1. Last 7 days
    1. Вселенной сила даст знак разложенным стихиям снова соединяться, то, как к одному началу прикрепленные разные верви все вместе и в одно время следуют за влекомым, так по причине влечения единой силой души различных стихий при внезапном стечении собственно принадлежащего сплетется тогда душой цепь нашего тела,

      дергает за веревочки!

    2. но проницает собственные свои, смешанные с однородным, а не ослабевает в силах, проходя с ними, когда разливаются во Вселенной, навсегда остается в них, где бы и как бы ни устроила их природа.

      душа навсегда в своих стихиях, но где же тогда смерть?

    3. с какими стихиями она соединена первоначально, в тех пребывает и по разрушении,

      тело как собственность души

    4. опять отделилась от сродного для составления воссозидаемого человека

      стихии соединяются вновь

    5. нет невозможности опять сойтись между собой стихиям и составить того же человека.

      воскресение ТЕЛЕСНО

    6. душа будет при каждой стихии, познавательной силой касаясь и держась свойственного ей,

      душа узнает стихии и "держится" их

    7. вместо живописного искусства пусть представлена будет в слове душа, вместо искусственных красок пусть разумеется естество стихий, а разноцветная смесь из красок неодинакового цвета и уступленное нам предположительно возвращение красок в свойственные им опять цвета пусть изображают соединение и разъединение стихий.

      душа-художница

    8. Ибо не слишком упорные достаточно, думаю, убеждены сказанным не обращать душу по разложении тел в небытие и уничтожение и не утверждать, что она никак не может принадлежать к числу существ, потому что имеет разнородную со стихиями сущность.

      душа не исчезает

    9. естество Божественное, как доказано в слове, будучи нечто совершенно иное с сущностью чувственной и вещественной, проницает, однако же, Собою каждое из существ и растворением силы Своей во Вселенной содержит существа в бытии

      повторение сказанного выше

    10. что наконец после длинных вековых периодов порок исчезнет и ничего не останется вне добра

      АПОКАТАСТАСИС

    11. именует нечто одно небесным, другое земным, а иное преисподним.

      небесное - земное - преисподнее

    12. местное положение свойственно одним телам, а что душа, как бесплотная по естеству, не имеет никакой нужды содержаться в каких-либо местах

      Аид - это не место!

    13. что или эта верхняя, или подземная сторона определена душам, отрешившимся от тел

      видимо, была точка зрения, что они в другое полушарие отправляются?

    14. что стремления эти сами по себе суть или добродетель, или порок; так как это движения души, то во власти пользующихся состоит, чтобы они были или хороши, или нет.

      безразличие порывов

    1. describes the series of proclamations of independence from Slovenia and Croatia, the recognition and acceptance of Slovenia, Croatia, and B&H into the UN, the civil war that broke out amongst the disintegration that the European Union and US legally intervened with to turn it into an international conflict, and the UN Security Council imposing sanctions on Yugoslavia.

    1. Plug-iny nie tak czyste, jak obiecywano. Dane z UE podważają ekologiczny wizerunek

      Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) are not as environmentally friendly as previously claimed, according to recent EU data.

      • Real-world emissions from PHEVs average 135 g CO₂/km, only 19% less than conventional petrol and diesel cars which average 166 g CO₂/km.
      • Official WLTP tests significantly underestimate emissions; PHEVs often run on the combustion engine, even in electric mode, increasing real fuel consumption.
      • In electric-only mode, PHEVs still burn around 3 liters of petrol per 100 km, resulting in emissions of 68 g CO₂/km—over eight times higher than manufacturers’ claims.
      • Hidden fuel consumption costs drivers approximately 500 euros per year more than official manufacturer data suggests.
      • PHEVs are among the most expensive on the market; average price in 2025 in Germany, France and the UK is 55,700 euros, about 15,000 euros higher than average battery-only electric cars.
      • Increasing electric range through larger batteries does not reduce emissions; heavier vehicles consume more fuel and energy overall.
      • PHEVs with electric ranges above 75 km emit more CO₂ on average than those with ranges of 45–75 km.
      • The biggest discrepancies are noted for Mercedes-Benz plug-in hybrids; in 2023, their real emissions exceeded official figures by an average of 494%, with the GLE-Class over by 611%.
      • Automotive industry is lobbying to have PHEVs recognized as low-emission beyond 2035, despite new EU regulations that require the transition to zero-emission vehicles.
      • Weakening EU regulations could undermine the development and adoption of truly zero-emission technologies.
      • According to Transport & Environment, plug-in hybrids are “one of the biggest myths in motoring,” often emitting almost as much as combustion-engine cars and much more than test results indicate.
      • EEA and T&E data casts doubt on PHEVs as effective solutions for transportation decarbonization; their environmental benefits are increasingly questioned.
    1. Jacob Kastrenakes. Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords in plain text. The Verge, April 2019. URL: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485599/facebook-instagram-passwords-plain-text-millions-users (visited on 2023-12-06).

      This article reports the situation that Facebook stores users' passwords in plain text instead of encrypted password, meaning stuffs with enough access can directly see the passwords of all the users. Even though they said no one leaked or illegally used the passwords, I still have doubts about this since we don't know what they actually do. When using social media, we give up some of our privacy, so I think if there are some things that we really don't want others to know, we should try to not talk about them on social media.

    1. What incentives to social media companies have to violate privacy?

      I think whether violating privacy of users is good or bad depends on the purpose of doing that. Some social media companies violate users' privacy because they want to make sure the users' actions on the platform are legal. There are so many fake accounts and scams on the social media, so some companies might violate these users' privacy in order to protect other users from being victimized. But like we learned from last chapter, one of the main goal of social medias is to increase the time users spend on their platforms. And I think they also want users on their platforms to be as more as possible. So they might collect users and non-users' data and analyze these data without getting permission.

    Annotators

    1. In the BB method, the full message appears only once on the network

      непонятно почему 1. как-будто и там и там мы передаём его столько раз, сколько всего процессов. То есть экономия не насколько сильная

    2. If multiple servers listen to the same port, onlyone (arbitrary) server will get the message.Ports are also used to identify groups. RPC and group primitives that are called with the sameport do not interfere with each other. When creating a group, the user specifies a port. Otherprocesses can use this port, for example, to join the group or to send a message to the group.

      не очень понятно как это должно рабоать. Сначала мы говорим что если несколько пользователей смотрят один порт, он может гарантировать доставку только до одного из них, а потом что всё взаимодействие группы строится вокруг одного порта, который могут также читать снаружи. как-будто это не очень удобный метод

    3. short acceptmessage from the sequencer

      Если честно, не очень понял как конкретно будет выглядеть accept message. Мы же должны как-то по его содержанию понять на какое именно сообщение мы отослали accept message. Мне сразу подумалось, что можно дополнительно ввести хеш-функцию для сообщений и вместе с sqeuence number'ом отправлять в accept message ещё и хеш сообщения, которое мы хотим заакцептить. Тогда узлы, принимающие accept message смогут понять, на какое именно сообщение пришло подтверждение от sequencer'а.

    1. Critical education as part of LIS courses is crucial to changing thecurrent situation in which “the LIS curriculum is just one of a constellation of middle-classpractices aimed at maintaining hegemonic control by the dominant class” (Pawley, 1998, p.123), and would prepare LIS students to challenge normative conceptions of informationas a commodity in their work environments.

      I wonder to what extent this has been adopted in LIS education since the article was published?

    2. The use of structures and procedures to quantify and measure information outputs in theform of “usage” and “impact” also drives a divergent form of competition for academics asthe value of their work is measured according to its contribution to the knowledge economy

      Is the underlying issue connected to how we value scholarly work?

    3. However, the apparatuses that govern society’s presentation and representationof this information, the features that help to define what commodities are, have beenorganised to provide a privileged and stratified access to this scholarly information andknowledge. This organisation allows information to appear and function as a commodityrather than as a commons and a public good.

      Is it only the organisation of the 'apparatuses that govern society's presentation'. And does organisation mean capitalism?

    1. eLife Assessment

      This important work develops the C. elegans as a model organism for studying effort-based discounting by asking the worms to choose between patches of easy and hard to digest bacteria. The authors provide convincing evidence that the nematodes are effort discounting. They also provide solid evidence of involvement of dopamine in the food preference and that the finding is not restricted to lab-acclimated strains.

    2. Reviewer #1 (Public review):

      Summary:

      Millet et al. show that C. elegans systematically prefers easy-to-eat bacteria but will switch its choice when harder-to-eat bacteria are offered at higher densities, producing indifference points that fit standard economic discounting models. Detailed kinetic analysis reveals that this bias arises from unchanged patch-entry rates but significantly elevated exit rates on effortful food, and dop-3 mutants lose the preference altogether, implicating dopamine in effort sensitivity. These findings extend effort-discounting behavior to a simple nematode, pushing the phylogenetic boundary of economic cost-benefit decision-making.

      Strengths:

      Extends the well-characterized concept of effort discounting into C. elegans, setting a new phylogenetic boundary and opening invertebrate genetics to economic-behavior studies.

      Elegant use of cephalexin-elongated bacteria to manipulate "effort" without altering nutritional or olfactory cues, yielding clear preference reversals and reproducible indifference points.

      Application of standard discounting models to predict novel indifference points is both rigorous and quantitatively satisfying, reinforcing the interpretation of worm behavior in economic terms.

      The three-state patch-model cleanly separates entry and exit dynamics, showing that increased leaving rates-rather than altered re-entry-drive choice biases.

      Demonstrates that _dop-3_ mutants lose normal effort discounting, firmly tying monoaminergic signaling to this behavior and paralleling vertebrate findings.

      Demonstration of discounting in wild strain (solid evidence).

      Weaknesses:

      Only _dop-3_ shows an effect, whereas _cat-2_/_dat-1_ do not, leaving the broader role of dopamine synthesis and reuptake ambiguous.

      With only five wild isolates tested, and only one clearly showing clear evidence of preference for the easy to eat bacteria, it's hard to conclude that effort discounting isn't a lab-strain artifact or how broadly it varies in natural populations.

    3. Reviewer #2 (Public review):

      Summary:

      Here Millet et al. adapted a t-maze paradigm for use in C. elegans to understand whether nematodes exhibit effort discounting behaviors comparable to other species. C. elegans worms were reliably sensitive to how effortful the food was to consume, allowing for the application of standard economic models of decision-making to be applied to their behavior. The authors then demonstrated the necessity of dopamine signaling for this behavior, identifying dop-3 mutants in particular as insensitive to effort. Together, this work establishes a new model system for the study of discounting behavior in cost-benefit decision-making.

      Strengths:

      The question is well-motivated and the approach taken here is novel; it is uncommon for worms to undergo such behavioural procedures (although this lab has previously been integral to pushing the extent of the complexity of behaviours studied in C. elegans). The authors are careful in their approach to altering and testing the properties of the elongated bacteria. Similarly, they go to some effort to understand what exactly is driving behavioural choices in this context, both through application of simple standard models of effort discounting and a kinetic analysis of patch leaving. The comparisons to various dopamine mutants further extends the translational potential of their findings. I also appreciate the comparison to natural isolate strains as the question of whether this behaviour may be driven by some sort of strain-specific adaptation to the environment is not regularly addressed in mammalian counterparts to this work.

