Christopher Tabone

Harvard University | Harvard · Center for Brain Science

The Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) provides the most comprehensive resource currently available for computable knowledge regarding the functions of genes and gene products. Here, we report the advances of the consortium over the past two years. The new GO-CAM annotation framework was notably improved, and we formalized the model with a computationa...

The Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) provides the most comprehensive resource currently available for computable knowledge regarding the functions of genes and gene products. Here, we report the advances of the consortium over the past two years. The new GO-CAM annotation framework was notably improved, and we formalized the model with a computationa...

FlyBase (flybase.org) is an essential online database for researchers using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, facilitating access to a diverse array of information that includes genetic, molecular, genomic and reagent resources. Here, we describe the introduction of several new features at FlyBase, including Pathway Reports, paralog info...

The Alliance of Genome Resources (Alliance) is a consortium of the major model organism databases and the Gene Ontology that is guided by the vision of facilitating exploration of related genes in human and well-studied model organisms by providing a highly integrated and comprehensive platform that enables researchers to leverage the extensive bod...

Odor perception allows animals to distinguish odors, recognize the same odor across concentrations, and determine concentration changes. How the activity patterns of primary olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs), at the individual and population levels, facilitate distinguishing these functions remains poorly understood. Here, we interrogate the comple...

Animals can identify an odorant type across a wide range of concentrations, as well as detect changes in concentration for individual odorant type. How olfactory representations are structured to support these functions remains poorly understood. Here, we studied how a full complement of ORNs in the Drosophila larva encodes a broad input space of o...

Since 1992, FlyBase (flybase.org) has been an essential online resource for the Drosophila research community. Concentrating on the most extensively studied species, Drosophila melanogaster, FlyBase includes information on genes (molecular and genetic), transgenic constructs, phenotypes, genetic and physical interactions, and reagents such as stock...

The sense of smell enables animals to react to long-distance cues according to learned and innate valences. Here, we have mapped with electron microscopy the complete wiring diagram of the Drosophila larval antennal lobe, an olfactory neuropil similar to the vertebrate olfactory bulb. We found a canonical circuit with uniglomerular projection neuro...

Significance A full understanding of sensorimotor transformation during complex behaviors requires quantifying brainwide dynamics of behaving animals. Here, we characterize brainwide dynamics of individual nematodes exposed to a defined thermosensory input. We show that it is possible to uncover representations of sensory input and motor output in...

Significance A previously unidentified set of thermosensory neurons embedded in the olfactory organ of the Drosophila larva is shown to be required to drive the animal up temperature gradients toward preferred environments. Optogenetics and optical neurophysiology reveal efficient sensory encoding of both favorable (warming) and unfavorable (coolin...

Introduction Olfactory learning and memory are widely investigated in Drosophila neuroscience. Assays can serve as simple measurements of behavioral plasticity in whole animals by harnessing the innate importance of olfactory cues for the fly (Lebreton et al., 2012). A successful fly learning assay needs to do only one thing well: Ask a simple ques...

The Mg2+ block of NMDA-type glutamate receptors (NMDARs) is crucial to their function as synaptic coincidence detectors. An analysis of Drosophila expressing a Mg2+-independent NMDAR by in this issue of Neuron concludes that the Mg2+ block is required primarily for long-term memory.

Vesicular transporters are required for the storage of all classical and amino acid neurotransmitters in synaptic vesicles. Some neurons lack known vesicular transporters, suggesting additional neurotransmitter systems remain unidentified. Insect mushroom bodies (MBs) are critical for several behaviors, including learning, but the neurotransmitters...

Associative conditioning in Drosophila melanogaster has been well documented for several decades. However, most studies report only simple associations of conditioned stimuli (CS, e.g., odor) with unconditioned stimuli (US, e.g., electric shock) to measure learning or establish memory. Here we describe a straightforward second-order conditioning (S...

The family of Eph and ephrin receptors is involved in a variety of functions in normal cells, and the alterations in their expression profiles have been observed in several cancers. We have compared the transcripts for Eph receptors and ephrin ligands in cell lines established from normal prostate epithelium and several carcinoma cell lines isolate...

There are more than 50 genes for autosomal dominant and autosomal recessive nonsyndromic hereditary deafness that are yet to be cloned. The human genome sequence and expression profiles of transcripts in the inner ear have aided positional cloning approaches. The knowledge of protein interactions offers additional advantages in selecting candidate...