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JANUARY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: David Anderson (HHMI investigator and Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings David Anderson and postdoc Eric Hoopfer to collaborate with labs at Janelia studying Drosophila behavior. The scientific focus is to study aggression, a social behavior in Drosophila that is a model for a well-accepted emotional behavior in vertebrates. The Anderson lab at Caltech developed a prototype apparatus and custom software for automated analysis that can be used in low-to-moderate throughput behavior assays. Hoopfer will scale up this behavioral assay at Janelia to adapt it to high-throughput screening of the Rubin collection of GAL4 lines.
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MARCH 1, 2009 - FEBRUARY 29, 2010
VISITORS: Michael Bate (Professor of Zoology, University of Cambridge) and K. VijayRaghavan (Senior Professor and Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This proposed project will bring Michael Bate and K. VijayRaghavan to collaborate with Gerry Rubin. The research programs of Professor Bate and Professor VijayRaghavan have focused on the developmental neurobiology of animal movements. The scientific objective of their proposed project is to screen the Rubin lab GAL4 driver lines using a simple system for the rapid screening of larvae crawling on an agar surface.
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MARCH 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Thomas Bozza (Assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology, Northwestern University)
HOST: Dmitry Rinberg (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Thomas Bozza to Janelia to collaborate with Dmitry Rinberg. The scientific focus is to assign functionally, specific murine olfactory receptor (OR) genes to specific odorants using Channelrhodopsin and light induction in a behavioral assay and then to use this knowledge to map the connections of those specific OR gene expressing receptor neurons to mitral cells in the olfactory bulb. This will connect Dr. Bozza's expertise and experience with OR genes to Rinberg's expertise in mouse behavior and electrophysiology.
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JUNE 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: Gyorgy Buzsáki (Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers University)
HOST: Jeff Magee (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Gyorgy Buzsáki, a pioneer and leader in the use of multi-probe electrodes, to Janelia to collaborate primarily with Jeff Magee, with additional benefits to several other labs (Jayaraman, Sternson, Rinberg, and Hess). The scientific focus is to study the high-level function of “coalitions” of neuronal groups: how the large-scale integration of function in the brain allows an animal (in this case, the rat) to integrate its model of the world, make decisions, and execute them. Professor Buzsáki and Jeff Magee are doing this by developing methods to study the activity of large numbers of neurons in multiple brain areas while allowing real-time, targeted perturbations of physiological patterns. A second objective is to miniaturize the probes for the mouse and fly brains.
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MARCH 1, 2009 - FEBRUARY 28, 2010
VISITOR: Barry Condron (Associate Professor of Biology, University of Virginia)
HOST: Jim Truman (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This proposed project is a collaboration between Barry Condron and Jim Truman to map neurons in the abdominal segments of the Drosophila ventral nerve cord. The goal of this project is to generate atlases of neurons of early and late larval stages, to link both atlases, and then to identify the individual neurons. Dr. Condron plans to use the Janelia/Rubin GAL4 collection to help distinguish certain motor and inter-neurons that are morphologically similar.
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AUGUST 1, 2008 - JULY 31, 2009
VISITOR: Ilan Davis (Professor of Biochemistry, The University of Oxford)
HOST: Sean Eddy (JFRC Group Leader) and Elena Rivas (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Ilan Davis and postdoc Russell Hamilton to Janelia to collaborate with Sean Eddy and Elena Rivas. Their focus is on the local regulation of gene expression at synapses, which may be the mechanism for some types of synaptic plasticity. The specific objectives of this project are to develop an improved “2.5D” computational method for the prediction of RNA secondary structures (which often underlie synaptic targeting sites).
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JULY 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITOR: Patrick Dennis (Emeritus Professor, The University of British Columbia and Program JFRC Director of Molecular Genetics in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, National Science Foundation)
HOST: Sean Eddy (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Patrick Dennis's research laboratory at the University of British Columbia was the first to discover small noncoding RNAs in Archaea and the first to succeed in in vitro studies of the activity of a subclass of noncoding RNA-binding proteins. After his retirement in 2002, Professor Dennis joined the National Science Foundation as Program JFRC Director. Professor Dennis comes from the NSF (Arlington, Virginia) for three days a month to collaborate with Sean Eddy to annotate small RNAs now being identified in the lab of Todd Lowe at UCSD through high-throughput screening.