      Weaknesses:

      The authors have now addressed concerns about whether the mechanisms underlying the choice behavior here are generalizable to other organisms. Specifically, their work speaks to foraging-inspired effort discounting paradigms in rodents and humans in which the decision is whether to stay or leave a given resource, rather than to simultaneous decision-making across two options in a T-maze.

      The dopamine results are interesting but still difficult to interpret. As the authors discuss, the lack of an effect in the cat-2 and dat-1 mutants is surprising given the effect in the dop-3 mutants. Understanding what exactly the role of dop-3 is here therefore requires further study.

    4. Reviewer #3 (Public review):

      Summary:

      The authors establish a behavioral task to explore effort discounting in C. elegans. By using bacterial food that takes longer to consume, the authors show that for equivalent effort, as measured by pumping rate, animals obtain less food, as measured by fat deposition.

      The authors formalize the task by applying a neuroeconomic decision making model that includes, value, effort, and discounting. They use this to estimate the discounting C. elegans apply based on ingestion effort by using a population level 2-choice T-maze.

      They then analyze the behavioral dynamics of individual animals transitioning between on-food and off-food states. Harder to ingest bacteria led to increased food patch leaving.

      Finally, they examined a set of mutants defective in different aspects of dopamine signaling, as dopamine plays a key role in discounting in vertebrates and regulates certain aspects of C. elegans foraging.

      In their response to the first set of reviews, the authors take care to ensure their task is analogous to at least some of those used in mammals and make changes to the text to better clarify some of their conclusions. My view is the same--that this is an interesting paper for methodological and scientific reasons that brings an important theoretical framework to bear on C. elegans foraging behavior. While I think the mutant results are somewhat unsatisfying, this is not the principal contribution of the work.

      Strengths:

      The behavioral experiments and neuroeconomic analysis framework are compelling and interesting and make a significant contribution to the field. While these foraging behaviors have been extensively studied, few include clearly articulated theoretical models to be tested.

      Demonstrating that C. elegans effort discounting fits model predictions and has stable indifference points is important for establishing these tasks as a model for decision making.

      Weaknesses:

      The dopamine experiments are harder to interpret. The authors point out the perplexing lack of an effect of dat-1 and cat-2. dop-3 leads to general indifference. I am not sure this is the expected result if the argument is a parallel functional role to discounting in vertebrates. dop-3 causes a range of locomotor phenotypes and may affect feeding (reduced fat storage), and thus there may be a general defect in the ability to perform the task rather than anything specific to discounting.

      That said, some of the other DA mutants also have locomotor defects and do not differ from N2. But there is no clear result here-my concern is that global mutants in such a critical pathway exhibit such pleiotropy that it's difficult to conclude there is a clear and specific role for DA in effort discounting. This would require more targeted or cell-specific approaches. The authors state these experiments are outside the scope of the current study, and that at minimum their results implicate dopamine signaling in some form. I tend to agree but still think locomotion defects of DA mutants complicate this question.

      Meanwhile, there are other pathways known to affect responses to food and patch leaving decisions-5HT, PDF, tyramine, etc. in their response the authors state they focus on dopamine because of its role in discounting behavior in mammals.

    5. Author response:

      The following is the authors’ response to the original reviews.

      Reviewer #1(Public Reviews):

      Summary: 

      Here, Millet et al. consider whether the nematode C. elegans 'discounts' the value of reward due to effort in a manner similar to that shown in other species, including rodents and humans. They designed a T-maze effort choice paradigm inspired by previous literature, but manipulated how effortful the food is to consume.C. elegans worms were sensitive to this novel manipulation, exhibiting effort-discountinglike behaviour that could be shaped by varying the density of food at each alternative in order to calculate an indifference point. This discounting-like behaviour was related to worms' rates of patch leaving, which differed between the low and high effort patches in isolation. The authors also found a potential relationship to dopamine signalling, and also that this discounting behaviour was not specific to lab-based strains of C. elegans

      Strengths: 

      The question is well-motivated, and the approach taken here is novel. The authors are careful in their approach to altering and testing the properties of the effortful, elongated bacteria. Similarly, they go to some effort to understand what exactly is driving behavioural choices in this context, both through the application of simple standard models of effort discounting and a kinetic analysis of patch leaving. The comparisons to various dopamine mutants further extend the translational potential of their findings. I also appreciate the comparison to natural isolate strains, as the question of whether this behaviour may be driven by some sort of strain-specific adaptation to the environment is not regularly addressed in mammalian counterparts. The manuscript is well-written, and the figures are clear and comprehensible. 

      Weaknesses: 

      Discounting is typically defined as the alteration of a subjective value by effort (or time, risk, etc.), which is then used to guide future decision-making. By adapting the standard t-maze task for C. elegans as a patch-leaving paradigm, the authors observe behaviour strongly consistent with discounting models, but that is likely driven by a different process, in particular by an online estimate of the type of food in the current patch, which then influences patch-leaving dynamics (Figure 3). This is fundamentally different from decision-making strategies relating to effort that have been described in the rodent and human literatures. 

      We agree that in our study worms are likely making an on-line estimate of food quality in the current patch, but we wish to point out that rodents and humans also use on-line estimates in some significant effort-discounting paradigms. With respect to rodents, we call attention to effort discounting studies involving the widely used progressive ratio task (references in Discussion). In this task, animals can either lever-press for a preferred food or consume a less preferred food that is freely available nearby. However, the number of lever presses required to obtain preferred food increases as a function of the cumulative number of lever presses until the effort-cost of obtaining preferred food becomes too high and the animal switches to a freely available food. In essence, the lever and the freely available food are patches and the animal decides whether or not to leave the “lever” patch. It seems inescapable that the progressive ratio task involves an on-line assessment of the cost/benefit relationship associated with lever pressing. With respect to humans, one highly cited study (reference in Discussion) presented participants with a series of virtual apple trees. They could see how many apples are in the current tree and how much effort (squeezing a handgrip) is required to gather them. Their task was to decide whether or not to gather apples from that tree based on the perceived cost and benefit. Thus, on-line estimation is a common strategy used by animals and humans as shown in the effort discounting literature. We now make this point in the Discussion section titled A model of effort-discounting like behavior.

      Similarly, the calculation of indifference points at the group instead of at the individual level also suggests a different underlying process and limits the translational potential of their findings. The authors do not discuss the implications of these differences or why they chose not to attempt a more analogous trial-based experiment.  

      It is not clear to us why changing the read-out –– from the individual level to the population level –– necessarily suggests that a different biological mechanism is at work. In our view, there is one mechanism and it can be seen from different perspectives (e.g., individual vs population). Furthermore, the analogous trial-based experiment, as we understand it, would be to record behavior one worm at a time in the T-maze. This design is not practical because it entails recording a large number of single worms in the T-maze for 60 min each. 

      In the case of both the dopamine and natural isolate experiments, the data are very noisy despite large (relative to other C. elegans experiments) sample sizes. In the dopamine experiment, disruption of dop1, dop-2, and cat-2 had no statistically significant effect. There do not appear to be any corrections for multiple comparisons, and the single significant comparison, for dop-3, had a small effect size. 

      An ANOVA followed by a Dunnett test was used to test differences between groups in Fig. 4 and 5. The Dunnett test is a multiple comparison test comparing experimental groups to a single control group. It is used to minimize type I error while maintaining statistical power and does not require further correction for multiple comparisons. We have clarified the use of the Dunnett test in the statistical table.  The effect size for dop-3 is 0.5 (Cohen’s d), which is typically interpreted as a medium, not small, effect size.(e.g. Cohen, Psychological Bulletin, 1992, Vol. 112. No. 1,155-159). 

      More detailed behavioural analyses on both these and the wild isolate strains, for example by applying their kinetic analysis, would likely give greater insight as to what is driving these inconsistent effects. 

      More detailed behavioral analysis could reveal why we observe a difference in effort discounting in some strains and not others. However, it is not obvious what type of behavioral analysis would be needed to differentiate between pleiotropic effects of the mutations/natural isolates and more specific effects on effort discounting. A simple kinetic analysis in particular may not be enough to reveal relevant differences between mutants/natural isolates. For this reason, we think that such experiments may be better suited for future follow up studies.

      Reviewer #2 (Public Reviews)

      Summary: 

      Millet et al. show that C. elegans systematically prefers easy-to-eat bacteria but will switch its choice when harder-to-eat bacteria are offered at higher densities, producing indifference points that fit standard economic discounting models. Detailed kinetic analysis reveals that this bias arises from unchanged patch-entry rates but significantly elevated exit rates on effortful food, and dop-3 mutants lose the preference altogether, implicating dopamine in effort sensitivity. These findings extend effortdiscounting behavior to a simple nematode, pushing the phylogenetic boundary of economic costbenefit decision-making. 

      Strengths: 

      (1) Extends the well-characterized concept of effort discounting into C. elegans , setting a new phylogenetic boundary and opening invertebrate genetics to economic-behavior studies. 

      (2) Elegant use of cephalexin-elongated bacteria to manipulate "effort" without altering nutritional or olfactory cues, yielding clear preference reversals and reproducible indifference points. 

      (3) Application of standard discounting models to predict novel indifference points is both rigorous and quantitatively satisfying, reinforcing the interpretation of worm behavior in economic terms. 

      (4) The three-state patch-model cleanly separates entry and exit dynamics, showing that increased leaving rates-rather than altered re-entry-drive choice biases. 

      (5) Investigates the role of dopamine in this behavior to try to establish shared mechanisms with vertebrates. 

      (6) Demonstration of discounting in wild strain (solid evidence). 

      Weaknesses: 

      (1) The kinetic model omits rich trajectory details-such as turning angles or hazard functions-that could distinguish a bona fide roaming transition from other exit behaviors. 

      The overarching goal of present paper was to develop a simple model for effort discounting in a small, genetically tractable organism.  Accordingly,  we focused on quantitative assays that are easy to implement and analyze. The patch-leaving assay and its associated kinetic analysis are one such assay. To keep things simple in this assay, we counted the number of  transitions between the three states shown in Fig. 3A. We chose not to analyze the data in terms of turning angles or hazard functions because the metrics we developed seemed sufficient. Finally, we note that there are new modeling data showing that the presumptive transitions into the roaming state can be explained in terms of a one-state stochastic model in which there is no discrete roaming state (Elife. 2025 Jul 30;14:RP104972. doi:

      10.7554/eLife.104972.PMID: 40736321).

      (2) Only dop-3 shows an effect, and the statistical validity of this result is questionable. It is not clear if the authors corrected for multiple comparisons, and the effect size is quite small and noisy, given the large number of worms tested. Other mutants do not show effects. Given these two concerns, the role of dopamine in C. elegans effort discounting was unconvincing. 

      An ANOVA followed by a Dunnett test was used to test statistical significance in figures 4 and 5 (see above for a discussion of these tests). We believe this approach is rigorous, and the use of these tests is statistically valid. We note that the effect size for this comparison was medium.

      (3) With only five wild isolates tested (and variable data quality), it's hard to conclude that effort discounting isn't a lab-strain artifact or how broadly it varies in natural populations. 

      The fact that four of the five natural isolates tested display levels of effort discounting similar to N2 (only one natural isolate does not display effort discounting) argues against effort discounting being a laboratory adaption.  We have nevertheless weakened the claim regarding natural isolates. We now say effort discounting-like behavior may not be an adaptation to the laboratory environment.  

