton!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
It was a fun process and I learnt a ton!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The role of insulin and octopamine in regulating energy homeostasis and locomotion in insects
Maintaining energy homeostasis is a fundamental requirement for survival. At the core, animals must balance periods of food-searching and feeding with…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 18, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Happy to share our current opinion on the insulin and octopamine systems and their role in shaping neuronal circuits, energy homeostasis, and behavior in #Drosophila, other insects, and 🧑🦱.
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....
Male CNS Connectome
A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...
www.janelia.org
October 5, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
September 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Couldn’t be more excited about this paradigm shifting result.
September 15, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Couldn’t be more excited about this paradigm shifting result.
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
🪰 How do dozens of tiny fly muscles cooperate to move a leg?
We’re excited to share the first 3D, data-driven musculoskeletal model of Drosophila legs based on Hill-type muscles, running in OpenSim and MuJoCo simulation environments.
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06426
We’re excited to share the first 3D, data-driven musculoskeletal model of Drosophila legs based on Hill-type muscles, running in OpenSim and MuJoCo simulation environments.
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06426
September 12, 2025 at 9:26 PM
🪰 How do dozens of tiny fly muscles cooperate to move a leg?
We’re excited to share the first 3D, data-driven musculoskeletal model of Drosophila legs based on Hill-type muscles, running in OpenSim and MuJoCo simulation environments.
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06426
We’re excited to share the first 3D, data-driven musculoskeletal model of Drosophila legs based on Hill-type muscles, running in OpenSim and MuJoCo simulation environments.
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06426
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
Harvard University lays off fly database team
The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.
www.thetransmitter.org
August 13, 2025 at 7:32 PM
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..
a baby wearing a black space racer shirt
ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt
media.tenor.com
July 28, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
This isn't a coincidence, IMO. The fly community is generally super rigorous - because there are so many tools and techniques available, people expect you to really nail things in order to get published (and keep getting funded)
Model organism communities are fantastic. Good work, "Drosophilists"! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Giant study finds a research field that’s mostly reproducible
Researchers assessed more than 1,000 results from fruit-fly immunity research published between 1959 and 2011. The majority of findings look verifiable.
www.nature.com
July 16, 2025 at 7:17 PM
This isn't a coincidence, IMO. The fly community is generally super rigorous - because there are so many tools and techniques available, people expect you to really nail things in order to get published (and keep getting funded)
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
We're hiring! Two exciting opportunities in our Lab @unibirmingham.bsky.social
Come work with us on decision-making and neural circuits in Drosophila. Please share!
Senior Research Technician + Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Deadline: 10 July
More info here: www.rezavallab.org
Come work with us on decision-making and neural circuits in Drosophila. Please share!
Senior Research Technician + Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Deadline: 10 July
More info here: www.rezavallab.org
June 26, 2025 at 10:34 AM
We're hiring! Two exciting opportunities in our Lab @unibirmingham.bsky.social
Come work with us on decision-making and neural circuits in Drosophila. Please share!
Senior Research Technician + Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Deadline: 10 July
More info here: www.rezavallab.org
Come work with us on decision-making and neural circuits in Drosophila. Please share!
Senior Research Technician + Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Deadline: 10 July
More info here: www.rezavallab.org
Very happy to share that the awesome @merterginkaya.bsky.social was awarded a @dfg.de #WalterBenjamin scholarship for his postdoc project on mechanisms for action-selection in visual sensorimotor pathways. The more Mert the better. 🎉
June 26, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Very happy to share that the awesome @merterginkaya.bsky.social was awarded a @dfg.de #WalterBenjamin scholarship for his postdoc project on mechanisms for action-selection in visual sensorimotor pathways. The more Mert the better. 🎉
It’s a wrap for the 2025 Crete Fly Circuits meeting! Huge thanks to our friends at the OAC for hosting us, our fantastic speakers for sharing their latest and greatest unpublished works, and to Eugenia, Marion, Nilay, and Richard for the fun we had organizing this. See you all in 2027!