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MARCH 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Chris Doe (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Neuroscience, University of Oregon)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This proposed project brings Chris Doe and his students to work with Gerry Rubin and other labs at Janelia (Truman, Peng, Myers, Chklovskii). Dr. Doe is a leading expert on Drosophila developmental neurobiology. The first objective of this project is to screen the Janelia collection of GAL4 lines for neuronal expression in Drosophila embryos. The second objective is to construct an atlas of gene expression in the embryo at the light level. In addition, Dr. Doe will share his expertise and assist other labs at Janelia with linking neuronal identity in the embryo to neurons identified by serial EM reconstruction in the early Drosophila larval stage.
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JULY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: Volker Hartenstein (Professor of Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles)
HOST: Gene Myers (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Volker Hartenstein and his wife and co-worker, Amelia Younossi-Hartenstein, spent a three-month sabbatical at Janelia Farm in 2007 working with Gene Myers and others. This project was very successful and laid down the groundwork for a large-scale mapping project. Their focus was on the use of lineage tracing to develop a systematic understanding of the large-scale structure of the fly brain. Professor Hartenstein and his wife have returned to Janelia to continue this work.
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APRIL 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: John Isaac (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health) and Jong-Cheol Rah (Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health)
HOSTS: Karel Svoboda, Mitya Chklovskii, and Gene Myers (JFRC Group Leaders) and Tim Harris (Director of Applied Physics and Instrumentation Group)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Jong-Cheol Rah is a postdoc in John Isaac's lab at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH. Dr. Rah is works on an exploratory array tomography project as a means to analyze circuits in the mouse.
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AUGUST 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITOR: Tzumin Lee (Associate Professor of Neurobiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Tzumin Lee to Janelia to collaborate with Gerry Rubin, Jim Truman, and others with interests in the anatomy of the Drosophila brain studied at the light level. Dr. Lee has been recruited to become a new group leader at Janelia and will take up his post July 1, 2009. This project is a mechanism to support his lab's transition from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The project involves twin-spot, double-marked mosaic analysis to characterize neuroblast lineages in the fly brain. This project is complementary to and synergistic with work already underway in the lab of Jim Truman at Janelia, and makes extensive use of reagents in preparation in the Rubin lab.
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APRIL 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: Matthieu Louis (Junior Group Leader, Center for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona)
HOST: Vivek Jayaraman (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a continuing collaboration between Matthieu Louis and Vivek Jayaraman to study circuits involved in Drosophila larval locomotion and odor tracking. Dr. Louis' initial visit in 2007 was very productive and led to success in patch-clamp recordings from larval projection neurons. The goal of this project will be to use this technique to clarify the neural basis of odor coding in the miniature olfactory system of the fruit fly larva.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
VISITOR: Richard Mann (Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University)
HOST: : Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a collaboration between Richard Mann's laboratory at Columbia University and Gerry Rubin's lab to examine the expression of Rubin's GAL4 lines in fly larval discs. Carlos Estella and Matt Giorgianni, postdocs in Professor Mann's lab, will make regular, short visits to Janelia to conduct a larval disc screen. The Rubin GAL4 lines will be crossed to a GFP reporter line and larval discs from each cross will be examined. GAL4 lines that drive GFP expression in the discs will be isolated for additional analyses to be conducted at Columbia University.
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JANUARY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Ian Meinertzhagen (Killam Professor in Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
HOST: : Dmitri Chklovskii (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Ian Meinertzhagen to collaborate with Dmitri Chklovskii and others at Janelia Farm. Professor Meinertzhagen is a leading expert in electron microscopic neuroanatomy, as he has completed the reconstruction of the first optic lobe (the lamina) of the Drosophila brain. The focus of this project is the assembly of a precise reconstruction of the second optic lobe (the medulla). Future tissues for reconstruction include the deeper optic neuropiles, the lobula and lobula plate, and the antennal lobes. This work not only provides a direct advance toward the Janelia goal of producing a complete wiring diagram for the fly brain, but has also helped to develop computational and other tools to greatly accelerate the process.