      (4) Detailed analysis of behavior beyond preference indices would strengthen the dopamine link and the claim of effort discounting in wild strains. 

      Going beyond preference in the behavioral analysis might or might not reveal new phenotypes that strengthen the link with dopamine. At present, however, we think such experiments are beyond the scope of the paper.

      (5) A few mechanistic statements (e.g., tying satiety exclusively to nutrient signals) would benefit from explicit citations or brief clarifications for non-worm specialists. 

      We are unable to identify a mechanistic statement tying satiety to nutrient signals in our manuscript.

      Reviewer #3 (Public Reviews)

      Summary: 

      The authors establish a behavioral task to explore effort discounting in C. eleganss . By using bacterial food that takes longer to consume, the authors show that, for equivalent effort, as measured by pumping rate, they obtain less food, as measured by fat deposition. The authors formalize the task by applying a formal neuroeconomic decision-making model that includes value, effort, and discounting. They use this to estimate the discounting that C. elegans applies based on ingestion effort by using a population-level 2-choice T-maze. They then analyze the behavioral dynamics of individual animals transitioning between on-food and off-food states. Harder to ingest bacteria led to increased food patch leaving. Finally, they examined a set of mutants defective in different aspects of dopamine signaling, as dopamine plays a key role in discounting in vertebrates and regulates certain aspects of C. elegans foraging. 

      Strengths: 

      The behavioral experiments and neuroeconomic analysis framework are compelling, interesting, and make a significant contribution to the field. While these foraging behaviors have been extensively studied, few include clearly articulated theoretical models to be tested. 

      Demonstrating that C. elegans effort discounting fits model predictions and has stable indifference points is important for establishing these tasks as a model for decision making. 

      Weaknesses: 

      The dopamine experiments are harder to interpret. The authors point out the perplexing lack of an effect of dat-1 and cat-2. dop-3 leads to general indifference. I am not sure this is the expected result if the argument is a parallel functional role to discounting in vertebrates. dop-3 causes a range of locomotor phenotypes and may affect feeding (reduced fat storage), and thus, there may be a general defect in the ability to perform the task rather than anything specific to discounting.

      That said, some of the other DA mutants also have locomotor defects and do not differ from N2. But there is no clear result here - my concern is that global mutants in such a critical pathway exhibit such pleiotropy that it's difficult to conclude there is a clear and specific role for DA in effort discounting. This would require more targeted or cell-specific approaches. 

      We agree with the reviewer that the results of the dopamine experiments are puzzling and getting a better understanding of the role of dopamine in effort-discounting will require more sensitive assays and different experimental approaches (e.g. cell-specific rescues). However, as mentioned by the reviewer, all the mutations tested have some pleiotropic effects, yet only dop-3 displays a defect in effort discounting. This, in our opinion, points to a specific role of dop-3 in effort-discounting in C. elegans. This point is now made in the Discussion in the section titled Role of dopamine signaling in effort discountinglike behavior.

      Meanwhile, there are other pathways known to affect responses to food and patch leaving decisions: serotonin, pigment-dispersing factor, tyramine, etc. The paper would have benefited from a clarification about why these were not considered as promising candidates to test (in addition to or instead of dopamine). 

      We focused on DA because of its well-established effect on effort discounting in rodents.

      Testing other pathways is a goal for future research.

      Reviewer #1 (Recommendations for the authors):

      The current results are more a reframing of data gathered from a patch-leaving paradigm, but described in the form of economic choice modelling in which discounting is one possible explanation. One more parsimonious explanation that worms estimate in real-time some rate of reward and leave the patch at some threshold, consistent with canonical foraging models, previous experiments in C. elegans, and the authors' own data (Figure 3). Therefore, I am wary about some of the claims made in this manuscript, such as 'decision-making strategies based on effort-cost trade-offs are evolutionarily conserved'. 

      These points are now addressed in the Discussion in a revised section titled A model of effortdiscounting like behavior. (i) We now call attention to the fact that our T-maze assay is a patch-leaving foraging paradigm. (ii) We now propose a revised model in which “worms make an on-line assessment of food value in the current patch which in turn alters patch-leaving dynamics, increasing the exit rates from cephalexin-treated patches as shown in Figure 3.” (iii) We now provide evidence from the rodent and human literature that the strategy of on-line assessment of reward value may be evolutionarily conserved in the case of a class of effort discounting tasks whose solution requires on-line assessments. 

      If the reason the authors chose to do a patch-leaving style task rather than a traditional t-maze is because C. elegans is unable to retain the sort of information necessary to make such simultaneous decisions - e.g., if pre-training on the two options isn't possible - then this in itself suggests that mechanisms underlying these decisions in worms and mammals are unlikely to be the same. I mention this because I would like to suggest to the authors an alternative interpretation: that patch foraging is actually 'the' canonical computation that translates across species. This would, in fact, be nicely consistent with some other recent modelling work in humans, e.g., https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.06.652482v1

      Please see the previous response.

      Reviewer #2 (Recommendations for the authors):

      Can you provide a picture of the regular and CEPH bacteria? 

      Done (see Figure 1––figure supplement 1).

      Reviewer #3 (Recommendations for the authors):

      I would recommend testing representative mutants in other pathways in the choice task. If possible, more targeted experiments with dop-3, including either cell-specific KOs or rescues, would very much strengthen this aspect of the paper. 

      While valuable, these experiments are out of scope for the present study.

    1. The message is pretty clear: start with why A value proposition.

      The amount of money you can ask for something is primarily a function of perception (perceived value), and relative availability.

      As such, the optimal cost for something is more of a psychological subjective function than an objective algorithmic process.

      This obviously leaves aside the philosophical dimension of ethics.

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      Referee #3

      Evidence, reproducibility and clarity

      Summary

      The manuscript presents IGNITE (Inference of Gene Networks using Inverse kinetic Theory and Experiments), an unsupervised machine learning framework for constructing gene regulatory networks from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. IGNITE utilizes a kinetic inverse Ising model to infer gene interactions from binarized expression data and can predict genetic perturbation effects, such as those from knockout experiments. Although the application of inverse Ising models to network reconstruction is not entirely novel, IGNITE's specific implementation and its application to single-cell RNA sequencing data represent a new development. The method is tested on the transition from naive to formative states in murine pluripotent stem cells, a system the authors are highly knowledgeable about, and its performance is compared to state-of-the-art alternative methods.

      Major concerns

      My concern regards the generality of the method, particularly the entire pipeline presented, and the fairness of the performance comparison. These concerns can be easily addressed by the authors by better explaining their choices and their general applicability, and by toning down the conclusions about the comparison with existing inference methods.

      The pre-processing steps are extensive, and their rationale is not always clear, though the results heavily depend on this analysis. Several steps appear to involve arbitrary choices optimized for specific outcomes, potentially introducing biases. The authors should better explain the rationale behind their choices to mitigate these concerns.

      Specifically, part of the pipeline seems to be built to reproduce a specific expression pattern of 24 genes that some of the authors discovered in a previous paper. Although this prior knowledge could be useful and relevant in this specific system, it could limit the generality of the method. For example, the authors selected approximately 2000 genes based on prior knowledge and used a combination of t-SNE and UMAP for dimensionality reduction (although the two techniques have a similar goal). This specific combination seems to reproduce the pseudotime alignment the authors were expecting to find, but such prior information might not be available in general. Therefore, feature selection and the methods used to project data need more justification, especially if the goal is to create a general tool applicable across different biological systems.

      Analogously, the clustering seems manually adjusted to match known expression patterns of 24 relevant genes, rather than being the result of an optimized clustering method. Additionally, the clusters overlap with different time points, raising concerns about potential batch effects. These issues should be addressed to strengthen the validity of the method.

      The claims about the comparison with existing methods should be toned down. While the comparisons are useful and interesting, they might be biased due to the method's fine-tuning for the specific system studied. The claim that the model requires only scRNA-seq data is misleading, as strong prior biological knowledge was used to select, for example, the genes analyzed.

      Significance

      The manuscript is scientifically sound, clearly written, and deserves publication. The proposed method is quantitative, novel, theoretically grounded, and was tested in detail with appropriate null models and statistical methods. Moreover, IGNITE can be applied to various biological systems as the availability of scRNA-seq datasets is continuously growing. The paper will be of interest to a broad community of computational biologists and biology labs interested in gene regulation using scRNA-seq data.

      The limitation, in my opinion, is the method's (particularly the pre-processing pipeline) fine-tuning for the specific biological system tested. Testing IGNITE on another biological system without pre-selected pre-processing steps or detailed biological priors would be more convincing and make the paper's conclusions much stronger. The comparison with other methods also may be slightly biased due to this fine-tuning.

      My background is in statistical physics, with expertise in biological physics, specifically in mathematical modeling and data analysis in molecular biology.

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      Referee #2

      Evidence, reproducibility and clarity

      Corridori et al introduce IGNITE, a computational framework to infer gene regulatory networks (GRNs) from scRNA-seq data leveraging the kinetic Ising model, which can be used to simulate synthetic gene expression and perform in-silico knockout experiments. Other similar frameworks exist, but none combine these three aspects together. The authors have generated a scRNA-seq of murine ESCs differentiation which they use to compare their method with others. Specifically they show that they can infer known regulatory interactions, that they can generate similar data than the original and that it can potentially predict gene expression changes in transcription factor knock-out perturbations.

      Major comments:

      • Many of the authors' claims are backed by qualitative results and not properly quantified. In Fig2, authors qualitatively compare intra gene correlations between genes for the original data and their prediction. Instead of just visualizing they should compute and report the Spearman correlation between the original expression and the predicted one. The Fraction of Agreement is not a good metric to compare knockout predictions since it is completely dependent on the class imbalance of signs, for example if the selected genes are 75% positive and 25% negative, a naive predictor that only outputs positive predictions will still have a high score. Instead, the authors should quantify this with Spearman correlation or RMSE and compare across methods. In FigS4a-b the authors qualitatively claim that other methods could not predict the expected cell composition, which they should quantify and report the values across methods. When comparing against the ground truth network, the fraction of correctly inferred interactions is technically the same as precision but is ignoring recall. I suggest the authors compute precision, recall and a combined F1 score to compare the evaluated methods. Authors claim that the method is scalable to a larger number of genes but no data is provided, they should show how their method compares to others when using a different number of cells and number of genes at memory usage and running time.
      • The authors need to better describe which tests were performed when talking about significance, which thresholds and which corrections, if any, were employed.
      • To reduce the number of dimensions of scRNA-seq data the authors use t-SNE and then from the obtained result UMAP to project the data into a lower dimensional space. This is fundamentally wrong since distances are not well preserved in t-SNE. Instead the authors should first employ PCA and then UMAP. Additionally, the authors use UMAP distances in the Slingshot pseudotime calculation. Similar to t-SNE, UMAP distances have no real meaning and should only be used for visualization purposes. Instead, the authors should provide Slingshot the obtained PCA embeddings.
      • Dictys (PMID: 37537351) is a known GRN inference method that also can simulate gene expression but is missing in the benchmark, the authors should add it to the method comparison.
      • The current manuscript is not reproducible since it is missing the method's code, the code to reproduce the figures and the generated scRNA-seq data.
      • Authors claim that the method is scalable to a larger number of genes but no data is provided to back this claim. They should show how their method compares to others when using a different number of cells and number of genes.

