Danionella

Optimization of breeding conditions in Danionella cerebrum to advance its use as a vertebrate model https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.10.758160v1

Atlas of adult Danionella fish telencephalon reveals retention of larval characters https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.23.753900v1

Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social

The first Danionella paper from the lab. Danionella cerebrum is transparent, so you can see all of the internal organs. But what sensory information are the organs sending to the brain? In our new preprint, Emily Bayer wanted to find out. 1/4 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our collaborative paper with Palka Puri and Johnatan Aljadeff is now published in @physrevlett.aps.org. We find that Danionella fish move in schools by copying a neighbor's heading direction @danionella.bsky.social aljadeff.ucsd.edu journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

New primer on Danionella cerebrum, with @xinwei-wang.bsky.social . What a fun little fish :) Free access here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1ndEe_LsQS...

I thought I was a quirky little underdog fish with cool tricks, widening the model-organism spectrum. Suddenly, headlines: "Billion Dollar Fish Takes Over" Holy Mackerel! I guess there weren't any smaller fish to fry. Anyway, I'm still the same, still making the case for model diversity.

Convergent genome streamlining accompanies independent miniaturization in the world's smallest fishes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.20.719654v1

Further cements #danionella as a robust model to study neurobiology 💪 🧪

Tiny, transparent, and now charted! Our brain atlas of adult Danionella cerebrum includes >200 annotated regions, 29 whole-brain in situs, and male/female reference volumes – openly available, versioned and extendable. Work by @nkadobyansky.bsky.social and team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

First whole-brain recording of social sound processing in a vertebrate. Surprises start in the hindbrain; thalamus gates conspecific calls; male and female brains diverge downstream. Work by @joerghenninger.bsky.social, @mh123.bsky.social sky.social and team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Beautiful work led by Yansong (Kevin) Lu on skeletal muscle growth in zebrafish, giant danio, Danionella cerebrum, and killifish. HCR, new image analysis tool, scRNA-seq, and CRISPR. New international collaborations between Uni Melbourne, NCVC/Osaka, Stanford & ARMI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Whole-body Single-cell Spatial transcriptomic atlas of adult Danionella ~1 cm long scRNAseq MERFISH (500-gene) HCR Endothelial cell podxl+ (Fig S8) Vascular vs Visceral mural cell (Fig S10) Peter Reddien lab bioRxiv 2026 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our latest study on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now posted as a preprint, led by UCSD PhD student Jo-Hsien Yu @anitajhyu.bsky.social @ucsandiego.bsky.social @danionella.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Out in Current Biology, by Ari Penalva and the Douglass lab: "Oxytocin-mediated social preference and socially reinforced reward learning in [☝️]": www.cell.com/current-biol... With a preview by Florian Engert: www.cell.com/current-biol...

#Danionella in the creature column www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For today's #fluorescenceFriday, a transgenic Danionella cerebrum, the world's (second) smallest vertebrate (yep, "stout infantfish" are smaller, but no one has made them glow yet!). Picci by our very own @xinwei-wang.bsky.social

New work with @danionella.bsky.social from Naumann Lab @dukemedschool.bsky.social

Divergent Visuomotor Strategies in Teleosts: Neural Circuit Mechanisms in Zebrafish and Danionella cerebrum https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.22.624938v1

Switched waters to Bluesky. Still singing, still transparent, and back to having the smallest vertebrate brain around.