Completed Genetics & Molecular Biology Brain & Nervous System

Virtual Fly Brain

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Associated organisations Embl-Ebi · European Bioinformatics Institute · University of Cambridge · University of Edinburgh Europe PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding £1.3M
Period Apr 2022 — Mar 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A fruit fly’s brain—complete with its wiring diagram, gene activity, and the tools scientists use to manipulate it—is being stitched into a single, searchable online atlas. This matters because the fruit fly is the only animal with complex behaviour, a full genetic toolkit, and detailed maps of its neural connections and gene expression. But those data sets are scattered across different labs and formats, making it nearly impossible to ask a question like “which neurons control this behaviour and what genes do they switch on?” Virtual Fly Brain solves that by pulling everything into one place, with search tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) that let researchers find neurons, reagents, and papers, and analyse the data directly. If successful, the project will scale up to handle multiple connectome data sets, integrate single-cell gene expression, and automate the mapping of cell types across experiments. For the wider research community, this means faster, more reproducible discoveries about how brains control behaviour—insights that, because fundamental mechanisms are often conserved across species, could eventually inform human brain research. This is fundamental science: it builds the infrastructure that makes other discoveries possible.

View original technical description
Drosophila is the only model organism with complex adaptive behaviours for which we also have a powerful genetic toolkit and extensive connectomic and transcriptomic coverage of the nervous system. This offers unparalleled opportunities to reveal the mechanisms by which brains control complex behaviour. Virtual Fly Brain provides a uniquely integrated, queryable view of Drosophila neuroscience data. Established pipelines with all major data providers enable rapid integration of new bulk data. Powerful UI and API allow users to find neurons and reagents from many sources, explore connectomes, visualise and download 3D image data. VFB provides an essential system ensuring key data is released openly and rapidly following FAIR data standards. However, it must cope with rapid increases in data scale and richness. The next phase will: - Massively scale-up integration of multiple connectomics datasets, enhancing tools for search query and, via APIs, integration with analysis pipelines. - Integrate comprehensive single cell transcriptomics data and exploration tools. - Incorporate data-driven cell-type definitions and automated tools to map cell types across datasets, and annotate and share data. - Develop and integrate text mining pipelines to ensure complete mapping of papers and reagents to neuron types. - Extend APIs to empower users to analyse, annotate and share huge datasets

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

David Osumi-Sutherland (EPMC Awardee)Gregory Jefferis (EPMC Awardee)Helen Parkinson (EPMC Awardee)James Armstrong (EPMC Awardee)Nicholas Brown (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Virtual Fly Brain: a global informatics hub for Drosophila neurobiology
The Digital Fruit Fly Brain
Structured and graphical queries for Drosophila neuroscience data
A Drosophila single-cell resource for brain metabolism research
Single cell correlates of memory, motivation and individuality

Original classification

Biomedical Resources Grant

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.