Wow, this is an interesting turn of events: Janelia launching a 10-year $1B effort to study the Danionella fish as a model organism for understanding the nervous system. (Note: this is different from zebrafish). I’m intrigued by the direction, but I also feel for those researchers at Janelia who had the rug pulled out from under them. It’s a tricky situation.

The Janelia Research Campus is launching two new projects: whole-brain imaging of a transparent fish called Danionella and an “AI-in-the-loop” tool to help parse all the imaging data, the facility announced last week.

As part of the change, Janelia is also shuttering two programs and plans to phase out projects that use rodent models, The Transmitter has learned. Janelia is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a private nonprofit biomedical research institution.

Investigators who run rodent labs have roughly three years to wrap up their projects and find new positions, and Janelia plans to provide each researcher with an additional $1 million in transition funding, says Gerald Rubin, head of biology and senior group leader at Janelia. The move does not affect external research funded by the HHMI, including the HHMI Investigators and Hanna H. Gray Fellows programs, Rubin adds.