Catherine (Katie) Schretter
@ceschretter.bsky.social
560 followers 420 following 26 posts
Postdoc in the Rubin lab at Janelia | Neuronal circuitry underlying social behavior | Host-microbe interactions | Ph.D. Caltech | she/her | https://www.janelia.org/people/katie-schretter
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ceschretter.bsky.social
Excited to have this paper out (rdcu.be/d0T3Y)! In it, we focused on how flies know what to attend to in a complex environment (like below)?

We uncovered neuronal pathways through which social states (like aggression 🥊) modulate visual processing in #Drosophila. #WomenInSTEM #neuroscience 🧪 1/
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
hhmijanelia.bsky.social
🪰 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.
🔗 https://hhmi.news/4o3EJnk
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
jefferis.bsky.social
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....
Male CNS Connectome
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 ...
www.janelia.org
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
beetzjerome.bsky.social
Insect spatial memory is thought to be based on panoramic snapshots that are modelled as retinotopic images. This idea won't allow a distinction of landmarks from the scene. Unexpectedly, our data suggest that 🐝 learn 3D-objects as individual landmarks. #neuroethology
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
mace-lab.bsky.social
Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧵1/
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
mishaahrens.bsky.social
Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
engineeringjoy.bsky.social
Happily sharing that our paper, where we examen the link between synaptic vulnerability & molecular identity in auditory neurons, is now up on Biorxiv! 🥳 I am ELATED to finally share what has been a major part of my postdoc life the past few years. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Molecularly defined auditory neuron subtypes show different vulnerabilities to noise- and age-related synaptopathy in mice
Neuronal subtype-specific synaptopathy is a hallmark of many forms of neurodegeneration. We examined the cellular basis for synaptic vulnerability in the auditory system, where three subtypes of spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) - Ia, Ib, and Ic - carry acoustic information from the cochlea to the brain. In response to noise and aging, a subset of synapses between inner hair cells and SGNs are lost, but it is unclear how this loss varies across SGN subtypes. Using genetic labelling, we showed that Ia SGNs have larger post-synaptic densities (PSDs) than Ib and Ic SGNs and are the most resilient subtype. Ia PSD volumes increased with age and were unchanged after noise exposure. By contrast, average Ib/Ic PSD volumes did not change with age but decreased with noise. Genetic reprogramming of Ib/Ic neurons to a Ia-like identity provided significant protection against noise-induced synaptopathy, linking identity to resilience and providing an entry point for therapeutics. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Blavatnik Family Foundation, https://ror.org/049hmt962, Blavatnik Sensory Disorders Research Grant National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, R01DC009223 National Institute on Aging, K00AG078230
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
jefferis.bsky.social
Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns?
To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠
#preprint thread ⬇️1/8
ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
flybase.bsky.social
FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...
FlyBase:Contribute to FlyBase - FlyBase Wiki
wiki.flybase.org
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
senguptalab.bsky.social
More new science from the lab! Led by @nathancsharris.bsky.social (now at GA State) and PD Priya Dutta.

We describe how experience tunes the ratios of functional receptors in a single sensory neuron via coordinating transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms to drive response plasticity.
biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
Experience-dependent reconfiguration of receptors at a sensory compartment regulates neuronal plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.13.670147v1
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
esschaffer.bsky.social
The Mount Sinai Neuroscience seminars (MSNseminars) committee is now actively accepting applications from postdocs! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
thetransmitter.bsky.social
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
Harvard University lays off fly database team
The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.
www.thetransmitter.org
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
carolineleiwee.bsky.social
Our preprint is out: following up on our previous work on the zebrafish lateral hypothalamus, we do a deep dive into the molecular identities of #zebrafish LH cell types and compare them to mice. We found a novel conserved population expressing the growth hormone receptor, read to find out more!
biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
Comparative transcriptomics of lateral hypothalamic cell types reveals conserved growth hormone-tachykinin dynamics in feeding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.28.667087v1
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
teralevin.bsky.social
I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes in Dictyostelium
Cells require highly polymorphic receptors to perform accurate self/non-self recognition. In the amoeba Dicytostelium discoideum, polymorphic TgrB1 & TgrC1 proteins are used to bind sister cells and e...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
darbly.bsky.social
With @megyounger.bsky.social's lab, et al., we present the first connectomics work in the disease-vector mosquito Aedes aegypti, revealing how its brain is wired to detect host cues.

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#Neuroscience #Connectomics #vEM #VectorBiology 🧪
Diagrams (top-left) of an adult female Ae. aegypti head and (bottom) a basiconic sensillum on maxillary palp (gray) which contain dendritic processes of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), including CO2-sensitive Gr3-expressing OSNs. OSN axons project centrally to the antennal lobes in the brain. On the right is a volumetric rendering of the mosquito brain neuropils including the antennal lobes (light blue) (Heinze et al., 2021; Matthews et al., 2019). Scale bar 100 μm.
Reposted by Catherine (Katie) Schretter
oceanfilly.bsky.social
With many postdoc grants like the NSF PRFB, Ford Fellowship, and Hanna H. Gray fellowships disappearing, I am currently looking for grants that could fund incoming postdoctoral scholars. Here is a thread of some of them 🧵