      Minor points:

      • In the introduction, authors mention multimodal GRN inference methods but do not provide any references.
      • In Table 1, CellOracle is annotated as not being able to do multiple KO which is wrong. Additionally, the authors mention that IGNITE uses no prior knowledge which is not really true since it requires pseudotime ordering. The authors should add a column to Table 1 whether methods require pseudotime.
      • It is unclear what the dashed arrow of Fig1b means. Moreover, plotting gene expression values on top of UMAPs can be misleading, instead authors should plot the gene expression distributions binned by pseudotime.
      • The authors report a p-value of 1.04x10-171 which is below detection limit (see PMID: 30921532). Authors should change it to an interval such as p < 2.2×10-16.
      • To make CellOracle results easier to interpret and more comparable, authors should run it at the atlas level instead of at the cell type level, this way generating only one GRN. This can be achieved by assigning the same cluster label to all cells.
      • Experimental values in FigS3b seem to have been repeated and do not match the previous ones for IGNITE and SCODE.
      • It is unclear what the different circles mean in Fig5b.

      Significance

      This manuscript is an incremental and methodological work for specialized audiences. Its strengths are that the authors employ kinetic Ising model for GRN inference and that they provide a single framework capable of inferring, simulating and perturbing gene expression. The main limitations are that the claims should be better quantified and that the code and data need to be made accessible.

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      Referee #1

      Evidence, reproducibility and clarity

      Summary

      Corridori and colleagues propose IGNITE, a novel method to recover Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN) from single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Their method solves the inverse Ising problem generating a cohort of candidate GRN optimising it to minimise the difference to the input expression matrix. Authors report the IGNITE is able to predict wild type data and simulate both single and multiple gene knockouts. Authors benchmark this method on a in-house data set of differentiating pluripotent stem cells (PSC). They focus on a small set of genes known to be involved in PSC differentiation into formative cells. Authors benchmark IGNITE against state of the art tools (SCODE, MaxEnt and CELLORACLE). They evaluate IGNITE ability to predict wild type gene expression by comparing their data with experimental data and with SCODE. They conclude the tool has generative capacity comparable with SCODE. They also evaluate IGNITE ability to recover known interactions with respect to other tools without finding it to significantly outperform them.

      Major comments

      • Are the key conclusions convincing?

      Conclusions appear convincing although model generalizability could be shown in a more thorough manner. For instance, analysing some other publicly available dataset could help demonstrate hyperparameters effects on GRN predictions and their robustness across different experiments. - Should the authors qualify some of their claims as preliminary or speculative, or remove them altogether?

      Claims are well supported by data. - Would additional experiments be essential to support the claims of the paper? Request additional experiments only where necessary for the paper as it is, and do not ask authors to open new lines of experimentation.

      I think the work would benefit from an additional benchmark on a different cellular system. This experiment would show how hyperparameters generalise across datasets and would provide potential users insights how to tweak them.

      Also, how does the model scale with the number of genes? A benchmark on computation time and resources required to infer GRN of growing size would be valuable in the adoption of this tool.

      In addition, I think the GRN comparison benchmark presented in section (3.4) would benefit from a quantitative discussion. Authors show inferred GRNs in Figure 4 and S5. For instance, measuring matrix similarity (when appropriate) would help understanding how predicted GRN compare. I understand authors attempt to do so by focusing on validated interactions and computing the fraction of correctly inferred interactions (FCI) but I think a measurement of the overall similarity (eg. Pearson correlation) would add on this.

      Another comment regards the dependency between Correlation Matrices Distance (CMD) and FCI, shown in Figure 5. I understand that IGNITE GRN that maximise FCI are not the same that minimise CMD. However, it looks like GRN that maximise FCI have higher value in terms of biological information. I wonder whether optimization for one or the other metric could be left to the end user as a tunable parameter.

      Authors should discuss why the expression of some genes does not follow the expected trends (Fig 1C vs Fig S1A). Out of the 24 genes they select for their analysis, at least four do not follow the expected trends: Sox2, according to literature, is a Naive gene, however, in Figure 1C its gene expression pattern is more similar to Formative late genes. Other genes with similar "unexpected" patterns are Zic3, Etv4 and Sall4.

      Are the suggested experiments realistic in terms of time and resources? It would help if you could add an estimated cost and time investment for substantial experiments.

      I think suggested experiments are doable as long as authors get publicly available data, i.e. the in-house dataset they generated for this study is enough to show applicability. For example datasets analysed in SCODE paper (https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btx194) could be used as second benchmark. The point of applying the tool to another dataset is to show how it generalises across different biological systems, experiments and, potentially, sequencing technologies. - Are the data and the methods presented in such a way that they can be reproduced?

      The methods section is really clear. To enable reproducibility both raw scRNA-seq data, the IGNITE source code and code written to benchmark it should be released in the public domain in appropriate repositories (eg. ENA, GitHub, Binder etc). - Are the experiments adequately replicated and statistical analysis adequate?

      Yes.

      Minor comments

      • Specific experimental issues that are easily addressable.

      Related to the Sox2 expression pattern is the binarization shown in Figure 2D. How is it possible that Sox2 is always marked as active? Could the authors clarify how these outlier behaviours emerge and propose mitigation strategies, if any?

      In section 5.11.2 it is unclear if xi are in log scale or not. Since the model starts from binarized, log transformed expression values, should not generated ones be in the same scale as the input? - Are prior studies referenced appropriately?

      Yes, referencing is clear. - Are the text and figures clear and accurate?

      Yes, figures appear to be clear, readable and well documented both in captions and main text. - Do you have suggestions that would help the authors improve the presentation of their data and conclusions?

      Section 3.3 could be improved by better describing experimental datasets. Only in the methods section it is clearly stated that experimental data for single KO experiments were retrieved from the literature.

      Check typesetting:

      • parenthesis missing in Eq. 1
      • Leftover $ in section 3.1
      • Parenthesis missing in Section 3.3
      • Misplaced comma in section 5.2.1

      Significance

      • Describe the nature and significance of the advance (e.g. conceptual, technical, clinical) for the field.

      The paper presents a method to infer GRN from scRNA-seq data alone. Applications include GRN prediction and their perturbations. This paper represents a technical advance in the field as it is the first application of the inverse Ising problem GRN inference. - Place the work in the context of the existing literature (provide references, where appropriate).

      The paper itself presents the landscape of GRN inference tools using scRNA-seq data: SCODE, MaxEnt and CELLORACLE. More tools exist, for instance SCENIC (https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4463) mainly relies on co-expression matrices. Other tools exist but require additional data types e.g. GRaNIE and GRaNPA (https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.202311627) leverage on physical interaction data (ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq). Similarly DeepFlyBrain uses deep neural networks to infer eGRN in Drosophila (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04262-z). The value of tools like IGNITE and its competitors is that they do not require additional data types, which, in turn, helps in controlling experimental costs. - State what audience might be interested in and influenced by the reported findings.

      The paper might be of interest to biologists interested in regulation of gene expression. The tool might turn out to be useful in planning experimental work by guiding the choice of perturbations to introduce in experimental systems. - Define your field of expertise with a few keywords to help the authors contextualize your point of view. Indicate if there are any parts of the paper that you do not have sufficient expertise to evaluate.

      I am a computational biologist.

      I have no sufficient expertise to evaluate the mathematical details of the method.

  2. wordpress-1307899-5879637.cloudwaysapps.com wordpress-1307899-5879637.cloudwaysapps.com
    1. PPROTECT

      Spelfout: Dubbele P

      Protect your wealth and financial freedom We build financial structures for wealth protection for now and the future

      Clear and tailormade steps combined with transparent communication Non nonsense. Focused. Practical.

      De letter G, g valt overal half weg.

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    1. eLife Assessment

      This important study combines behavioural psychophysics with image-computable models to contrast a view-selective model of face recognition with a view-tolerant process. Although diagnostic orientations vary with viewpoint (horizontal for frontal, vertical for profile), human recognition remains consistently tuned to horizontal information, aligning with the view-tolerant model's predictions. The evidence for view-invariant recognition is solid, though testing more plausible model variants and considering generalisability to more naturalistic face stimuli would strengthen the conclusions.

    2. Reviewer #1 (Public review):

      Summary:

      The authors describe the results of a single study designed to investigate the extent to which horizontal orientation energy plays a key role in supporting view-invariant face recognition. The authors collected behavioral data from adult observers who were asked to complete an old/new face matching task by learning broad-spectrum faces (not orientation filtered) during a familiarization phase and subsequently trying to label filtered faces as previously seen or novel at test. This data revealed a clear bias favoring the use of horizontal orientation energy across viewpoint changes in the target images. The authors then compared different ideal observer models (cross-correlations between target and probe stimuli) to examine how this profile might be reflected in the image-level appearance of their filtered images. This revealed that a model looking for the best matching face within a viewpoint differed substantially from human data, exhibiting a vertical orientation bias for extreme profiles. However, a model forced to match targets to probes at different viewing angles exhibited a consistent horizontal bias in much the same manner as human observers.

      Strengths:

      I think the question is an important one: The horizontal orientation bias is a great example of a low-level image property being linked to high-level recognition outcomes, and understanding the nature of that connection is important. I found the old/new task to be a straightforward task that was implemented ably and that has the benefit of being simple for participants to carry out and simple to analyze. I particularly appreciated that the authors chose to describe human data via a lower-dimensional model (their Gaussian fits to individual data) for further analysis. This was a nice way to express the nature of the tuning function, favoring horizontal orientation bias in a way that makes key parameters explicit. Broadly speaking, I also thought that the model comparison they include between the view-selective and view-tolerant models was a great next step. This analysis has the potential to reveal some good insights into how this bias emerges and ask fine-grained questions about the parameters in their model fits to the behavioral data.

      Weaknesses:

      I will start with what I think is the biggest difficulty I had with the paper. Much as I liked the model comparison analysis, I also don't quite know what to make of the view-tolerant model. As I understand the authors' description, the key feature of this model is that it does not get to compare the target and probe at the same yaw angle, but must instead pick a best match from candidates that are at different yaws. While it is interesting to see that this leads to a very different orientation profile, it also isn't obvious to me why such a comparison would be reflective of what the visual system is probably doing. I can see that the view-specific model is more or less assuming something like an exemplar representation of each face: You have the opportunity to compare a new image to a whole library of viewpoints, and presumably it isn't hard to start with some kind of first pass that identifies the best matching view first before trying to identify/match the individual in question. What I don't get about the view-tolerant model is that it seems almost like an anti-exemplar model: You specifically lack the best viewpoint in the library but have to make do with the other options. Again, this is sort of interesting and the very different behavior of the model is neat to discuss, but it doesn't seem easy to align with any theoretical perspective on face recognition. My thinking here is that it might be useful to consider an additional alternate model that doesn't specifically exclude the best-matching viewpoint, but perhaps condenses appearance across views into something like a prototype. I could even see an argument for something like the yaw-averages presented earlier in the manuscript as the basis for such a model, but this might be too much of a stretch. Overall, what I'd like to see is some kind of alternate model that incorporates the existence of the best-match viewpoint somehow, but without the explicit exemplar structure of the view-specific model.

