Current and Continuing Projects
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: David Anderson (HHMI investigator and Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology) and Eric Hoopfer (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology)
HOST: Fly Olympiad Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Professor David Anderson and postdoctoral fellow Eric Hoopfer to Janelia 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 Cal Tech 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 (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings professors 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Tom Bozza (Assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology, Northwestern University)
HOST: Dmitry Rinberg (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing collaboration brings Dr. Thomas Bozza to Janelia to work 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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MAY 1, 2009 - APRIL 30, 2010
VISITORS: Paul Brehm (Group Leader, Vollum Institute) and Mark Verdecia (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Vollum Institute)
HOSTS: Loren Looger (Group Leader) and Luke Lavis (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This collaborative project brings postdoctoral fellow Mark Verdecia from Dr. Paul Brehm's lab at the Vollum Institute to work with Luke Lavis and Loren Looger. The goal of this project is to clone and purify a naturally occurring fluorescence protein from the starfish Ophiopsila californica. This protein is of particular interest to the Looger and Lavis groups because it exhibits a calcium-dependent fluorescence activity, which may be used as a marker of neuronal activity.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Gyorgy Buzsáki (Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers University)
HOST: Jeff Magee (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing collaboration brings Professor Gyorgy Buzsáki, a pioneer and leader in the use of multi-probe electrodes, to Janelia to work 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Albert Cardona (Group Leader, Institute of Neuroinformatics, University Zeurich)
HOST: Marta Zlatic (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Dr. Albert Cardona back to Janelia to collaborate with Marta Zlatic, Mitya Chklovskii, Julie Simpson, Jim Truman, and Gerry Rubin. The scientific focus is to study connectivity patterns and microcircuitry of somato-sensory processing centers in the Drosophila larval central nervous system.
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MARCH 1, 2009 - FEBRUARY 28, 2010
VISITORS: Barry Condron (Associate Professor of Biology, University of Virginia) and Yong Yang (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Virginia)
HOST: Jim Truman (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a collaboration between Dr. Barry Condron and Jim Truman to map neurons in the abdominal segments of the Drosophila ventral nerve cord. The goal 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Patrick Dennis (Emeritus Professor, The University of British Columbia and Program Director of Molecular Genetics in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, National Science Foundation)
HOST: Sean Eddy (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Patrick Dennis' research laboratory at the University of British Columbia was the first to discover small non-coding RNAs in Archaea and the first to succeed in vitro studies of the activity of a subclass of non-coding RNA-binding proteins. After his retirement in 2002, Professor Dennis joined the National Science Foundation as Program Director. Professor Dennis works 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Chris Doe (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Neuroscience, University of Oregon), Maria Purice (Student, University of Oregon), and Jason Kroll (Student, University of Oregon)
HOST: Fly Brain Imaging - Optical Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Chris Doe and his students will work with Gerry Rubin and other labs at Janelia (Truman, Peng, Myers, Chklovskii). Professor 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, Professor 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 stages.
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AUGUST 15, 2009 - DECEMBER 15, 2009
VISITOR: Henry Greenside (Professor of Physics and Computer Science, Duke University)
HOST: Dmitri Chklovskii (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Henry Greenside is collaborating primarily with Dmitri Chklovskii. Professor Greenside has expertise in theoretical and computational physics. He will apply his expertise to help in advancing and applying these methods in the context of understanding the anatomy of the fly optic lobe (vision) and of the fly antennal lobe (olfaction).
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Volker Hartenstein (Professor of Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles) and Amelia Younossi-Hartenstein (University of California, Los Angeles)
HOST: Fly Brain Imaging - Optical Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Volker Hartenstein and Amelia Younossi-Hartenstein previously spent time at Janelia Farm working with Gene Myers and others to lay down the groundwork for a large-scale mapping project. Hartenstein and Younossi-Hartenstein will return to Janelia to focus on the use of lineage tracing to develop a systematic understanding of the large-scale structure of the fly brain.
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APRIL 1, 2009 - DECEMBER 31, 2009
(renewal)
VISITORS: John Isaac (Senior Investigator, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health) and Jong-Cheol Rah (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health)
HOSTS: Karel Svoboda, Dmitri Chklovskii, and Gene Myers (Group Leaders) and Tim Harris (Director, Applied Physics and Instrumentation Group)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Jong-Cheol Rah is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John Isaac's lab at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH. Jong-Cheol is working on an exploratory array tomography project as a means to analyze circuits in the mouse.
