|
When Lee Niswander goes to work, she gets a squeaky and high-pitched welcome, complete with a flutter of wings and a twitching of ears. This unusual greeting is from a colony of tropical fruit bats. When not in her lab at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, Niswander, an HHMI investigator, often works at one of the few bat research facilities in the country. Here, about 100 furry fliers spend their days snoozing and nights exploring. And when Niswander or her colleagues intervene, the bats mate.
In fact, mating is what makes the bat facility so important. "The biggest reason for having a colony is the ability to do timed matings," Niswander explains. "We want to study bat embryos at precise developmental stages." That's possible, she adds, only when she and colleagues can catch a developmental moment in action. (Ever try to lure a pregnant bat from the sky?)
While at Cornell University's Medical College, bat researcher John J. Rasweiler IV, now at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, founded the colony with bats collected in Trinidad almost a decade ago. When Rasweiler left Cornell, the facility's funding was in question. But last year, Niswander appealed to HHMI Vice President Gerald M. Rubin for support. For roughly $20,000 per year, HHMI has kept the facility open—allowing Niswander, as well as molecular geneticist Richard Behringer of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, to conduct developmental studies of bats that also promise insights into human biology. Niswander estimates that housing each bat costs about 65 cents per day.
"We ultimately hope to make this colony available to the broader scientific community," Niswander says. "Researchers are growing more aware of our developmental research on bats, and this is a valuable resource."
|
|
|