      Besides this larger issue, I would also like to see some more details about the nature of the cross-correlation that is the basis for this model comparison. I mostly think I get what is happening, but I think the authors could expand more on the nature of their noise model to make more explicit what is happening before these cross-correlations are taken. I infer that there is a noise-addition step to get them off the ceiling, but I felt that I had to read between the lines a bit to determine this.

      Another thing that I think is worth considering and commenting on is the stimuli themselves and the extent to which this may limit the outcomes of their behavioral task. The use of the 3D laser-scanned faces has some obvious advantages, but also (I think) removes the possibility for pigmentation to contribute to recognition, removes the contribution of varying illumination and expression to appearance variability, and perhaps presents observers with more homogeneous faces than one typically has to worry about. I don't think these negate the current results, but I'd like the authors to expand on their discussion of these factors, particularly pigmentation. Naively, surface color and texture seem like they could offer diagnostic cues to identity that don't rely so critically on horizontal orientations, so removing these may mean that horizontal bias is particularly evident when face shape is the critical cue for recognition.

    3. Reviewer #2 (Public review):

      This study investigates the visual information that is used for the recognition of faces. This is an important question in vision research and is critical for social interactions more generally. The authors ask whether our ability to recognise faces, across different viewpoints, varies as a function of the orientation information available in the image. Consistent with previous findings from this group and others, they find that horizontally filtered faces were recognised better than vertically filtered faces. Next, they probe the mechanism underlying this pattern of data by designing two model observers. The first was optimised for faces at a specific viewpoint (view-selective). The second was generalised across viewpoints (view-tolerant). In contrast to the human data, the view-specific model shows that the information that is useful for identity judgements varies according to viewpoint. For example, frontal face identities are again optimally discriminated with horizontal orientation information, but profiles are optimally discriminated with more vertical orientation information. These findings show human face recognition is biased toward horizontal orientation information, even though this may be suboptimal for the recognition of profile views of the face.

      One issue in the design of this study was the lowering of the signal-to-noise ratio in the view-selective observer. This decision was taken to avoid ceiling effects. However, it is not clear how this affects the similarity with the human observers.

      Another issue is the decision to normalise image energy across orientations and viewpoints. I can see the logic in wanting to control for these effects, but this does reflect natural variation in image properties. So, again, I wonder what the results would look like without this step.

      Despite the bias toward horizontal orientations in human observers, there were some differences in the orientation preference at each viewpoint. For example, frontal faces were biased to horizontal (90 degrees), but other viewpoints had biases that were slightly off horizontal (e.g., right profile: 80 degrees, left profile: 100 degrees). This does seem to show that differences in statistical information at different viewpoints (more horizontal information for frontal and more vertical information for profile) do influence human perception. It would be good to reflect on this nuance in the data.

    1. We will assume that there exists α∈Rn\alpha\in \mathbb{R}^nα∈Rn

      If this is not the case, the perceptron algorithm will not terminate, but surprisingly it will stay bounded. See Block and Levin, "On the Boundedness of an Iterative Procedure for Solving a System of Linear Inequalities", Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., Vo. 26., No. 2, (1970), 229-245.

      There exists \(M\) only dependent on the vectors \(v_1, \dots, v_m\), such that

      $$ |\alpha_i| \leq |\alpha_1| + M $$

      for every \(i = 1, 2, \dots\). In particular, if the vectors have rational coordinates, the algorithm will eventually cycle.

    1. eLife Assessment

      This important study uses a combination of behavioral and molecular techniques to identify neuromodulators that influence blood-feeding behavior in the disease vector, Anopheles stephensi. Through a combination of gene expression analysis and RNA knockdown, the authors identify neuropeptides RYamide and sNPF as candidate regulators for blood-feeding, demonstrate behavioral changes upon co-knockdown, and anatomically characterize their expression patterns. While the evidence for behavioral characterization and expression mapping is solid, the evidence supporting a direct causal role for these neuropeptides in promoting host-seeking remains unproven.

    2. Reviewer #1 (Public review):

      Summary:

      Bansal et al. present a study on the fundamental blood and nectar feeding behaviors of the critical disease vector, Anopheles stephensi. The study encompasses not just the fundamental changes in blood feeding behaviors of the crucially understudied vector, but then uses a transcriptomic approach to identify candidate neuromodulation pathways which influence blood feeding behavior in this mosquito species. The authors then provide evidence through RNAi knockdown of candidate pathways that the neuromodulators sNPF and Rya modulate feeding either via their physiological activity in the brain alone or through joint physiological activity along the brain-gut axis (but critically not the gut alone). Overall, I found this study to be built on tractable, well-designed behavioral experiments.

      Their study begins with a well-structured experiment to assess how the feeding behaviors of A. stephensi change over the course of its life history and in response to its age, mating, and oviposition status. The authors are careful and validate their experimental paradigm in the more well-studied Ae. aegypti, and are able to recapitulate the results of prior studies, which show that mating is a prerequisite for blood feeding behaviors in Ae. aegypt. Here they find A. Stephensi, like other Anopheline mosquitoes, has a more nuanced regulation of its blood and nectar feeding behaviors.

      The authors then go on to show in a Y-maze olfactometer that ,to some degree, changes in blood feeding status depend on behavioral modulation to host cues, and this is not likely to be a simple change to the biting behaviors alone. I was especially struck by the swap in valence of the host cues for the blood-fed and mated individuals, which had not yet oviposited. This indicates that there is a change in behavior that is not simply desensitization to host cues while navigating in flight, but something much more exciting is happening.

      The authors then use a transcriptomic approach to identify candidate genes in the blood-feeding stages of the mosquito's life cycle to identify a list of 9 candidates that have a role in regulating the host-seeking status of A. stephensi. Then, through investigations of gene knockdown of candidates, they identify the dual action of RYa and sNPF and candidate neuromodulators of host-seeking in this species. Overall, I found the experiments to be well-designed. I found the molecular approach to be sound. While I do not think the molecular approach is necessarily an all-encompassing mechanism identification (owing mostly to the fact that genetic resources are not yet available in A. stephensi as they are in other dipteran models), I think it sets up a rich line of research questions for the neurobiology of mosquito behavioral plasticity and comparative evolution of neuromodulator action.

      Strengths:

      I am especially impressed by the authors' attention to small details in the course of this article. As I read and evaluated this article, I continued to think about how many crucial details could potentially have been missed if this had not been the approach. The attention to detail paid off in spades and allowed the authors to carefully tease apart molecular candidates of blood-seeking stages. The authors' top-down approach to identifying RYamide and sNPF starting from first principles behavioral experiments is especially comprehensive. The results from both the behavioral and molecular target studies will have broad implications for the vectorial capacity of this species and comparative evolution of neural circuit modulation.

      Weaknesses:

      There are a few elements of data visualizations and methodological reporting that I found confusing on a first few read-throughs. Figure 1F, for example, was initially confusing as it made it seem as though there were multiple 2-choice assays for each of the conditions. I would recommend removing the "X" marker from the x-axis to indicate the mosquitoes did not feed from either nectar, blood, or neither in order to make it clear that there was one assay in which mosquitoes had access to both food sources, and the data quantify if they took both meals, one meal, or no meals.

      I would also like to know more about how the authors achieved tissue-specific knockdown for RNAi experiments. I think this is an intriguing methodology, but I could not figure out from the methods why injections either had whole-body or abdomen-specific knockdown.

      I also found some interpretations of the transcriptomic to be overly broad for what transcriptomes can actually tell us about the organism's state. For example, the authors mention, "Interestingly, we found that after a blood meal, glucose is neither spent nor stored, and that the female brain goes into a state of metabolic 'sugar rest', while actively processing proteins (Figure S2B, S3)".

      This would require a physiological measurement to actually know. It certainly suggests that there are changes in carbohydrate metabolism, but there are too many alternative interpretations to make this broad claim from transcriptomic data alone.

    3. Reviewer #2 (Public review):

      Summary:

      In this manuscript, Bansal et al examine and characterize feeding behaviour in Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. While sharing some similarities to the well-studied Aedes aegypti mosquito, the authors demonstrate that mated females, but not unmated (virgin) females, exhibit suppression in their blood-feeding behaviour. Using brain transcriptomic analysis comparing sugar-fed, blood-fed, and starved mosquitoes, several candidate genes potentially responsible for influencing blood-feeding behaviour were identified, including two neuropeptides (short NPF and RYamide) that are known to modulate feeding behaviour in other mosquito species. Using molecular tools, including in situ hybridization, the authors map the distribution of cells producing these neuropeptides in the nervous system and in the gut. Further, by implementing systemic RNA interference (RNAi), the study suggests that both neuropeptides appear to promote blood-feeding (but do not impact sugar feeding), although the impact was observed only after both neuropeptide genes underwent knockdown.

      Strengths and/or weaknesses:

      Overall, the manuscript was well-written; however, the authors should review carefully, as some sections would benefit from restructuring to improve clarity. Some statements need to be rectified as they are factually inaccurate.

      Below are specific concerns and clarifications needed in the opinion of this reviewer:

      (1) What does "central brains" refer to in abstract and in other sections of the manuscript (including methods and results)? This term is ambiguous, and the authors should more clearly define what specific components of the central nervous system was/were used in their study.

      (2) The abstract states that two neuropeptides, sNPF and RYamide are working together, but no evidence is summarized for the latter in this section.

      (3) Figure 1<br /> Panel A: This should include mating events in the reproductive cycle to demonstrate differences in the feeding behavior of Ae. aegypti.<br /> Panel F: In treatments where insects were not provided either blood or sugar, how is it that some females and males had fed? Also, it is unclear why the y-axis label is % fed when the caption indicates this is a choice assay. Also, it is interesting that sugar-starved females did not increase sugar intake. Is there any explanation for this (was it expected)?

      (4) Figure 3<br /> In the neurotranscriptome analysis of the (central) brain involving the two types of comparisons, can the authors clarify what "excluded in males" refers to? Does this imply that only genes not expressed in males were considered in the analysis? If so, what about co-expressed genes that have a specific function in female feeding behaviour?

      (5) Figure 4<br /> The authors state that there is more efficient knockdown in the head of unfed females; however, this is not accurate since they only get knockdown in unfed animals, and no evidence of any knockdown in fed animals (panel D). This point should be revised in the results test as well. Relatedly, blood-feeding is decreased when both neuropeptide transcripts are targeted compared to uninjected (panel C) but not compared to dsGFP injected (panel E). Why is this the case if authors showed earlier in this figure (panel B) that dsGFP does not impact blood feeding? In addition, do the uninjected and dsGFP-injected relative mRNA expression data reflect combined RYa and sNPF levels? Why is there no variation in these data, and how do transcript levels of RYa and sNPF compare in the brain versus the abdomen (the presentation of data doesn't make this relationship clear).

      (6) As an overall comment, the figure captions are far too long and include redundant text presented in the methods and results sections.

      (7) Criteria used for identifying neuropeptides promoting blood-feeding: statement that reads "all neuropeptides, since these are known to regulate feeding behaviours". This is not accurate since not all neuropeptides govern feeding behaviors, while certainly a subset do play a role.

      (8) In the section beginning with "Two neuropeptides - sNPF and RYa - showed about 25% and 40% reduced mRNA levels...", the authors state that there was no change in blood-feeding and later state the opposite. The wording should be clarified as it is unclear.

