The Treiber Lab launched in January 2024 and we are set to investigate how intronic transposon insertions that frequently introduce cryptic splice sites within neural genes change proteins, brain functions and behaviours. I will present high-throughput single-cell transposon expression data of the Drosophila melanogaster brain, which reveals that most transposon families exhibit highly complex, non-random expression patterns. We show that co-expression with neighbouring genes accounts for the majority of the observed transposon expression. In addition, we find transposons that are specifically up-regulated when animals form new memories, and this activity-dependent transposon expression matches that of neighbouring genes.

My presentation will highlight how new technological advances in long-read single-cell sequencing will help unravel how transposon expression in the brain impacts an animal's behaviour.