Rebecca Yang, PhD and Dorsa Motevalli, PhD
A new study from the Yang Lab shows how natural genetic variation can reshape neural circuits to influence decision-making. Dorsa Motevalli, a former Yang Lab research assistant now pursuing a PhD at the University of Michigan, helped lead the work demonstrating that noncoding variants in the gene pumilio alter the excitability of key inhibitory interneurons in Drosophila. These circuit-level changes shift how flies evaluate egg-laying substrates, linking gene regulation to neural function and behavior. The findings provide a “genome-to-circuit-to-decision” framework for understanding how genetic diversity drives behavioral differences.
Read the article in Science Advances.