Inbal Shainer

Excited to share our new paper in Nature! 'Transcriptomic neuron types vary topographically in function and morphology' explores how neurons in the zebrafish optic tectum exhibit diverse functions and shapes despite similar transcriptional profiles. 🔗 rdcu.be/d9GVM

We are sharing tools and knowledge to create and use virtual realities for (adult) (zebra)fish. Great work by Alex Javier, Sriram Narayanan and others. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

‼️Register now: Zebrafish Neural Circuits & Behavior 2026 This event brings together the zebrafish research community to share scientific ideas and present discoveries. 📅 09.-12.2026 📍MPI for Biological Intelligence, Martinsried ➡️ Register here: plan.events.mpg.de/event/726/re...

News: millions of years ago, hybridization gave rise to a tetraploid #fish with two distinct parental subgenomes & this is fascinating: as young barbels develop, they switch from using opsins from one subgenome as larvae to those from the other as adults, fine-tuning their colour #vision! 👁️🌈.

Our paper’s out! 🐟👀 How does the four-eyed fish Anableps see in air and water at once? It expanded its air-facing ventral retina and redeployed existing opsins there. Congrats Louise Perez @perezlouise.bsky.social & Lina Shi! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spectral tuning and signaling of diverse and far red–sensitive rhodopsins in mantis shrimp eyes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We, the Weizmann Institute of Science community, deeply mourn the passing of Prof. Ada Yonath - Nobel Laureate and a Model of Scientific Perseverance. May her memory be a blessing. bit.ly/ada-yonath-eng

A massive update: At least ~15 companies~ are selling scientists antibodies using faked validation data. We've documented 18,000+ manipulated images on 17,000+ products sold by leading laboratory suppliers including Thermo Fisher, Abcam, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Millipore Sigma and Bio-Techne. 1/🧵

Congrats to Ann Rose Bright @annrosebright.bsky.social and Inbal Shainer @ishainer.bsky.social on winning the Young Scientist Award! Their work shows that neurons born late can speed up maturation, and a neuron’s identity depends on location, not just genes. More: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-07...

🧠 A new paper from our lab is out! In this study, we explore how dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) circuits modulate forebrain activity and behavior. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am excited to announce the latest paper from our lab, published in Science ! In this study, we show that thalamocortical-like circuits in the zebrafish brain process sensory information hierarchically across topographically organized forebrain circuits.

Happy to share our new paper published in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Using in vivo imaging of genetically defined zebrafish retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), we show that while some Satb2+ RGCs maintain stable functional identities during development, others undergo functional changes.

What if part of Huntington's disease wasn't just damage, but a circuit stuck in the wrong pattern? Our new paper, out today in Nature, tests that idea.

Congratulations to our Prof. Debbie Lindell for being elected EMBO member 2026 www.embo.org/press-releas...

🚨New in @cellpress.bsky.social We discovered that hippocampal replays in natural-scale environments are highly fragmented, not full-length. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... 👇🧵

1/11 Excited to share my postdoc work from @schierlab.bsky.social and Rainer Friedrich! 🐟👃 How does the brain decide whether an odor is good or bad? In larval zebrafish, we find that odor preference is reflected in spatially cohesive neuronal domains of the olfactory bulb. 🧵

One of the world's leading brain research centers is shifting away from fruit flies and toward a tiny, transparent fish. The goal: to understand how brains control the behavior of an animal or human. n.pr/4vV8dYM

🚨 New paper in @nature.com We asked why two hippocampal areas with very different anatomy, CA3 and CA1, often seem to code space so similarly? By recording bats flying up to 200m, we found that the difference was hidden by scale! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 1/11

An internal compass: #pigeons use magnetically responsive immune cells in their livers to sense Earth’s magnetic field, helping them navigate without visual cues like the sun. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s8i... @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @science.org

Whole brain mapping of spinal-projecting neurons in larval zebrafish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.20.726602v1

we got the cover!!! Novel light-driven schizorhodopsins from Antarctic Minisyncoccota (Patescibacteria) and cyanobacteria www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Evolution runs through the gut: Researchers show, using highly diverse cichlids, how diet shapes the composition of intestinal tissue. @tschopplab.bsky.social @snsf.ch

Hippocampal representations of partner and novel individuals in monogamous California mice during pair bond formation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723922v1

In this beautiful paper from the Baier lab, authors show that cichlid fish show innate nest-building behaviors, but they are refined over time as animals learn to improve their nest! Additionally, they find brain activity in a region homologous to the hippocampus. 🐠🧠 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy to share our new review! Chromatin mechanics and regulatory protein function: insights from single-molecule force spectroscopy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today we mourn the passing of our beloved central dogma. It served Crick well. But it is time to let go. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Constructing a nest underwater is no easy task! But shell-dwelling cichlids are expert architects, instinctively transforming empty snail shells into protective nests. Take a deep dive into the new cichlid research from our Institute! 🔗 Press release: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-04...