      (9) Just before the conclusions section, the statement that "neuropeptide receptors are often ligand-promiscuous" is unjustified. Indeed, many studies have shown in heterologous systems that high concentrations of structurally related peptides, which are not physiologically relevant, might cross-react and activate a receptor belonging to a different peptide family; however, the natural ligand is often many times more potent (in most cases, orders of magnitude) than structurally related peptides. This is certainly the case for various RYamide and sNPF receptors characterized in various insect species.

      (10) Methods<br /> In the dsRNA-mediated gene knockdown section, the authors could more clearly describe how much dsRNA was injected per target. At the moment, the reader must carry out calculations based on the concentrations provided and the injected volume range provided later in this section.

      It is also unclear how tissue-specific knockdown was achieved by performing injection on different days/times. The authors need to explain/support, and justify how temporal differences in injection lead to changes in tissue-specific expression. Does the blood-brain barrier limit knockdown in the brain instead, while leaving expression in the peripheral organs susceptible? For example, in Figure 4, the data support that knockdown in the head/brain is only effective in unfed animals compared to uninjected animals, while there is no evidence of knockdown in the brain relative to dsGFP-injected animals. Comparatively, evidence appears to show stronger evidence of abdominal knockdown mostly for the RYa transcript (>90%) while still significantly for the sNPF transcript (>60%).

    4. Reviewer #3 (Public review):

      Summary:

      This manuscript investigates the regulation of host-seeking behavior in Anopheles stephensi females across different life stages and mating states. Through transcriptomic profiling, the authors identify differential gene expression between "blood-hungry" and "blood-sated" states. Two neuropeptides, sNPF and RYamide, are highlighted as potential mediators of host-seeking behavior. RNAi knockdown of these peptides alters host-seeking activity, and their expression is anatomically mapped in the mosquito brain (sNPF and RYamide) and midgut (sNPF only).

      Strengths:

      (1) The study addresses an important question in mosquito biology, with relevance to vector control and disease transmission.

      (2) Transcriptomic profiling is used to uncover gene expression changes linked to behavioral states.

      (3) The identification of sNPF and RYamide as candidate regulators provides a clear focus for downstream mechanistic work.

      (3) RNAi experiments demonstrate that these neuropeptides are necessary for normal host-seeking behavior.

      (4) Anatomical localization of neuropeptide expression adds depth to the functional findings.

      Weaknesses:

      (1) The title implies that the neuropeptides promote host-seeking, but sufficiency is not demonstrated (for example, with peptide injection or overexpression experiments).

      (2) The proposed model regarding central versus peripheral (gut) peptide action is inconsistently presented and lacks strong experimental support.

      (3) Some conclusions appear premature based on the current data and would benefit from additional functional validation.

    5. Author response:

      Public Reviews:

      Reviewer #1 (Public review):

      Summary:

      Bansal et al. present a study on the fundamental blood and nectar feeding behaviors of the critical disease vector, Anopheles stephensi. The study encompasses not just the fundamental changes in blood feeding behaviors of the crucially understudied vector, but then uses a transcriptomic approach to identify candidate neuromodulation pathways which influence blood feeding behavior in this mosquito species. The authors then provide evidence through RNAi knockdown of candidate pathways that the neuromodulators sNPF and Rya modulate feeding either via their physiological activity in the brain alone or through joint physiological activity along the brain-gut axis (but critically not the gut alone). Overall, I found this study to be built on tractable, well-designed behavioral experiments.

      Their study begins with a well-structured experiment to assess how the feeding behaviors of A. stephensi change over the course of its life history and in response to its age, mating, and oviposition status. The authors are careful and validate their experimental paradigm in the more well-studied Ae. aegypti, and are able to recapitulate the results of prior studies, which show that mating is a prerequisite for blood feeding behaviors in Ae. aegypt. Here they find A. Stephensi, like other Anopheline mosquitoes, has a more nuanced regulation of its blood and nectar feeding behaviors.

      The authors then go on to show in a Y-maze olfactometer that ,to some degree, changes in blood feeding status depend on behavioral modulation to host cues, and this is not likely to be a simple change to the biting behaviors alone. I was especially struck by the swap in valence of the host cues for the blood-fed and mated individuals, which had not yet oviposited. This indicates that there is a change in behavior that is not simply desensitization to host cues while navigating in flight, but something much more exciting is happening.

      The authors then use a transcriptomic approach to identify candidate genes in the blood-feeding stages of the mosquito's life cycle to identify a list of 9 candidates that have a role in regulating the host-seeking status of A. stephensi. Then, through investigations of gene knockdown of candidates, they identify the dual action of RYa and sNPF and candidate neuromodulators of host-seeking in this species. Overall, I found the experiments to be well-designed. I found the molecular approach to be sound. While I do not think the molecular approach is necessarily an all-encompassing mechanism identification (owing mostly to the fact that genetic resources are not yet available in A. stephensi as they are in other dipteran models), I think it sets up a rich line of research questions for the neurobiology of mosquito behavioral plasticity and comparative evolution of neuromodulator action.

      We appreciate the reviewer’s detailed summary of our work. We thank them for their positive comments and agree with them on the shortcomings of our approach.

      Strengths:

      I am especially impressed by the authors' attention to small details in the course of this article. As I read and evaluated this article, I continued to think about how many crucial details could potentially have been missed if this had not been the approach. The attention to detail paid off in spades and allowed the authors to carefully tease apart molecular candidates of blood-seeking stages. The authors' top-down approach to identifying RYamide and sNPF starting from first principles behavioral experiments is especially comprehensive. The results from both the behavioral and molecular target studies will have broad implications for the vectorial capacity of this species and comparative evolution of neural circuit modulation.

      We really appreciate that the reviewer has recognised the attention to detail we have tried to put, thank you!

      Weaknesses:

      There are a few elements of data visualizations and methodological reporting that I found confusing on a first few read-throughs. Figure 1F, for example, was initially confusing as it made it seem as though there were multiple 2-choice assays for each of the conditions. I would recommend removing the "X" marker from the x-axis to indicate the mosquitoes did not feed from either nectar, blood, or neither in order to make it clear that there was one assay in which mosquitoes had access to both food sources, and the data quantify if they took both meals, one meal, or no meals.

      We thank the reviewer for flagging the schematic in figure 1F. As suggested, we have removed the “X” markers from the x-axis and revised the axis label from “choice of food” to “choice made” to better reflect what food the mosquitoes chose in the assay. For clarity, we have now also plotted the same data as stacked graphs at the bottom of Fig. 1F, which clearly shows the proportion of mosquitoes fed on each particular choice. We avoid the stacked graph as the sole representation of this data, as it does not capture the variability in the data.

      I would also like to know more about how the authors achieved tissue-specific knockdown for RNAi experiments. I think this is an intriguing methodology, but I could not figure out from the methods why injections either had whole-body or abdomen-specific knockdown.

      The tissue-specific knockdown (abdomen only or abdomen+head) emerged from initial standardisations where we were unable to achieve knockdown in the head unless we used higher concentrations of dsRNA and did the injections in older females. We realised that this gave us the opportunity to isolate the neuronal contribution of these neuropeptides in the phenotype produced. Further optimisations revealed that injecting dsRNA into 0-10h old females produced abdomen-specific knockdowns without affecting head expression, whereas injections into 4 days old females resulted in knockdowns in both tissues. Moreover, head knockdowns in older females required higher dsRNA concentrations, with knockdown efficiency correlating with the amount injected. In contrast, abdominal knockdowns in younger females could be achieved even with lower dsRNA amounts.

      We have mentioned the knockdown conditions- time of injection and the amount dsRNA injected- for tissue-specific knockdowns in methods but realise now that it does not explain this well enough. We have now edited it to state our methodology more clearly (see lines 932-948).

      I also found some interpretations of the transcriptomic to be overly broad for what transcriptomes can actually tell us about the organism's state. For example, the authors mention, "Interestingly, we found that  after a blood meal, glucose is neither spent nor stored, and that the female brain goes into a state of metabolic 'sugar rest', while actively processing proteins (Figure S2B, S3)".

      This would require a physiological measurement to actually know. It certainly suggests that there are changes in carbohydrate metabolism, but there are too many alternative interpretations to make this broad claim from transcriptomic data alone.

      We thank the reviewer for pointing this out and agree with them. We have now edited our statement to read:

      “Instead, our data suggests altered carbohydrate metabolism  after a blood meal, with the female brain potentially entering a state of metabolic 'sugar rest' while actively processing proteins (Figure S2B, S3). However, physiological measurements of carbohydrate and protein metabolism will be required to confirm whether glucose is indeed neither spent nor stored during this period.” See lines 271-277.

      Reviewer #2 (Public review):

      Summary:

      In this manuscript, Bansal et al examine and characterize feeding behaviour in Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. While sharing some similarities to the well-studied Aedes aegypti mosquito, the authors demonstrate that mated females, but not unmated (virgin) females, exhibit suppression in their bloodfeeding behaviour. Using brain transcriptomic analysis comparing sugar-fed, blood-fed, and starved mosquitoes, several candidate genes potentially responsible for influencing blood-feeding behaviour were identified, including two neuropeptides (short NPF and RYamide) that are known to modulate feeding behaviour in other mosquito species. Using molecular tools, including in situ hybridization, the authors map the distribution of cells producing these neuropeptides in the nervous system and in the gut. Further, by implementing systemic RNA interference (RNAi), the study suggests that both neuropeptides appear to promote blood-feeding (but do not impact sugar feeding), although the impact was observed only  after both neuropeptide genes underwent knockdown.

      Strengths and/or weaknesses:

      Overall, the manuscript was well-written; however, the authors should review carefully, as some sections would benefit from restructuring to improve clarity. Some statements need to be rectified as they are factually inaccurate.

      Below are specific concerns and clarifications needed in the opinion of this reviewer:

      (1) What does "central brains" refer to in abstract and in other sections of the manuscript (including methods and results)? This term is ambiguous, and the authors should more clearly define what specific components of the central nervous system was/were used in their study.

      Central brain, or mid brain, is a commonly used term to refer to brain structures/neuropils without the optic lobes (For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07686-5). In this study we have focused our analysis on the central brain circuits involved in modulating blood-feeding behaviour and have therefore excluded the optic lobes. As optic lobes account for nearly half of all the neurons in the mosquito brain (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8121336/), including them would have disproportionately skewed our transcriptomic data toward visual processing pathways.

      We have indicated this in figure 3A and in the methods (see lines 800-801, 812). We have now also clarified it in the results section for neuro-transcriptomics to avoid confusion (see lines 236-237).

      (2) The abstract states that two neuropeptides, sNPF and RYamide are working together, but no evidence is summarized for the latter in this section.

      We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. We have now added a statement “This occurs in the context of the action of RYa in the brain” to end of the abstract, for a complete summary of our proposed model.

      (3) Figure 1

      Panel A: This should include mating events in the reproductive cycle to demonstrate differences in the feeding behavior of Ae. aegypti.

      Our data suggest that mating can occur at any time between eclosion and oviposition in An. stephensi and between eclosion and blood feeding in Ae. aegypti. Adding these into (already busy) 1A, would cloud the purpose of the schematic, which is to indicate the time points used in the behavioural assays and transcriptomics.

