Here we provide video tutorials and other resources to help other research laboratories use the approaches and tools that we have developed. Some of these approaches require surgical manipulation of animals. We do our best to reduce the number of animals we use for experiments. We also make every effort to minimize harm. Our investigation of flies (Drosophila melanogaster) is in line with a general effort to Replace, Reduce, and Refine in animal research. Please see these links for more information about more about the 3Rs in general, in Switzerland, and at EPFL.
Tethering flies for high-resolution behavioral studies.
Dissections for neural recordings in the motor system (VNC) of behaving flies.
Dissection reported in Chen, Hermans et al., Nature Communications 2018. This approach was used in Chen et al., Nature Neuroscience 2023 and Aymanns et al., Elife 2022.
How to perform this dissection.
Tools and dissections for long-term (lifetime-scale) neural recordings in the motor system (VNC) of behaving flies.
Tools and approach reported in Hermans, Kaynak et al., Nature Communications 2022
Fabricating thoracic implants
Fabricating thoracic windows
Fabricating the manipulator arm
Fabricating the remounting stage
Mounting and unmounting flies from the remounting stage
Implant and window surgical procedure
Fabrication Protocols (updated 220411)
NeuroMechFly, a neuromechanical simulation of the adult fly.
- Website, installation, and code
- Code and approach reported in Lobato-Ríos et al., Nature Methods 2022
X-ray microtomograph of an adult female fly
LifePose3D, 3D pose estimation with fewer cameras
Code and approach reported in Gosztolai, Günel et al., Nature Methods 2022
DeepFly3D, 3D pose estimation for tethered flies.
Code and approach reported in Günel et al., Elife 2019