Welcome to Virtual Fly Brain
A hub for Drosophila melanogaster neural anatomy, imaging data & connectomics.
Our colleagues at FlyBase still need your help. As of FlyBase's March 2026 update, NHGRI funding has been restored for the US-based FlyBase teams, but the foreign subaward that supported the curation team at the University of Cambridge remains terminated.
That team now asks fly labs for an annual contribution — a suggested £/€200 or $250 per researcher — to keep curating new data into FlyBase and the Alliance of Genome Resources. Without it, FlyBase freezes in its current state. VFB and FlyBase are long-standing partners: we maintain the Drosophila anatomy, cell type and developmental ontologies the community works with, and FlyBase curates the genetic reagents and literature that turn those data into experiments. Losing that curation would slow work right across the fly community, so please contribute if you can: how to contribute to FlyBase.
Virtual Fly Brain's own funding is unaffected, and we remain grateful to Wellcome for their continued support.
Welcome to Virtual Fly Brain (VFB) - an interactive tool for neurobiologists to explore the detailed neuroanatomy, neuron connectivity and gene expression of Drosophila melanogaster. Our goal is to make it easier for researchers to find relevant anatomical information and reagents.
We integrate the neuroanatomical and expression data from the published literature, as well as image datasets onto the same brain template, making it possible to run cross searches, find similar neurons and compare image data on our 3D Viewer.
Explore Connectomes!
New Circuit Browser Tool has been made available for user testing.
We always welcome user feedback
Contributions welcome!
Quickstart guide for VFB
- VFB integrates data curated from the literature with image data from many bulk sources.
- The search system () allows you to search for neurons and neuroanatomical structures using almost any name found in the literature.
- The query system () can identify neurons innervating any specified neuropil or fasciculating with any specified tract.
- It also allows queries for genes, transgenes and phenotypes expressed in any brain region or neuron.
- Search and query results combine referenced textual descriptions with 3D images and links to originating data sources.
- VFB features tens of thousands of 3D images of neurons, clones and expression patterns, registered to standard template brains.
- Any combination of these images can be viewed together.
- You can hover () to explore brain regions in the Stack Viewer.
- A BLAST-type query system (NBLAST) allows you to find similar neurons and drivers starting from a registered neuron.
Contributions welcome!
Documentation
Documentation
Here you will find explanations and tutorial for the concepts and tools that are utilised by Virtual Fly Brain (VFB).
Overview
What Virtual Fly Brain is, what you can ask it, and where to go next.
Website Features
Descriptions of the various features of the Virtual Fly Brain website and how to get started using them.
Concepts
Details of concepts or terms used in Virtual Fly Brain.
Tutorials
How to guides for using the VFB website and other tools to explore the available data and perform tasks.
Data
Types of data and datasets that are available on Virtual Fly Brain.
VFB APIs
All available VFB APIs and underlying schemas.
Contribution Guidelines
Contribute or update Virtual Fly Brain data/sites.
Resources
External resources that may be useful to users of Virtual Fly Brain.
Anatomy Diagrams
Diagrams associated with anatomy terms from the Drosophila Anatomy Ontology.
Workshop Materials
Tutorials from the Virtual Fly Brain "Hacking the connectome" workshop that was run in collaboration with the Drosophila …
Hosted for the community
Hosted Sites
Data viewers and databases that VFB runs — archives of resources whose original hosts went offline, alongside instances hosted here because VFB serves the dataset.
ABD1.5 CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
BrainTrap
BrainTrap is a database of 3D protein expression patterns in the Drosophila brain, providing …
FAFB CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
FANC CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
FLYBRAIN Neuron Database (NDB)
FLYBRAIN NDB is an extension to the Flybrain, an Online Atlas of the Drosophila Nervous …
IAV-ROBO CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
IAV-TNT CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
L1 CNS (Larva1099) eFIB-SEM CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
L1EM CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …
L3VNC CATMAID Data Viewer
This CATMAID (Collaborative Annotation Toolkit for Massive Amounts of Image Data) instance …