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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

Takeshi Morita @takeshimorita.bsky.social · 20d

🚨 Ph.D. Opportunity! 🚨 I’m recruiting students to start in the Spring Semester 2026 (Jan 2026) or the Fall Semester 2026 (Aug 2026) to study the behavior & neurobiology of mosquito-host interactions. Know someone who’d be a perfect fit? Please share! 🦟 #Mosquito #Neurobiology #VectorBiology #Itch

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · Aug 26

Blood, sweat, and beers: investigating mosquito biting preferences amidst noise and intoxication in a cross-sectional cohort study at a large music festival https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.21.671470v1

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Elodie Couderc @elodiecouderc.bsky.social · Aug 27

🚀 Excited to share (with a little delay) my first first-author publication on #Vago genes in #mosquitoes! 🦟 🦠 Have a look to see how we questioned a mosquito immunity dogma and challenged the existing understanding of Vago-like genes as antiviral factors ⬇️

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Aedes aegypti VLG-1 challenges the assumed antiviral nature of Vago genes - BMC Biology

Background Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) such as dengue virus (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV) pose a significant threat to global health. Novel approaches to control the spread of arboviruses foc...

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com

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SalehLab @salehlabparis.bsky.social · Jul 12

Great project, great PI, and great team. Apply now!!! You won’t regret it.

Gael Cristofari @retrogenomics.bsky.social · Jul 11

🦟 Bioinformatics Research Scientist position open in my lab in Nice (FR) to study Aedes mosquito retrotransposons & their interactions with arboviruses collab w/ @salehlabparis.bsky.social & @lambrechtslab.bsky.social
Apply: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/359830
Please boost! #ArboRetro #Bioinformatics

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Jun 3

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯

Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below.

This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

Marc Dionne @marcsdionne.bsky.social · Jun 3

My lab studies bacterial infections. We spend a lot of time looking at (or for) species-specific genetic and genomic databases for hosts and microbes. FlyBase is the best of all—there is literally no comparison. Its existence is under threat. Please donate.
www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Drosophila Genetic Database

The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk

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SalehLab @salehlabparis.bsky.social · Apr 10

Thrilled to receive @anrs-mie.bsky.social grant with @lambrechtslab.bsky.social & @retrogenomics.bsky.social! Making mosquitoes intolerant to arboviruses. Thanks @pasteur.fr, @inserm.fr & @cnrs.fr for support. Exciting times for #ARBORETRO project! Stay tunned.

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Apr 10

At the end it worked after heating up the blood and stretching the parafilm almost to the breaking point!

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Apr 8

colony), so I don’t know what to change. I need to use parafilm because it’s the only material I can sterilize. Any advice?

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Apr 8

Mosquito people I have a problem: I am trying to blood feed mosquitoes using parafilm as a membrane, but the mosquitoes are not able to feed. They probe a lot (=they can sense the blood) but can’t really feed.. I’ve done this before and it wasn’t a problem (although mosquitoes were from another

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Mar 27

Celebratory post: after 3.5 years in the @salehlabparis.bsky.social I finally have a lab coat with my name on it! I can stop using Carla’s one I guess 😬 thank you to all the people that supported my in this journey!

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

Arbovirus seminars @arbovirus.bsky.social · Mar 17

Hi everyone, what's up? We have our monthly seminar this week, with some super cool work on arbovirus entry receptors from leading researcher Jolanda Smit from @unigroningen.bsky.social
All welcome - help spread the news with a re-post 🙂
NOTE THE EARLIER TIME for everyone outside the USA

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Rubén González @rubengonzalez.bsky.social · Mar 14

In my first Drosophila study at @salehlabparis.bsky.social, we found that:

1. Enteric viral infections accelerate aging.
2. Even if the infection is cleared, aging process remains triggered.
3. Accelerated aging correlates with reduced lifespan.

📑Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A cute aged fly, despite my mom thinking it’s a bee.

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Mar 8

This #InternationalWomensDay I want to tell the story of Lilian Vaughan Morgan. I learned of Lilian this past year - what a badass.

Lilian was a leading scientist when women weren't welcome in the lab, nor even the department. But she contributed immensely to the genetics of sex determination

1/n

A photo of a young Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting with a book on her lab staring into the distance.

A photo of an older Lilian Vaughan Morgan, sitting at a lab bench with a microscope and dozens of glass milk bottles bunged with cotton. Lilian is in the middle of applying ether to anaesthetize a bottle of flies.

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

SalehLab @salehlabparis.bsky.social · Mar 8

For #IWD2025, the men from @salehlabparis.bsky.social share #ForAllWomenAndGirls:
We celebrate women’s strength, resilience, and achievements. Let’s honor those who fight every day, and stand united against discrimination and violence—equality is a right, and together we can build a fairer world.

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

Hugo Perdomo @hugodperdomo.bsky.social · Feb 4

Check out our paper, co-authored by @akhorramnejad.bsky.social and me. Published in @commsbio.bsky.social

We explore how global change will affect mosquito-virus interaction. We use single or multi-generational exposure to heat to address this.
A 🧵 with our results (1/5)
rdcu.be/d8wse

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Ottavia Romoli

François Leulier @francoisleulier.bsky.social · Dec 6

Drosophila and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in the spotlight (again), what a wonderful model (disclaimer I am biased ;-) ).

Congrats Will and team!

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

A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity

Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...

www.science.org

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

A big thank you to Stencey Fontenelle, Gabrielle Georgeon, Emmanuel Sechet and the whole Vectopole @Institut Pasteur de la Guyane. We would like to dedicate a special thought to our dear colleague Jean-Géraud Issaly, who passed away in 2022, leaving a profound void at the Vectopole. Ciao! (13/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

Thank you to all the people involved in the study, to the funding agencies @agencerecherche.bsky.social, @ibeidlabex.bsky.social, to Eric Marois for providing the Aaeg-M strain, and to @sigientist.bsky.social for providing the auxotrophic E. coli strain. (12/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

This suggests a general model for mosquito development, where male mosquitoes require fewer microbiota-derived metabolites to complete their development and are more susceptible to lower doses of toxic compounds. (11/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

We observed that low bacteria loads favored the development of male mosquitoes. The same results were obtained using with two different slow-growing E. coli strains. (10/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

We then asked whether this differential toxicity was associated to a more general differential requirement for metabolites between male and females. Using auxotrophic E. coli, we were able to produce larvae with low microbiota loads, while ensuring that bacteria were still proliferating. (9/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

Using these mosquitoes, we determined that biotin was not inducing feminization and precisely defined biotin toxicity for male and female germ-free larvae. Specifically, we found that biotin was toxic to both males and females, but males were susceptible to lower concentrations. (8/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

While attending the mosquito meeting in sunny Kolimbary, we met Eric Marois, who had recently developed a transgenic Aedes aegypti strain with males expressing GFP. HURRA! No more PCRs! He kindly shared this strain with us. (7/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

Therefore, we decided to dig more into which vitamin was having this huge effect on male larva development: we identified BIOTIN as the most significant responsible. (6/13)

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Ottavia Romoli @ottavia-romoli.bsky.social · Dec 3

With the help of Pol, I collected the samples, but my time in the lab came to an end: I passed the baton to Javier and Yanouk! Our transcriptome analysis was not conclusive, as B vitamins were inducing in male larvae genes related to both metabolic stress and sex-determination. (5/13)

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