UNC Science Expo 2024

As we promised last year, once again, our team participated in the UNC Science Expo with support from our NSF grant. Both kids and their parents had a blast competing with flies over their olfactory acuity!

Paper published!

Our new paper has been published in the Journal of Physiology! In this work, we developed a new experimental system to monitor both long-term and short-term synaptic plasticity in the central synapses in the Drosophila brain. Our results significantly revises the prevailing model regarding the role of adenylyl cyclase in synaptic plasticity. Please also check out the nice perspectives paper written by Dr. Andrew Lin's team!

Drew visited a local middle school classroom

Drew visited our former Kenan Fellow Christine Sudzina Schut's classroom at Culbreth Middle School in Chapel Hill. Her internship in our lab in the past summer inspired her to spend the previous month of her 7th grade AVID (Advancement via individual determination) Science class studying the fruit fly by observing their life cycle and describing their anatomy and common phenotypic markers while practicing their microscope skills. Drew's visit gave students the opportunity to share their observations with him, listen to our research mission, and hear about the potential career paths in academia. Many thanks for doing this, both of you!