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David Hildebrand edited this page Apr 9, 2026 · 1 revision

The goal of this community is to advance circuit neuroscience in the mosquito by collaboratively producing and analyzing the connectome of an adult female non-blood-fed Aedes aegypti brain.

The Female Adult Aedes aegypti Brain (FAAB) dataset was conceptualized in 2018 by Meg Younger (BU), David Hildebrand (Rockefeller>UHouston), and Wei-Chung Allen Lee (BCH/Harvard). Data acquisition and alignment were completed in 2024 with technical support from Mohd Freezly. From 2022 to 2024, the Lee and Younger labs contracted Zetta AI to produce an automated segmentation of all neurons and to generate synapse predictions.

Early in 2025, Greg Jefferis (MRC LMB/Cambridge University) and Elizabeth Marin (Cambridge University) secured funding with Meg and Wei for collaborative reconstruction, annotation, and analysis from the Wellcome Trust, and their group became major contributors to proofreading and data management efforts. The primary goals of this £5M grant are to:

  1. produce a complete, high-quality connectome for an entire Aedes aegypti central brain through proofreading, expert validation, and annotation of the automated segmentation,
  2. obtain novel scientific insights into neural circuits underlying host-seeking behaviour as a model for multisensory integration, and
  3. perform comparative connectomics with extant Drosophila melanogaster brain volumes to identify conserved vs divergent cells and circuits over >160 my of evolution.

Achieving these ambitious goals will require large-scale, coordinated, collaborative proofreading and annotation efforts from all users of this dataset. Systematic proofreading and annotation work, with contributions from the four co-PIs and their teams, began with the start of the grant in May 2025.

The FAAB Community Steering Committee was formed to coordinate proofreading and annotation efforts. This Steering Committee consists of Wei-Chung Allen Lee Wei-Chung_Lee@hms.harvard.edu, Meg Younger myounger@bu.edu, David Hildebrand david@hildebrand.name, Greg Jefferis jefferis@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk, and Elizabeth Marin em711@cam.ac.uk.

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