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JUNE 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Robert Olberg (Professor of Biology, Union College)
HOST: Anthony Leonardo (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Rob Olberg to Janelia to collaborate with Anthony Leonardo. The scientific focus is to study flight dynamics in tethered dragonflies. Electromyograms and custom electrodes will be used to measure muscle and neural activity while the dragonfly attempts to chase a moving target projected onto a wraparound screen. A magnetic tether will allow the dragonfly one to two axes of movement. The long-term goal is to study the role for “target-selective descending neurons” in wing activity control. This will lead later to free-flight studies.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - JULY 15, 2009
VISITOR: Lorenz Pammer (Master's student, University of Vienna, Austria)
HOST: Karel Svoboda (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings a Master's student, Lorenz Pammer, from the University of Vienna to Janelia to collaborate with Karel Svoboda. Over the last two years, the Svoboda lab has developed quantitative behavioral assays for somatosensation in head-fixed mice. Mr. Pammer’s research objective is to exploit the behavioral tools in the Svoboda lab to answer some basic questions about the kinematic and dynamic variables used by mice in whisker-based somatosensation.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
VISITOR: Joseph Paton (Fellow, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal)
HOST: Joshua Dudman (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Dr. Joseph Paton to collaborate with Josh Dudman. The goal of the project is to use Dr. Paton's expertise to develop a new behavioral paradigm and to optimize recording techniques in head-fixed, behaving mice.
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FEBRUARY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Gonzalo de Polavieja (Professor, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
HOST: Dmitri Chklovskii (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This is a continuing project that brings Professor de Polavieja and his student Marta Alba to Janelia to collaborate with labs working on reconstructing the Drosophila brain at the EM level. The scientific focus of the project is to develop and test automated neural reconstruction techniques using multiple regions of the brain. The objective is to apply these techniques to the lamina and medulla regions of the optic lobe of the Drosophila brain. This effort will synergize with the Meinertzhagen visitor project.
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JULY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Christine Portfors (Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Washington State University)
HOST: Roian Egnor (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Christine Portfors to Janelia to collaborate with Roian Egnor. There is growing scientific interest in mouse vocalization; work in the Portfors lab has shown that mice housed in complex social environments generate more complex vocalization (like people). The scientific focus of this project is to compare the vocalization of mice born and raised in large, multigenerational cages to those raised in small faculty offices. A second objective is to develop a new rig for extracellular physiology.
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NOVEMBER 1, 2008 - OCTOBER 31, 2009
VISITOR: Matthew Reynolds (Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University)
HOST: Roian Egnor (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a collaboration between Matthew Reynolds and Roian Egnor that will explore a novel use for the RFID technology, developed by Dr. Reynolds. The goal of the project is to develop a system to continuously record ultrasonic mouse vocalizations of 30-40 mice, while simultaneously tracking the identity and position of individual mice using implanted RFID tags as they interact.
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Dates: MARCH 1, 2009 - FEBRUARY 28, 2010
VISITOR: William Schafer (Programme Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge)
HOST: Dmitri Chklovskii (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project proposes to study how patterns of neuromuscular activity generate C. elegans locomotor behavior. To address this question, Dr. William Schafer and his students, Victoria Butler, Tadas Jucikas, and Eviatar Yemini will come to Janelia to collaborate with Dmitri Chklovskii to develop a tracking microscope that will allow simultaneous recordings of nematode behavior and neuromuscular calcium transients.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITOR: Louis Scheffer (Fellow, Cadence Design Systems)
HOST: Dmitri Chklovskii (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Lou Scheffer, a senior researcher in electronic engineering at Cadence Design Systems, Inc., to Janelia for 10 months to collaborate with Dmitri Chklovskii. Scheffer is an expert in integrated circuit design, verification, and testing. The scientific focus is to translate the experience developed in chip design to the analysis of neuronal circuits. In particular, they will focus on the methods for “reverse engineering” of electronic circuit function from their physical structure. They intend to use these methods in the deduction of function from the connection diagrams that will be mapped at Janelia for the fly (and other) brains.