      Panel F: In treatments where insects were not provided either blood or sugar, how is it that some females and males had fed? Also, it is unclear why the y-axis label is % fed when the caption indicates this is a choice assay. Also, it is interesting that sugar-starved females did not increase sugar intake. Is there any explanation for this (was it expected)?

      We apologise for the confusion. The experiment is indeed a choice assay in which sugar-starved or sugar-sated females, co-housed with males, were provided simultaneous access to both blood and sugar, and were assessed for the choice made (indicated on the x-axis): both blood and sugar, blood only, sugar only, or neither. The x-axis indicates the choice made by the mosquitoes, not the choice provided in the assay, and the y-axis indicates the percentage of males or females that made each particular choice. We have now removed the “X” markers from the x-axis and revised the axis label from “choice of food” to “choice made” to better reflect what food the mosquitoes chose to take.

      In this assay, we scored females only for the presence or absence of each meal type (blood or sugar) and are therefore unable to comment on whether sugar-starved females consumed more sugar than sugarsated females. However, when sugar-starved, a higher proportion of females consumed both blood and sugar, while fewer fed on blood alone.

      For clarity, we have now also plotted the same data as stacked graphs at the bottom of Fig. 1F, which clearly shows the proportion of mosquitoes fed on each particular choice. We avoid the stacked graph as the sole representation of this data as it does not capture the variability in the data.

      (4) Figure 3

      In the neurotranscriptome analysis of the (central) brain involving the two types of comparisons, can the authors clarify what "excluded in males" refers to? Does this imply that only genes not expressed in males were considered in the analysis? If so, what about co-expressed genes that have a specific function in female feeding behaviour?

      This is indeed correct. We reasoned that since blood feeding is exclusive to females, we should focus our analysis on genes that were specifically upregulated in them. As the reviewer points out, it is very likely that genes commonly upregulated in males and females may also promote blood feeding and we will miss out on any such candidates based on our selection criteria.

      (5) Figure 4

      The authors state that there is more efficient knockdown in the head of unfed females; however, this is not accurate since they only get knockdown in unfed animals, and no evidence of any knockdown in fed animals (panel D). This point should be revised in the results test as well.

      Perhaps we do not understand the reviewer’s point or there has been a misunderstanding. In figure 4D, we show that while there is more robust gene knockdown in unfed females, blood-fed females also showed modest but measurable knockdowns ranging from 5-40% for RYamide and 2-21% for sNPF.

      Relatedly, blood-feeding is decreased when both neuropeptide transcripts are targeted compared to uninjected (panel C) but not compared to dsGFP injected (panel E). Why is this the case if authors showed earlier in this figure (panel B) that dsGFP does not impact blood feeding?

      We realise this concern stems from our representation of the data. Since we had earlier determined that dsGFP-injected females fed similarly to uninjected females (fig 4B), we used these controls interchangeably in subsequent experiments. To avoid confusion, we have now only used the label ‘control’ in figure 4 (and supplementary figure S9) and specified which control was used for each experiment in the legend.

      In addition to this, we wanted to clarify that fig 4C and 4E are independent experiments. 4C is the behaviour corresponding to when the neuropeptides were knocked down in both heads and abdomens.

      4E is the behaviour corresponding to when the neuropeptides were knocked down in only the abdomens. We have now added a schematic in the plots to make this clearer.

      In addition, do the uninjected and dsGFP-injected relative mRNA expression data reflect combined RYa and sNPF levels? Why is there no variation in these data,…

      In these qPCRs, we calculated relative mRNA expression using the delta-delta Ct method (see line 975). For each neuropeptide its respective control was used. For simplicity, we combined the RYa and sNPF control data into a single representation. The value of this control is invariant because this method sets the control baseline to a value of 1.

      …and how do transcript levels of RYa and sNPF compare in the brain versus the abdomen (the presentation of data doesn't make this relationship clear).

      The reviewer is correct in pointing out that we have not clarified this relationship in our current presentation. While we have not performed absolute mRNA quantifications, we extracted relative mRNA levels from qPCR data of 96h old unmanipulated control females. We observed that both sNPF and RYa transcripts are expressed at much lower levels in the abdomens, as compared to those in the heads, as shown in the graphs inserted below.

      Author response image 1.

      (6) As an overall comment, the figure captions are far too long and include redundant text presented in the methods and results sections.

      We thank the reviewer for flagging this and have now edited the legends to remove redundancy.

      (7) Criteria used for identifying neuropeptides promoting blood-feeding: statement that reads "all neuropeptides, since these are known to regulate feeding behaviours". This is not accurate since not all neuropeptides govern feeding behaviors, while certainly a subset do play a role.

      We agree with the reviewer that not all neuropeptides regulate feeding behaviours. Our statement refers to the screening approach we used: in our shortlist of candidates, we chose to validate all neuropeptides.

      (8) In the section beginning with "Two neuropeptides - sNPF and RYa - showed about 25% and 40% reduced mRNA levels...", the authors state that there was no change in blood-feeding and later state the opposite. The wording should be clarified as it is unclear.

      Thank you for pointing this out. We were referring to an unchanged proportion of the blood fed females. We have now edited the text to the following:

      “Two neuropeptides - sNPF and RYa - showed about 25% and 40% reduced mRNA levels in the heads but the proportion of females that took blood meals remained unchanged”. See lines 338-340.

      (9) Just before the conclusions section, the statement that "neuropeptide receptors are often ligand promiscuous" is unjustified. Indeed, many studies have shown in heterologous systems that high concentrations of structurally related peptides, which are not physiologically relevant, might cross-react and activate a receptor belonging to a different peptide family; however, the natural ligand is often many times more potent (in most cases, orders of magnitude) than structurally related peptides. This is certainly the case for various RYamide and sNPF receptors characterized in various insect species.

      We agree with the reviewer and apologise for the mistake. We have now removed the statement.

      (10) Methods

      In the dsRNA-mediated gene knockdown section, the authors could more clearly describe how much dsRNA was injected per target. At the moment, the reader must carry out calculations based on the concentrations provided and the injected volume range provided later in this section.

      We have now edited the section to reflect the amount of dsRNA injected per target. Please see lines 921-931.

      It is also unclear how tissue-specific knockdown was achieved by performing injection on different days/times. The authors need to explain/support, and justify how temporal differences in injection lead to changes in tissue-specific expression. Does the blood-brain barrier limit knockdown in the brain instead, while leaving expression in the peripheral organs susceptible?

      To achieve tissue-specific knockdowns of sNPF and RYa, we optimised both the time of injection as well as the dsRNA concentration to be injected. Injecting dsRNA into 0-10h females produced abdomen specific knockdowns without affecting head expression, whereas injections into 96h old females resulted in knockdowns in both tissues. Head knockdowns in older females required higher dsRNA concentrations, with knockdown efficiency correlating with the amount injected. In contrast, abdominal knockdowns in younger females could be achieved even with lower dsRNA amounts, reflecting the lower baseline expression of sNPF in abdomens compared to heads and the age-dependent increase in head expression (as confirmed by qPCR). It is possible that the blood-brain barrier also limits the dsRNA entering the brain, thereby requiring higher amounts to be injected for head knockdowns.

      We have now edited this section to state our methodology more clearly (see lines 932-948).

      For example, in Figure 4, the data support that knockdown in the head/brain is only effective in unfed animals compared to uninjected animals, while there is no evidence of knockdown in the brain relative to dsGFP-injected animals. Comparatively, evidence appears to show stronger evidence of abdominal knockdown mostly for the RYa transcript (>90%) while still significantly for the sNPF transcript (>60%).

      As we explained earlier, this concern likely stems from our representation of the data. Since we had earlier determined that dsGFP-injected females fed similarly to uninjected females (fig 4B), we used these controls interchangeably in subsequent experiments. To avoid confusion, we have now only used the label ‘control’ in figure 4 (and supplementary figure S9) and specified which control was used for each experiment in the legend.

      In addition to this, we wanted to clarify that fig 4C and 4E are independent experiments. 4C is the behaviour corresponding to when the neuropeptides were knocked down in both heads and abdomens. 4E is the behaviour corresponding to when the neuropeptides were knocked down in only the abdomen. We have now added a schematic in the plots to make this clearer.

      Reviewer #3 (Public review):

      Summary:

      This manuscript investigates the regulation of host-seeking behavior in Anopheles stephensi females across different life stages and mating states. Through transcriptomic profiling, the authors identify differential gene expression between "blood-hungry" and "blood-sated" states. Two neuropeptides, sNPF and RYamide, are highlighted as potential mediators of host-seeking behavior. RNAi knockdown of these peptides alters host-seeking activity, and their expression is anatomically mapped in the mosquito brain (sNPF and RYamide) and midgut (sNPF only).

      Strengths:

      (1) The study addresses an important question in mosquito biology, with relevance to vector control and disease transmission.

      (2) Transcriptomic profiling is used to uncover gene expression changes linked to behavioral states.

      (3) The identification of sNPF and RYamide as candidate regulators provides a clear focus for downstream mechanistic work.

      (3) RNAi experiments demonstrate that these neuropeptides are necessary for normal host-seeking behavior.

      (4) Anatomical localization of neuropeptide expression adds depth to the functional findings.

      Weaknesses:

      (1) The title implies that the neuropeptides promote host-seeking, but sufficiency is not demonstrated (for example, with peptide injection or overexpression experiments).

      Demonstrating sufficiency would require injecting sNPF peptide or its agonist. To date, no small-molecule agonists (or antagonists) that selectively mimic sNPF or RYa neuropeptides have been identified in insects. An NPY analogue, TM30335, has been reported to activate the Aedes aegypti NPY-like receptor 7 (NPYLR7; Duvall et al., 2019), which is also activated by sNPF peptides at higher doses (Liesch et al., 2013). Unfortunately, the compound is no longer available because its manufacturer, 7TM Pharma, has ceased operations. Synthesising the peptides is a possibility that we will explore in the future.

      (2) The proposed model regarding central versus peripheral (gut) peptide action is inconsistently presented and lacks strong experimental support.

      The best way to address this would be to conduct tissue-specific manipulations, the tools for which are not available in this species. Our approach to achieve head+abdomen and abdomen only knockdown was the closest we could get to achieving tissue specificity and allowed us to confirm that knockdown in the head was necessary for the phenotype. However, as the reviewer points out, this did not allow us to rule out any involvement of the abdomen. This point has been addressed in lines 364-371.

      (3) Some conclusions appear premature based on the current data and would benefit from additional functional validation.

      The most definitive way of demonstrating necessity of sNPF and RYa in blood feeding would be to generate mutant lines. While we are pursuing this line of experiments, they lie beyond the scope of a revision. In its absence, we relied on the knockdown of the genes using dsRNA. We would like to posit that despite only partial knockdown, mosquitoes do display defects in blood-feeding behaviour, without affecting sugar-feeding. We think this reflects the importance of sNPF in promoting blood feeding.

      Recommendations for the authors:

      Reviewer #1 (Recommendations for the authors):

      Overall, I found this manuscript to be well-prepared, visually the figures are great and clearly were carefully thought out and curated, and the research is impacwul. It was a wonderful read from start to finish. I have the following recommendations:

      Thank you very much, we are very pleased to hear that you enjoyed reading our manuscript!

      (1) For future manuscripts, it would make things significantly easier on the reviewer side to submit a format that uses line numbers.

      We sincerely apologise for the oversight. We have now incorporated line numbers in the revised manuscript.