June 21, 2025 at 6:43 AM
It’s a wrap for the 2025 Crete Fly Circuits meeting! Huge thanks to our friends at the OAC for hosting us, our fantastic speakers for sharing their latest and greatest unpublished works, and to Eugenia, Marion, Nilay, and Richard for the fun we had organizing this. See you all in 2027!
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Sexual dimorphism arises not through wholesale transcriptional reprogramming, but via selective sex-specific survival of neurons defined by birth order and shared developmental programs.
A Role for Exaptation in Sculpting Sexually Dimorphic Brains from Shared Neural Lineages
Sex differences in behaviours arise from variations in female and male nervous systems, yet the cellular and molecular bases of these differences remain poorly defined. Here, we take an unbiased, sing...
www.biorxiv.org
June 9, 2025 at 1:12 PM
New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Sexual dimorphism arises not through wholesale transcriptional reprogramming, but via selective sex-specific survival of neurons defined by birth order and shared developmental programs.
The sky knows what’s up. Happy #pridemonth! 🌈
June 8, 2025 at 6:04 PM
The sky knows what’s up. Happy #pridemonth! 🌈
Very happy that we were able to contribute a few recordings from our favorite #insulin producing cells to this great story from @buelowlab.bsky.social!
I am very excited to share our latest preprint on peroxisome-Golgi interaction in dilp secretion. Great work by lab members @kucharowski.bsky.social, the incredible Marie, @darladr.bsky.social, @buelowt.bsky.social and fantastic collaboration with @jan-ache.bsky.social-Lab and Kuerschner-lab
May 28, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Very happy that we were able to contribute a few recordings from our favorite #insulin producing cells to this great story from @buelowlab.bsky.social!
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
Hey spinal/ventral nerve cord folks. we’re organizing this cross species “cords” meeting @hhmijanelia.bsky.social . Hurry up and upload your abstracts. As a trainee these were my favorite meetings (small and focused) where I got the most useful feedback. DM in case of any Qs.
📢 Applications are now open for our cross-disciplinary conference on nerve cord circuits.
🧠 Join experts to probe the organization & function of cord circuits across species.
🏨 Hotel, meals & registration covered.
🗓️ Apply by May 27 @ janelia.news/CRD25
@hhmi.org
@salilbidaye.bsky.social
🧠 Join experts to probe the organization & function of cord circuits across species.
🏨 Hotel, meals & registration covered.
🗓️ Apply by May 27 @ janelia.news/CRD25
@hhmi.org
@salilbidaye.bsky.social
May 16, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Hey spinal/ventral nerve cord folks. we’re organizing this cross species “cords” meeting @hhmijanelia.bsky.social . Hurry up and upload your abstracts. As a trainee these were my favorite meetings (small and focused) where I got the most useful feedback. DM in case of any Qs.
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
#CharlotteFörster #Farewell #Symposium #Chronobiology #GermanClockClub2025 #CircadianClock #Drosophila #Fruitfly #Würzburg #KatharinaBeer #RudolfoCosta #BambosKyriacou #OrieSchäfer #MonikaStengl #SheebaVasu #TaishiYoshii #CharlotteHelfrichFörster #Circadia_Clock @uni-wuerzburg.de
May 14, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
Excited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky!
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...
🪰How does a fruit fly walk or fly in a perfectly straight line — even at high speed? It’s not just sharp vision. A sophisticated neural computation is at work.
🧠New study led by @champalimaudf.bsky.social Eugenia Chiappe.
📖 www.fchampalimaud.org/news/researc...
Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧠New study led by @champalimaudf.bsky.social Eugenia Chiappe.
📖 www.fchampalimaud.org/news/researc...
Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
May 2, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Excited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky!
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...
I could not be more proud to present the the first PhD graduate from my lab - @ritujabisen.bsky.social! Rituja basically walked into an empty lab in the beginning of 2020, helped build the lab’s first ephys rig from scratch, and then patched her heart out over the following years…
May 1, 2025 at 2:47 PM
I could not be more proud to present the the first PhD graduate from my lab - @ritujabisen.bsky.social! Rituja basically walked into an empty lab in the beginning of 2020, helped build the lab’s first ephys rig from scratch, and then patched her heart out over the following years…
Yay - the extensive review Ansgar Büschges and I wrote on insect motor control and the many things insects can teach us about our own nervous systems just came out in Physiological Reviews @apsphysiology.bsky.social. Check it out - it's free: journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10....