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AUGUST 1, 2008 - JULY 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITOR: Gordon Shepherd (Assistant Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University)
HOST: Karel Svoboda (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Gordon Shepherd to Janelia to collaborate with Karel Svoboda. The goal of this project is to obtain a wiring diagram, including local and long-range circuits, connecting all major classes of excitatory neurons in the mouse whisker sensorymotor system. Mac Hooks, a postdoctoral associate, has successfully mapped the intracortical circuits in vibrissae M1 and S1, mainly based on glutamate-based laser- scanning photostimulation. The project will be a continuation of their progress and will use ChR2-based mapping next to map long-range connections.
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APRIL 1, 2009 - MARCH 31, 2010
VISITORS: Robert Singer (Chair, Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) and Xavier Darzacq and Olivier Bensaude (École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
HOST: Robert Tjian (HHMI president)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a continuation of a project that began in September 2006. Hosted first by Sydney Brenner and then Gerry Rubin, Robert Tjian and his colleagues collaborated on developing imaging capabilities to visualize fluorescently labeled single molecules as they assemble on the transcription initiation complex in cultured Drosophila cells in vivo. Critical to the success of these experiments was a new microscope system to do live imaging. The scientific focus in the renewal period will be to image and analyze the formation of the pre-initiation complexes. This collaboration has been very successful thus far and has culminated in a publication (Ann. Rev. Biophysics, in press).
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FEBRUARY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Roland Strauss (Professor of Neurobiology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany)
HOST: Julie Simpson (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Roland Strauss and postdoctoral associate Tilman Triphan to Janelia to study fly neurobiology and behavior. The goal is to understand the neuronal basis of walking and climbing control in insects using Drosophila genetics. Professor Strauss is an expert in this area and has developed a gap-crossing assay that measures the ability of a fly to choose, when a gap is small enough, to cross by walking. This assay will be modified for high-throughput screens. Tilman will conduct the gap-crossing screen of the Janelia collection of GAL4 lines.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
VISITOR: Lawrence Zipursky (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biological Chemistry, University of California, Los Angeles)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (JFRC Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Larry Zipursky and postdoc associate Aljoscha Nern to Janelia to collaborate with Gerry Rubin. Professor Zipursky has expert knowledge in the development of the fly visual system. The scientific objective is to identify a set of GAL4 driver lines in the Rubin GAL4 collection for the full set of cell-types in the Drosophila lamina and medulla (the outer two of the four optic lobes).
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JULY 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITOR: Marta Zlatic (Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and Visiting Fellow, Columbia University)
HOST: Julie Simpson (JFRC Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Marta Zlatic's research focus is to identify interneuronal populations involved in the different stereotyped behaviors of Drosophila larvae. As a participant in the Janelia Visitor Program in 2007 and 2008, Dr. Zlatic characterized specific larval behaviors and modified an automated tracking system developed by Rex Kerr's lab at Janelia to develop a high-throughput assay to screen for different larval behaviors. Dr. Zlatic will carry out a high-throughput screen of the Janelia collection of GAL4 lines to identify functionally different interneurons that direct these specific larval behaviors. In September 2009, Dr. Zlatic will continue her work as a JFRC Fellow.
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FEBRUARY 1, 2009 - JANUARY 31, 2010
(renewal)
VISITOR: Charles Zuker (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego)
HOST: Michael Reiser (JFRC Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Charles Zuker, M.D./Ph.D. student Tyler Ofstad, and postdoc Marco Gallio to Janelia to collaborate with Michael Reiser. This collaboration has been highly successful and has led to the development of a novel automated testing arena to assay spatial learning in Drosophila. The thermotaxis and spatial memory assay is currently being adapted for high-throughput screening of the Janelia collection of GAL4 lines. The long-term objective of this project is to identify interesting features of visually and thermally guided behaviors and then pursue the neural mechanisms underlying these behaviors.
