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Andreas Prokop

@poppi62.bsky.social

1953 Followers

272 Following

Using #Drosophila to decipher the cell biology of #neurons during development and #neurodegeneration - #scicomm initiative - https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/andreas.prokop

  1. rcthayer.bsky.social profile picture

    Rachel C Thayer @rcthayer.bsky.social

    Very nice resources for arguing that studying flies is a good investment

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  6. peiferlabunc.bsky.social profile picture

    Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social

    The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

    Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
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  7. poppi62.bsky.social profile picture

    Andreas Prokop @poppi62.bsky.social

    Dear president@harvard.edu - @flybase.bsky.social is the most sophisticated model organism data base there is, facilitating research far beyond the #Drosophila community - including work on human disease. Work on fly has been instrumental in founding biomedical sciences and stays at its forefront.

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  8. rohankhadilkar.bsky.social profile picture

    Rohan Khadilkar @rohankhadilkar.bsky.social

    Looking forward to attending the Indian Drosophila Research Conference (InDRC) at IISER Mohali this December!! We have a stellar line up of speakers....can't wait for all the exciting science and the networking interactions!! #drosophila #conference #meetings #science #research

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  9. peiferlabunc.bsky.social profile picture

    Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social

    If anyone wants to write individually or collectively (but politely):

    President Alan Garber Harvard University president@harvard.edu

    Dr. Rachelle Gaudet Chair, Harvard MCB Department gaudet@mcb.harvard.edu

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  10. poppi62.bsky.social profile picture

    Andreas Prokop @poppi62.bsky.social

    Letting AI do the job is secondary learning, like reading reviews but never primary articles. Gaining depth of understanding requires time spent. AI helps getting things out quickly, but it bypasses us with minimal learning effect, thus diminishing our creative thinking and conceptual understanding.

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