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NOVEMBER 1, 2009 - OCTOBER 31, 2010
(renewal)
VISITOR: Matthieu Louis (Junior Group Leader, Center for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona)
HOST: Vivek Jayaraman (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing collaboration brings Dr. Matthieu Louis and members of his lab to Janelia to collaborate primarily with Vivek Jayaraman. The goal of this proposal is to clarify the neural basis of odor coding in the miniature olfactory system of the fruit fly larva. Their previous work has demonstrated that even the most elementary unit of the olfactory circuit, a single olfactory sensory neuron, has the potential to encode and transmit a surprisingly large amount of information about the identity of an odorant stimulus. Their research objectives are twofold: clarifying how the quality of an odor is encoded by a single type of odorant receptor; and understanding how dynamic olfactory stimuli with ethological relevance are represented by the activity patterns of single and combination of OSN(s). To tackle these two questions, they will follow an integrative approach based on their previous successes in intracellular and extracellular recordings from neurons of the larval olfactory system.
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OCTOBER 1, 2009 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2010
VISITORS: Richard Mann (Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University), Carlos Estella (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Columbia University), and Matt Giorgianni (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Columbia University)
HOST: : Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a collaboration between Professor 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, post-docs 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 the 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Ian Meinertzhagen (Killam Professor in Neuroscience, Dalhousie University), Zhiyuan Lu (Research Specialist, Dalhousie University), Shin-ya Takemura (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dalhousie University) and Satoko Takemura (Research Technician, HHMI/Janelia)
HOST: Fly Brain Imaging - EM Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: This is a continuing collaboration between Professor Ian Meinertzhagen and Dmitri Chklovskii and others at Janelia Farm. Professor Meinertzhagen is a leading expert in electron microscopic neuroanatomy; 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 large 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Robert Olberg (Professor of Biology, Union College)
HOST: Anthony Leonardo (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing collaboration brings Professor Rob Olberg to Janelia to work primarily with Anthony Leonardo. The scientific focus is to study the role of target-sensitive descending neurons (TSDNs) in the behaving dragonfly. Dragonfly foraging will be studied before and after selective laser ablation of identified TSDNs. This project will make use of the large indoor dragonfly flight arena developed by the Leonardo Lab, and the chronic electrophysiology techniques for dragonflies developed in the 2008 Olberg project.
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JULY 1, 2009 - DECEMBER 31, 2009
VISITOR: Eva Pastalkova (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Rutgers University)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: The collaborative project brings Eva Pastalkova to collaborate with multiple labs at Janelia to understand the neural circuitry underlying certain behaviors in awake-behaving animals. Dr. Pastalkova has been recruited as a Janelia Farm Fellow and will transition to her fellow lab on January 1, 2010. In the interim, this proposal will support her efforts to develop new ideas and tools to be employed in her lab.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - DECEMBER 31, 2009
VISITORS: Joseph Paton (Fellow, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal) and Yi Li (Ph.D. student, Fudan University, China)
HOST: Joshua Dudman (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Dr. Joseph Paton and Ms. Yi Li to collaborate with Josh Dudman. The goal of the project is to develop a new behavioral paradigm and to optimize recording techniques in head-fixed, behaving mice.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Gonzalo de Polavieja (Professor, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain) and Marta Rivera Alba (Ph.D. Student, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
HOST: Fly Brain Imaging - EM Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: This is a continuing project that brings Professor de Polavieja and graduate 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Catharine Rankin (Associate Professor, University of British Columbia) and Andrew Giles (Ph.D. student, University of British Columbia)
HOST: Rex Kerr (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This collaborative project brings Dr. Catharine Rankin and her Ph.D. student, Andrew Giles, to Janelia to collaborate with Rex Kerr. The goal of this project is to use the worm-tracker developed by Rex Kerr at Janelia to conduct a genetic screen for worm learning mutants using a habituation assay developed in the Rankin lab. Andrew will screen approximately 2,000 lines from the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center.
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NOVEMBER 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Matthew Reynolds (Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University) and Stewart Thomas (Ph.D. student, Duke University)
HOST: Roian Egnor (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Dr. Matthew Reynolds to Janelia to work with Roian Egnor and 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
VISITORS: William Schafer (Programme Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge) and Victoria Butler, Tadas Jucikas and Eviatar Yemini (Ph.D. students, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge)
HOST: Dmitri Chklovskii (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 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, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Axel Scherer (Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Physics and Co-Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute, California of Technology)
HOST: Tim Harris (Director of APIG)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This collaborative project brings Professor Axel Scherer from Cal Tech to work with Mladen Barbic and Tim Harris of the Applied Physics and Instrumentation Group. Professor Scherer is an expert in the design and fabrication of nano-scale photonic, magnetic and fluidic devices and systems. The objective of this project is to create an autonomous (no wires) intracellular-voltage micro-sensor suitable for neurophysiology research. An ensemble of these sensors would permit whole cell patch clamp-like data to be generated on >30 neurons simultaneously. A post-doctoral fellow with relevant expertise will be hired as the primary personnel conducting the work on this project and will be jointly supervised by Scherer, Barbic and Harris. Josh Dudman, Lou Scheffer, Vivek Jayaraman and Roian Egnor will provide additional scientific direction and expertise.
