Our "Dr. Léopold Week” this year has come to an end! We deeply thank Pierre @leopoldlab.bsky.social for visiting us again. We also thank Prof. Chih-Chiang Chan and his team from National Taiwan University for visiting us as part of our collaboration! We had a wonderful party yesterday.

As has become an annual tradition over the past few years, I am delighted that Dr. Pierre Leopold @leopoldlab.bsky.social from the Institut Curie, Paris, visited us again in Tsukuba and, as usual, gave a lecture on developmental biology to undergraduate students.

Celebration for Naoki's Nature paper!

Here is a news post about our work from our university: Even Boneless Insects Have an Endocrine System for Calcium Control www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-...

Beautiful "fundamental physiology" paper in a glamour journal - there is still some hope! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our paper, led by Naoki Okamoto in our group, just out in Nature! Neuroendocrine control of calcium mobilization in the fruit fly www.nature.com/articles/s41... We “re”-discovered the calcium storage site in “boneless” Drosophila and revealed how calcium mobilization is regulated.

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....

Discovering genes essential for stress-induced death in insects | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Discovering Genes Essential for Stress-Induced Death in Insects | Research News - University of Tsukuba www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-...

Our new preprint: NudC moonlights in ribosome biogenesis and homeostasis in Drosophila melanogaster polyploid cells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new paper from our group: Stress-induced organismal death is genetically regulated by the mTOR–Zeste–Phae1 axis | PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... At least in Drosophila, organismal death caused by excessive stress is not possible without the involvement of a genetic pathway.

A new preprint from our lab.

I will give a talk at BIDMC/Harvard, Boston, on May 9 (Fri). Title: How is calcium ion homeostasis regulated in “boneless” invertebrates? Lessons from the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I will be there as an invited speaker. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting "Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling" meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

Our lab group photo with cherry blossoms in April 2025.

Amazing talks on the fly gut at #Dros2025 ! Fantastic how the field has grown! Great Stem Cell and Regen session with: #NewPI Imilce Rodriguez-Fernandez formerly Jasper lab; Yuichiro Nakajima; Jessica Sawyer- Fox lab; Anthony Galenza - O'Brien lab; Qingyin Qian of the @ryuniwa.bsky.social lab 👏👏👏

I hadn’t anticipated that a ‘novel’ gene could be identified using such a straightforward approach. Remarkable dedication and devotion.

Identifying venom genes of parasitoid wasps: | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Dear All, I believe that this thread will become one of my most important contributions to the fly field (I hope I will make other contributions)! Here, I introduce the Soy Milk Machine Fly Food Method, a.k.a., DeepCook!#Drosophila#NewPI

Our latest... Congrats to Seb Sorge, Victor Girard & coauthors for devising HolFast, a chemically defined (holidic) diet for #Drosophila development that performs almost as well as a yeast diet. If you study developmental #nutrition or #metabolism please try it out... www.cell.com/developmenta...

Its a super interesting paper about parasitoid wasps from my previous affiliation. I am feeling happy its finally out as I've seen this story alongside with my time in undergrad - gradschool life www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I am thrilled that our paper, which is packed with our 10 years of data on the venom proteins of the parasitoid wasp Asobara japonica, has just been published! Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

<Seminar announcement> Jan 16 (Thu) 2025, 13:15 – 14:30 @ The seminar room, Bldg. A of TARA, Univ. Tsukuba "Arms race between infectious retrotransposons and the piRNA pathway in animals (感染性レトロトランスポゾンとpiRNA経路の進化的関連性について)" by Dr. Rippei Hayashi (AIU)（林立平博士） See the poster below.

Excited to see our new gut hormone paper in @naturecomms.bsky.social in collaboration with our alumnus Dr. Yuto Yoshinari (Gunma Univ.) and others! A high-protein diet-responsive gut hormone regulates behavioral and metabolic optimization in Drosophila melanogaster. www.nature.com/articles/s41...