🐟+🐚 =🏠 Shell-dwelling cichlids are true underwater architects, instinctively transforming empty snail shells into protective nests. New research shows: They improve with practice, remember what they learned, and adapt to unusual conditions. 🔗 Press release: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-04...

Very happy to see this out. 👏 @yinanwan.bsky.social Bogdan Bintu and team. Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis | free link Science www.science.org/eprint/5MHTM...

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...

🚨Happy to share our new mini-review on phage-encoded small RNAs and their potential for phage therapy and antibacterial strategies, written with Aviezer Silverman! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #RNA #phage @journals.sagepub.com @hebrewuniversity.bsky.social @phagedirectory.bsky.social

An Ocean of Opsins [type-2 rhodopsins] academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

New preprint from the group on the evolution of retinal cell types. Check the summary by Dario @dariotommasini.bsky.social !

A Double International Honor for the Technion: Prof. Debbie Lindell Recognized by Leading Scientific Societies www.technion.ac.il/en/blog/arti...

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...

CONGRATULATIONS Debbie!!! Debbie Lindell was named as one of 63 new Fellows elected to the American Academy of Microbiology asm.org/press-releas...

Congratulations to Debbie Lindell for receiving the 2026 G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from @aslo.org www.aslo.org/aslo-honors-...

New paper out : "Synchronization of behavioral and cardiac dynamics in larval zebrafish" Here, we report a pretty striking relationship between behavioral state and heart rate in larval zebrafish, and then explore the mechanisms that lead to this coupling bit.ly/4ciYt3R

Have you ever wondered how the brain should represent the sensory world in order to generate behavior? Read our new preprint: work by Shuhong Huang shuhonghuang.bsky.social with our long-standing collaborator James Fitzgerald at Northwestern.

New preprint out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... One of the most salient lessons I learned in all my adventures with screening and protein engineering is the importance of context. The context in which you test a gene or protein determines what function it has.

You love fish? We are looking for you! We are hiring a Postdoc and a PhD student for our project on the effects of sleep deprivation on brain-heart communication! Life imaging and behavior in zebrafish. More information: ncloud.lin-magdeburg.de/s/g3FeXEnJNb...

What's the relation between voltage and calcium in dendrites? Xiang Wu studied this in CA2 hippocampal pyramidal cells in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Convergent thyroid-ATPase interactions regulate collective behavior in Danionella

Engineering a Mechanoresponsive DNA Origami Capsule for Drug Delivery to Narrowed Arteries pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... Glad we could contribute to this interesting work from Yuval Garini's lab. Kudos to Hadas Omer and the team: Hadeel_Khamis, Zipora Lansky, Netanel Korin, Racheli Boeangiu

Nature research paper: Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons go.nature.com/4qP4HwB

Excited to see this preprint out! Siyuan Mei did exceptional work leading this project, and it was a great experience working with the Herz lab. How do zebrafish update their internal compass? They use a multi ring shifter network, similar to flies despite 550M years of divergence. Full thread ⬇️

Do you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!

Do direction and orientation preferences form maps in the mouse superior colliculus (SC)? We examined how motion and orientation tuning are organized in SC neurons and their retinal inputs—and how the retinal topography is transformed by collicular circuits. tinyurl.com/mr2zt5rm 🧵👇

🥁We are recruiting PhD students/Postdocs with strong proven background in developmental/molecular/cell biology & related areas, for various projects- check out our lab website👇🏼 We offer: competitive stipends, super equipped lab, fun international team! yanivelkoubylab.com

A study from the Baier Departement, published in Nature in February 2025, has now been selected for the Nature Highlights List 2025. Congratulations to all the researchers involved on this well-deserved recognition! 👉 Nature Highlights 2025: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @ishainer.bsky.social