Drew visited the Honors Principles of Human Genetics class, taught by our former Kenan Fellow, Robyn Stanek-Dembisky, at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, NC. This time, he was able to make it in person and gave a talk about the Model Organisms in Biology Research, which was followed by endless questions from 30 enthusiastic students. Thank you, Drew and Robyn, for building such a lasting and fruitful relationship to broaden the science community!
Our collaborative paper with the Parnas lab has been published in Current Biology! In this study, we show that muscarinic acetylcholine receptors expressed in the axons of the mushroom body Kenyon cells enhance the stimulus specificity of olfactory learning. We propose this neuromodulation as one of the biological functions of the axo-axonic synapses between Kenyon cells that have been previously identified in ultrastructural studies.