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JULY 1, 2009 - DECEMBER 31, 2009
VISITORS: Petra Schwille (Group Leader and Professor of Biophysics, TU-Dresden) and Jörg Mütze (Ph.D. student, TU-Dresden)
HOSTS: Tim Harris (Director of APIG), Loren Looger (Group Leader) and Luke Lavis (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This collaborative project brings graduate student Jörg Mütze from the lab of Professor Petra Schwille to work with Loren Looger, Luke Lavis and Tim Harris to characterize 2-photon probes being developed at Janelia for neuroimaging. Jörg has extensive experience in 2-photon fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and is expected to make significant progress in using these probes to evaluate the properties of small-molecule calcium ion indicators commonly used in neuroimaging
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AUGUST 1, 2009 - JULY 31, 2010
(renewal)
VISITORS: Gordon Shepherd (Assistant Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University) and Mac Hooks (Associate, HHMI/Janelia)
HOST: Karel Svoboda (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Dr. 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 Hook, 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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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Roland Strauss (Professor of Neurobiology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany) and Tilman Triphan (Student Researcher, HHMI/Janelia)
HOST: Fly Olympiad Team
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Professor Roland Strauss and Ph.D. student Tilman Triphan to Janelia to study fly neurobiology and behavior. The goal of this project 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 is assay will be modified for high-throughput screens. Tilman Triphan will conduct the gap-crossing screen of the Janelia collection of GAL4 lines.
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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 (Group Leader, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris), Olivier Bensaude (Group Leader, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris), Benjamin Guglielmi (UC Berkeley), Lana Bosanac, Sébastien Causse, Valeria de Turris and Benjamin Mathieu (Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris) and Dan Larson and Timothee Lionnet (Albert Einstein College of Medicine)
HOST: Robert Tjian Robert Tjian (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UC Berkeley; President, HHMI)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project is a continuing collaboration among the labs of Professor Robert Tjian, Professor Rob Singer, and Dr. Xavier Darzacq that began in September 2006. Professor Singer and his colleagues collaborated on developing imaging capabilities to image 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 the set up of 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 into a publication (Ann. Rev. Biophysics, 2009).
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SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 - OCTOBER 30, 2009
VISITORS: David Tank (Professor, Princeton University) and Dave Markowitz (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Princeton University)
HOST: Dimitry Rinberg (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: TThis collaboration brings Dave Markowitz, from Professor David Tank's lab at Princeton University, to Janelia to collaborate primarily with Dimitry Rinberg. The scientific objective of this project is to understand the mechanisms underlying olfactory coding in awake behaving animals. Dave will apply analytical methods developed in the Tank lab to analyze recordings of mitral cells, obtained by the Rinberg lab, in the behaving mouse olfactory bulb upon odor exposure.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITOR: Stephen Williams (Professor, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology)
HOST: Jeff Magee (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Professor Stephen Williams to Janelia to collaborate primarily with Jeff Magee, with additional benefits to several other labs (Svoboda, Dudman, Murphy). The focus is to characterize the computational properties of neocortical pyramidal and stellate neurons using experimental and theo-retical approaches that will test the concept of generalized functional classification of neuron types. 2-photon neurotransmitter uncaging in conjunction with targeted activation of specific subtypes of network interneurons as well as external excitatory inputs will be employed.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2010
VISITORS: Lawrence Zipursky (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biological Chemistry, University of California, Los Angeles) and Aljoscha Nern (Associate, HHMI/Janelia)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brings Professor Lawrence Zipursky and postdoctoral 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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FEBRUARY 1, 2009 - JANUARY 31, 2010
(renewal)
VISITORS: Charles Zuker (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, Columbia University), Tyler Ofstad (M.D./Ph.D. student, University of California, San Diego) and Marco Gallio (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of California, San Diego)
HOST: Michael Reiser (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This continuing project brings Professor Charles Zuker, M.D./Ph.D. student, Tyler Ofstad and postdoctoral fellow 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.
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