From a technical point of view we have put together a lot of equipment to be able to address the question of how neural circuits evolve. For example, together with our collaborators we contributed to the development of more powerful microscopy techniques (Janiak et al. Nature Communications, 2022) as well as novel machine designs to study the behaviour of small animals, such as the fly larvae (Cano-Ferrer et al., in prep). We have also set-up in the lab advance chemical analysis methods to study the environment where the fly and larvae we study live.
We also published results on how olfactory systems evolve by reconstructing the evolutionary path of a family of olfactory receptors (Prieto-Godino et al. eLife, 2021). Another publication focused how brains can evolve by preventing the normal death of neurons that occurs in every brain during development (Prieto-Godino et al. Science Advances, 2019). We also investigated and published work on how neural circuits evolve through regulation of splicing programmes (a molecular machinery that enables cells to generate different proteins out of the same genes) (Torres-Mendez et al. Science Advances, 2022).
In addition to this, we were able to image every neuron and every connection between them, synapses, in the brain of one fly species, and we have been comparing at this very high resolution the brain circuits of this species with those of a different species for which a brain map had been generated before, this approach is called comparative connectomics, and is very new. Based on our results from the comparative connectomics, we have begun building computational models of how information in processed in the brain of different species. To validate these models, we have been employing genetic engineering to visualise the neurons of different species. With these genetic tools, and the powerful microscopes we built, we are using advanced volumetric imaging methods to visualise the activity of different neurons in the circuit across species, testing predictions from our models. We are also studying which genes are being expressed in each of the neurons of the brain of different species. We are now looking at how differences in the genes that are expressed can explain differences in how neurons function and generate different behaviours. We have also introduced across species genetic tools that enable us to remotely activate and inactivate specific neurons to understand their role in the behaviour of the different species.
Finally, during the early stages of the covid pandemic when the lab remained closed, we took part in the efforts to control the pandemic, including participation in programmes to develop and implement testing, and we published a paper revising open access approaches that could help alleviate the burden that that covid-19 imposed on global health systems (Chagas et al. PLoS Biology, 2020).
