Inbal Shainer
assistant professor at technion.ac.il/, studying visual neuroethology in zebrafish 🐟🔬🏳️🌈
shainer-lab.net.technion.ac.il
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- Oh man! What a crazy honor to receive this award from SDB!! I love being a part of SDB so much - it has led to so many awesome ideas, collaborations, and friendships over the last 13 years, so this is really exciting. Looking forward to seeing you all at the meeting. Thank you, SDB!!!
- Congrats to the 2026 SDB Award Winners! Conklin Medal: Lee Niswander SDB Lifetime Achievement Award: Alexandra Joyner Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize: Roberto Mayor Hay New Investigator Award: Jeffrey Farrell SDB Trainee SciComm Award: Nicholas Desnoyer bit.ly/4afnjiC
- Faculty Retreat 2026......
- we got the best lab video for 2026!!!
- The second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉
- What's the relation between voltage and calcium in dendrites? Xiang Wu studied this in CA2 hippocampal pyramidal cells in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Engineering a Mechanoresponsive DNA Origami Capsule for Drug Delivery to Narrowed Arteries pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... Glad we could contribute to this interesting work from Yuval Garini's lab. Kudos to Hadas Omer and the team: Hadeel_Khamis, Zipora Lansky, Netanel Korin, Racheli Boeangiu
- Exciting genome news! For those interested, there is a prerelease of the Ensembl gene models for the new reference genomes GRCz12tu (GCA_049306965.1) and GRCz12ab (GCA_05204075.1) at ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/database... You can download gff and gtf files there as well as softmasked genomes.
- Nature research paper: Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons go.nature.com/4qP4HwB
- Excited to see this preprint out! Siyuan Mei did exceptional work leading this project, and it was a great experience working with the Herz lab. How do zebrafish update their internal compass? They use a multi ring shifter network, similar to flies despite 550M years of divergence. Full thread ⬇️
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- Do you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!
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- Do direction and orientation preferences form maps in the mouse superior colliculus (SC)? We examined how motion and orientation tuning are organized in SC neurons and their retinal inputs—and how the retinal topography is transformed by collicular circuits. tinyurl.com/mr2zt5rm 🧵👇
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- Ever wanted to know how the visual system of a long distance migratory moth looks like? Then you'll find your answers in our new paper. Finally out, after about a decade of collecting data by a group af amazing co-authors. Find it here, open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- A study from the Baier Departement, published in Nature in February 2025, has now been selected for the Nature Highlights List 2025. Congratulations to all the researchers involved on this well-deserved recognition! 👉 Nature Highlights 2025: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @ishainer.bsky.social
- Neurons with identical transcriptomes can have different morphologies and functions! A new study by the Baier Lab published in @nature.com shows that temporal and spatial factors expand the repertoire of genetically similar neurons: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ishainer.bsky.social
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- We are very excited: @hannazwaka.bsky.social has been awarded a Leibniz Best Minds grant as a Junior Research Group Leader! Five years of independent research, tenure track and part of the Best Minds network – a real boost for her career.
- Very excited to share this thread on our recent paper! We show how Zebrafish integrate visual navigation signals in aligned topographic maps. Full thread below🧵
- (1/n) We are excited to share our new paper in Nature Communications, by Hagar Lavian (@hlavian.bsky.social) and team, revealing how the zebrafish brain integrates visual navigation signals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- (1/n) We are excited to share our new paper in Nature Communications, by Hagar Lavian (@hlavian.bsky.social) and team, revealing how the zebrafish brain integrates visual navigation signals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- The Trojan Horse Gene of the Marine Virus www.technion.ac.il/en/blog/arti...
- When a larval zebrafish twitches its tail, the vascular endothelium lights up with a calcium signal, mediated by Piezo1. We used to think mechanosensing in endothelial cells was about sensing blood flow, but at least in this case it's about sensing body motion.