Motor control on the move: from insights in insects to general mechanisms
journals.physiology.org
April 16, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Yay - the extensive review Ansgar Büschges and I wrote on insect motor control and the many things insects can teach us about our own nervous systems just came out in Physiological Reviews @apsphysiology.bsky.social. Check it out - it's free: journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10....
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
the Dunkin’ logo has never felt more accurate
March 29, 2025 at 4:06 PM
the Dunkin’ logo has never felt more accurate
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
Join us for a fully funded, 4-year PhD, a collaboration between Northumbria, Durham and Mainz Universities to study the evolution of the neuronal basis of defence behaviours in Drosophila!
Application and full PhD advert:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Application and full PhD advert:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
February 28, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Join us for a fully funded, 4-year PhD, a collaboration between Northumbria, Durham and Mainz Universities to study the evolution of the neuronal basis of defence behaviours in Drosophila!
Application and full PhD advert:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Application and full PhD advert:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature
A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.
www.nature.com
March 27, 2025 at 10:58 PM
I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Jan M. Ache
I'm very excited to share joint work from the project I have been working on with great colleagues during the first year of my PhD.
You can hear all about it tomorrow at 11:00 in Symposium 11 - Wired for motion: perspectives on motor control.
@neurowissg.bsky.social
#NWG2025
You can hear all about it tomorrow at 11:00 in Symposium 11 - Wired for motion: perspectives on motor control.
@neurowissg.bsky.social
#NWG2025
March 26, 2025 at 9:21 PM
I'm very excited to share joint work from the project I have been working on with great colleagues during the first year of my PhD.
You can hear all about it tomorrow at 11:00 in Symposium 11 - Wired for motion: perspectives on motor control.
@neurowissg.bsky.social
#NWG2025
You can hear all about it tomorrow at 11:00 in Symposium 11 - Wired for motion: perspectives on motor control.
@neurowissg.bsky.social
#NWG2025
The lab‘s getting ready for the NWG meeting 2025 @neurowissg.bsky.social! Our plotting service @uni-wuerzburg.de was so excited about the work of @sirinlieb.bsky.social that we got six copies of her poster - make sure to check out what all the hype is about…
March 25, 2025 at 9:22 PM
The lab‘s getting ready for the NWG meeting 2025 @neurowissg.bsky.social! Our plotting service @uni-wuerzburg.de was so excited about the work of @sirinlieb.bsky.social that we got six copies of her poster - make sure to check out what all the hype is about…
Our third paper on the neuronal control of insulin release in flies was published in @elife.bsky.social!
This was a great team effort spearheaded by Tina Held, Rituja Bisen and our collaborator @zandawala.bsky.social.
You can find the paper here:
elifesciences.org/articles/99548. 1/3
This was a great team effort spearheaded by Tina Held, Rituja Bisen and our collaborator @zandawala.bsky.social.
You can find the paper here:
elifesciences.org/articles/99548. 1/3
Aminergic and peptidergic modulation of insulin-producing cells in Drosophila
The combination of receptor expression analysis, optogenetics, physiological approaches, and connectomics reveals how a heterogeneous population of insulin-producing cells in Drosophila integrates div...
elifesciences.org
March 25, 2025 at 9:17 PM
Our third paper on the neuronal control of insulin release in flies was published in @elife.bsky.social!
This was a great team effort spearheaded by Tina Held, Rituja Bisen and our collaborator @zandawala.bsky.social.
You can find the paper here:
elifesciences.org/articles/99548. 1/3
This was a great team effort spearheaded by Tina Held, Rituja Bisen and our collaborator @zandawala.bsky.social.
You can find the paper here:
elifesciences.org/articles/99548. 1/3