      (2) There are a few statements in the text that I think may need clarification or might be outside the bounds of what was actually studied here. For example, in the introduction "However, mating is dispensable in Anophelines even under conditions of nutritional satiety". I am uncertain what is meant by this statement - please clarify.

      We apologise for the lack of clarity in the statement and have now deleted it since we felt it was not necessary.

      (3) Typo/Grammatical minutiae:

      a) A small idiosyncrasy of using hyphens in compound words should also be fixed throughout. Typically, you don't hyphenate if the words are being used as a noun, as in the case: e.g. "Age affects blood feeding.". However, you would hyphenate if the two words are used as a compound adjective "Age affects blood-feeding behavior". This may not be an all-inclusive list, but here are some examples where hyphens need to either be removed or added. Some examples:

      "Nutritional state also influences other internal state outputs on blood-feeding": blood-feeding -> blood feeding

      "... the modulation of blood-feeding": blood-feeding -> blood feeding

      "For example, whether virgin females take blood-meals...": blood-meals -> blood meals

      ".... how internal and external cues shape meal-choice"-> meal choice

      "blood-meal" is often used throughout the text, but is correctly "blood meal" in the figures.

      There are many more examples throughout.

      We apologise for these errors and appreciate the reviewer’s keen eye. We have now fixed them throughout the manuscript.

      b) Figure 1 Caption has a typo: "co-housed males were accessed for sugar-feeding" should be "co-housed males were assessed for sugar feeding"

      We apologise for the typo and thank the reviewer for spotting it. We have now corrected this.

      c) It would be helpful in some other figure captions to more clearly label which statement is relevant to which part of the text. For example, in Figure 4's caption.

      "C,D. Blood-feeding and sugar-feeding behaviour of females when both RYa and sNPF are knocked down in the head (C). Relative mRNA expressions of RYa and sNPF in the heads of dsRYa+dssNPF - injected blood-fed and unfed females, as compared to that in uninjected females, analysed via qPCR (D)."

      I found re-referencing C and D at the end of their statements makes it look as thought C precedes the "Relative mRNA expression" and on a first read through, I thought the figure captions were backwards. I'd recommend reformating here and throughout consistently to only have the figure letter precede its relevant caption information, e.g.:

      "C. Blood-feeding and sugar-feeding behaviour of females when both RYa and sNPF are knocked down in the head. D. Relative mRNA expressions of RYa and sNPF in the heads of dsRYa+dssNPF - injected bloodfed and unfed females, as compared to that in uninjected females, analysed via qPCR."

      We have now edited the legends as suggested.

      Reviewer #2 (Recommendations for the authors):

      Separately from the clarifications and limitations listed above, the authors could strengthen their study and the conclusions drawn if they could rescue the behavioural phenotype observed following knockdown of sNPF and RYamide. This could be achieved by injection of either sNPF or RYa peptide independently or combined following knockdown to validate the role of these peptides in promoting blood-feeding in An. stephensi. Additionally, the apparent (but unclear) regionalized (or tissue-specific) knockdown of sNPF and RYamide transcripts could be visualized and verified by implementing HCR in situ hyb in knockdown animals (or immunohistochemistry using antibodies specific for these two neuropeptides).

      In a follow up of this work, we are generating mutants and peptides for these candidates and are planning to conduct exactly the experiments the reviewer suggests.

      Reviewer #3 (Recommendations for the authors):

      The loss-of-function data suggest necessity but not sufficiency. Synthetic peptide injection in non-host seeking (blood-fed mated or juvenile) mosquitoes would provide direct evidence for peptide-induced behavioral activation. The lack of these experiments weakens the central claim of the paper that these neuropeptides directly promote blood feeding.

      As noted above, we plan to synthesise the peptide to test rescue in a mutant background and sufficiency.

      Some of the claims about knockdown efficiency and interpretation are conflicting; the authors dismiss Hairy and Prp as candidates due to 30-35% knockdown, yet base major conclusions on sNPF and RYamide knockdowns with comparable efficiencies (25-40%). This inconsistency should be addressed, or the justification for different thresholds should be clearly stated.

      We have not defined any specific knockdown efficacy thresholds in the manuscript, as these can vary considerably between genes, and in some cases, even modest reductions can be sufficient to produce detectable phenotypes. For example, knockdown efficiencies of even as low as about 25% - 40% gave us observable phenotypes for sNPF and RYa RNAi (Figure S9B-G).

      No such phenotypes were observed for Hairy (30%) or Prp (35%) knockdowns. Either these genes are not involved in blood feeding, or the knockdown was not sufficient for these specific genes to induce phenotypes. We cannot distinguish between these scenarios.

      The observation that knockdown animals take smaller blood meals is interesting and could reflect a downstream effect of altered host-seeking or an independent physiological change. The relationship between meal size and host-seeking behavior should be clarified.

      We agree with the reviewer that the reduced meal size observed in sNPF and RYa knockdown animals could result from their inability to seek a host or due to an independent effect on blood meal intake. Unfortunately, we did not measure host-seeking in these animals. We plan to distinguish between these possibilities using mutants in future work.

      Several figures are difficult to interpret due to cluttered labeling and poorly distinguishable color schemes. Simplifying these and improving contrast (especially for co-housed vs. virgin conditions) would enhance readability.

      We regret that the reviewer found the figures difficult to follow. We have now revised our annotations throughout the manuscript for enhanced readability. For example, “D1<sup>B</sup>” is now “D1<sup>PBM</sup>” (post-bloodmeal) and “D1<sup>O</sup>” is now “D1<sup>PO</sup>” (post-oviposition). Wherever mated females were used, we have now appended “(m)” to the annotations and consistently depicted these females with striped abdomens in all the schematics. We believe these changes will improve clarity and readability.

      The manuscript does not clearly justify the use of whole-brain RNA sequencing to identify peptides involved in metabolic or peripheral processes. Given that anticipatory feeding signals are often peripheral, the logic for brain transcriptomics should be explained.

      The reviewer is correct in pointing out that feeding signals could also emerge from peripheral tissues. Signals from these tissues – in response to both changing nutritional and reproductive states – are then integrated by the central brain to modulate feeding choices. For example, in Drosophila, increased protein intake is mediated by central brain circuitry including those in the SEZ and central complex (Munch et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2017; Goldschmidt et al., 2023). In the context of mating, male-derived sex peptide further increases protein feeding by acting on a dedicated central brain circuitry (Walker et al., 2015). We, therefore focused on the central brain for our studies.

      The proposed model suggests brain-derived peptides initiate feeding, while gut peptides provide feedback. However, gut-specific knockdowns had no effect, undermining this hypothesis. Conversely, the authors also suggest abdominal involvement based on RNAi results. These contradictions need to be resolved into a consistent model.

      We thank the reviewer for raising this point and recognise their concern. Our reasons for invoking an involvement of the gut were two-fold:

      (1) We find increased sNPF transcript expression in the entero-endocrine cells of the midgut in blood-hungry females, which returns to baseline  after a blood-meal (Fig. 4L, M).

      (2) While the abdomen-only knockdowns did not affect blood feeding, every effective head knockdown that affected blood feeding also abolished abdominal transcript levels (Fig. S9C, F). (Achieving a head-only reduction proved impossible because (i) systemic dsRNA delivery inevitably reaches the abdomen and (ii) abdominal expression of both peptides is low, leaving little dynamic range for selective manipulation.) Consequently, we can only conclude the following: 1) that brain expression is required for the behaviour, 2) that we cannot exclude a contributory role for gut-derived sNPF. We have discussed this in lines 364-371.

      The identification of candidate receptors is promising, but the manuscript would be significantly strengthened by testing whether receptor knockdowns phenocopy peptide knockdowns. Without this, it is difficult to conclude that the identified receptors mediate the behavioral effects.

      We agree that functional validation of the receptors would strengthen the evidence for sNPF and RYa_mediated control of blood feeding in _An. stephensi. We selected these receptors based on sequence homology. A possibility remains that sNPF neuropeptides activate more than one receptor, each modulating a distinct circuit, as shown in the case of Drosophila Tachykinin (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10184743/). This will mean a systematic characterisation and knockdown of each of them to confirm their role. We are planning these experiments in the future.

      The authors compared the percentage changes in sugar-fed and blood-fed animals under sugar-sated or sugar-starved conditions. Figure 1F should reflect what was discussed in the results.

      Perhaps this concern stems from our representation of the data in figure 1F? We have now edited the xaxis and revised its label from “choice of food” to “choice made” to better reflect what food the mosquitoes chose to take.

      For clarity, we have now also plotted the same data as stacked graphs at the bottom of Fig. 1F, which clearly shows the proportion of mosquitoes fed on each particular choice. We avoid the stacked graph as the sole representation of this data because it does not capture the variability in the data.

      Minor issues:

      (1) The authors used mosquitoes with belly stripes to indicate mated females. To be consistent, the post-oviposition females should also have belly stripes.

      We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. We have now edited all the figures as suggested.

      (2) In the first paragraph on the right column of the second page, the authors state, "Since females took blood-meals regardless of their prior sugar-feeding status and only sugar-feeding was selectively suppressed by prior sugar access." Just because the well-fed animals ate less than the starved animals does not mean their feeding behavior was suppressed.

      Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding in the experimental setup of figure 1F, probably stemming from our data representation. The experiment is a choice assay in which sugar-starved or sugar-sated females, co-housed with males, were provided simultaneous access to both blood and sugar, and were assessed for the choice made (indicated on the x-axis): both blood and sugar, blood only, sugar only, or neither. We scored females only for the presence or absence of each meal type (blood or sugar) and did not quantify the amount consumed.

      (3) The figure legend for Figure 1A and the naming convention for different experimental groups are difficult to follow. A simplified or consistently abbreviated scheme would help readers navigate the figures and text.

      We regret that the reviewer found the figure difficult to follow. We have now revised our annotations throughout the manuscript for enhanced readability. For example, “D1<sup>B</sup>” is now “D1<sup>PBM</sup>” (post-bloodmeal) and “D1<sup>O</sup>” is now “D1<sup>PO</sup>” (post-oviposition).

      (4) In the last paragraph of the Y-maze olfactory assay for host-seeking behaviour in An. stephensi in Methods, the authors state, "When testing blood-fed females, aged-matched sugar-fed females (bloodhungry) were included as positive controls where ever possible, with satisfactory results." The authors should explicitly describe what the criteria are for "satisfactory results".

      We apologise for the lack of clarity. We have now edited the statement to read:

      “When testing blood-fed females, age-matched sugar-fed females (blood-hungry) were included wherever possible as positive controls. These females consistently showed attraction to host cues, as expected.” See lines 786-790.

      (5) In the first paragraph of the dsRNA-mediated gene knockdown section in Methods, dsRNA against GFP is used as a negative control for the injection itself, but not for the potential off-target effect.

      We agree with the reviewer that dsGFP injections act as controls only for injection-related behavioural changes, and not for off-target effects of RNAi. We have now corrected the statement. See lines 919-920.

      To control for off-target effects, we could have designed multiple dsRNAs targeting different parts of a given gene. We regret not including these controls for potential off-target effects of dsRNAs injected.

      (6) References numbers 48, 89, and 90 are not complete citations.

      We thank the reviewer for spotting these. We have now corrected these citations.