- How do four-eyed fish see above & underwater? 🌤️🌊 Our new preprint reveals how Anableps rewired its retina for dual vision- evolution at work 👁️👁️ Kudos to @perezlouise.bsky.social @josanesousa.bsky.social @keylapruett.bsky.social + team! 🔗 tinyurl.com/3a8r9xy5
- Viral NblA proteins negatively affect oceanic cyanobacterial photosynthesis www.nature.com/articles/s41... this project was led by @omernadel.bsky.social and is a joint work between the labs of @bejalab.bsky.social, Debbie Lindell and Oded Kleifeld from @biologytechnion.bsky.social
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- How does a fish know when to blend in? Scientists identified a key circuit controlling camouflage in zebrafish – from cells in the retina sensing light to nerve cells in the brain controlling the release of a hormone that pales the skin to match bright backgrounds. www.bi.mpg.de/news/2025-11...
- New work from Baier Lab 🧠 🐟 🔗 to paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- How does a fish know when to blend in? Scientists identified a key circuit controlling camouflage in zebrafish – from cells in the retina sensing light to nerve cells in the brain controlling the release of a hormone that pales the skin to match bright backgrounds. www.bi.mpg.de/news/2025-11...
- My new ImageJ / Fiji toolkit is out 🔥! The goal is to make image handling & visualization easy, with an intuitive interface! Install it on Fiji with the "Image Viewer" update site #microscopy #ImageJ #FluorescenceFriday #microscopyMonday imagej.net/plugins/imag...
- Now out in Cell! Congratulations to all involved, especially @chiarafornetto.bsky.social For a breakdown, see the bluetorial from when we posted the preprint: bsky.app/profile/neur... Funding: @erc.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social
- Excited to share our paper now published in Cell! 'Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background' Huge thanks to @neurofishh.bsky.social & @teuler.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social @cp-cell.bsky.social 👇🏻 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
- Now online! Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background
- Very happy to share our latest work extending iterative immunofluorescence to in toto imaging of early zebrafish embryos (3D-4i), integrated with a 3D-dedicated image analysis pipeline! 🐟🔬📊 Huge kudos to Max Hess for this PhD milestone! 💪 @lucaspelkmans.bsky.social shorturl.at/cO0u7 Let's zoom in!
- First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
- Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Kaarthik A Balakrishnan: We identify medullary circuits that represent the valence of thermal stimuli and control both long-term strategies of cold-avoidance and short term hot avoidance behaviors to enable thermoregulation. www.cell.com/current-biol...
- Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is. www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...
- 🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
- Evolutionary expansion of the corticospinal system is linked to dexterity in Peromyscus mice biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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- I am excited to share my PhD work on head-direction cells recorded in the wild, now published in @science.org, where we recorded neurons in bats flying outdoors on an island. doi.org/10.1126/sci... With @ray-neuro.bsky.social, Shir Maimon, Liora Las, Nachum Ulanovsky and many others
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- Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10
- Our review is out 🎉 We discuss how neural computations in the retina shape behavior, continuing the top-down tradition of Lettvin et al.'s classic bug-detector neurons Check it out 👀 arevie.ws/46HMEjd @annualreviews.bsky.social w/ coauthors @serenariccitelli.bsky.social @annaintegrated.bsky.social
- The 2025 volume of the Annual Review of Vision Science is now online. The most read article so far is "Behavior-Specific Computations in the Vertebrate Retina" arevie.ws/46HMEjd @serenariccitelli.bsky.social @annaintegrated.bsky.social @katrinfranke.bsky.social TOC: arevie.ws/3Wklava
- And here's the official announcement from our Janelia collaborators with a fantastic visualisation from @philiphubbard.bsky.social. See more at male-cns.janelia.org/media. Downloads are humming and we have solved the first data access queries. Happy exploring! #drosophila #connectomics #malecns.
- 🪰 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 millions of connections between them. 🔗 hhmi.news/4o3EJnk
- 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....
- “Blame your parents if you can’t pay enough attention." At least when you are a zebrafish! Our new study on attentional switching together with Kumaresh Krishnan, @paulapflitsch.bsky.social , @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social and Florian Engert is out in Science Advances: doi.org/10.1126/scia...
- Zebrafish Study Reveals Hidden Dimensions of Attention🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @sterrett-sc.bsky.social @hannazwaka.bsky.social @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social
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