FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Summary of Current Project Teams

Project Teams in chronological order

Janelia Farm Single Cell Consortium: Developing New Methods to Dissect In Vivo Mechanisms of Transcriptional Regulation
Visitors: Robert Tjian, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology UC Berkeley and HHMI investigator, Robert Singer, chair of the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Xavier Darzacq, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and Olivier Bensaude, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. Also other personnel include post-docs fellows and research technicians.
Dates: September 1, 2006 - December 31, 2008
Host: Sydney Brenner
Project Summary: This project involves the development of cellular and molecular imaging reagents to track the formation of an activated Pre-Initiation Complex (PIC) at endogenous promoters in Drosophila cells. The work is being done in multiple short visits per year, with development work done in preparation (DNA constructions) in the Tjian lab at Berkeley. The team assembles at Janelia after this preparative work to image transfected cells. Janelia provides the exclusive use of a Zeiss 5-live system while they are here and extensive support in our microscopy and cell culture shared resources.

High Order Control of Behavior in Drosophila
Visitor: Michael Dickinson is Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology
Dates: Dec 20, 2007 thru December 19, 2007
Host: Michael Reiser
Project Summary: Dickinson is spending a sabbatical year at Janelia developing behavioral assays and equipment for flies. Janelia is supporting this project by providing the services of an Instrumentation engineer in addition to the lab and equipment costs of the project.

Construction and characterization of transgenic RNAi lines to inactivate 1,000 Drosophila genes with nervous system functions.
Visitors: Professor Norbert Perrimon, Professor of Genetics Harvard Medical School and an HHMI investigator and Charles Zuker, Professor of Biology and of Neuroscience at UC San Diego and an HHMI investigator. Also four full-time staff at Janelia are dedicated to this project.
Dates: January 1, 2007 - December 31, 2008
Host: Gerry Rubin
Project Summary: These two investigators are each spending ten weeks a year in residence and are collaborating to design and test RNAi constructs to inhibit the activity of about 1,000 genes with neural function in Drosophila and then to undertake the initial phenotypic characterization of the lines. These lines will be a valuable reagent for many groups at Janelia and will eventually be widely distributed. We are supporting this project with four additional full time staff and funding for Drosophila transgenesis.

New behavioral assays for Drosophila
Visitor: David Anderson is an HHMI Investigator and Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology.
Dates: January 1, 2007 - December 31, 2007, later years expected.
Host: Gerry Rubin
Project Summary: Anderson spends ten weeks at Janelia and is working here to develop and improve methods to assay behavior in Drosophila. This involves the construction of specific machines and software to run them as well as to analyze the data. We are supporting this through personnel in our machine shop and in software development.

Novel approaches to controlled gene expression in the mouse nervous system
Visitor: Thomas Südhof is an HHMI Investigator and Professor of Molecular Genetics and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Dates: June 1, 2007 - May 31, 2008, later years expected.
Host: Alla Karpova and Sean Eddy
Project Summary: Südhof spends ten weeks a year at Janelia, working to develop and improve methods to express genes in mouse brain in temporally and spatially restricted patterns. This involves an initial computational analysis to identify potential transcriptional regulators near to genes expressed in the nervous system. The project addresses a major limitation in the field of molecular neurobiology — our limited ability to target markers and reagents to specific parts of the mouse nervous system. Breaking down this barrier will provide both an enabling technology as well as a small collection of fully realized gene expression tools. The computational work is being done by a postdoc who is under the supervision of Sean Eddy. The second phase of the project to test these in mice and this is in collaboration with Alla Karpova. This project is supported with three full-time staff (the computational postdoc and two biologists) and the services of our transgenic facility.

Large-scale recordings of neurons in the intact cortex
Visitor: Gyorgy Buzsáki is a Board of Governors Professor at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University.
Dates: June 1, 2007 - May 31, 2008, later years expected.
Host: Jeff Magee
Project Summary: Buzsáki spends four weeks a year at Janelia working on the development of novel silicon microelectrodes for rodent and Drosophila electrophysiology. Janelia is supporting this through the provision of a full time post-doc and through the Applied Physics and Instrumentation Group, which is also contracting with an outside consultant to design the electrodes.

This project involves several groups at Janelia (Svoboda, Sternson, Rinberg, Magee and Jayaraman). Specific designs are developed to suit each of their experimental systems which they then test. Two technologies are employed: silicon wafer fabrication and focused ion beam nano-machining. The silicon wafer runs are outsourced twice a year and the designs are prepared by our consultant. The nano-machining is done at Janelia on a newly acquired focused ion beam instrument. The two approaches are complementary: silicon wafer runs are long lead-time and expensive but produce large numbers of devices, while ion beam fabrication is an individual process but which can be done on demand in-house to develop prototypes.

Examination of Circuits Formed by Model Systems of Neurons in Drosophila
Visitor: Ian Meinertzhagen is a University Research Professor at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia).
Dates: January 1, 2008 Ð December 31, 2008, later years expected.
Host: Mitya Chklovskii
Project Summary: Meinertzhagen spends two months a year at Janelia, and works towards the long-term goal of fully reconstructing the Drosophila brain, at the EM level. The complexity of this is enormous and the problem will require a concerted effort by many groups over several years. The work proposed here is to bring this forward in the next layer of the optic lobe (the medulla). We support this project through the provision of a full-time post-doc and through the half-time residence of Meinertzhagen's EM technician (two three-month stays per year).

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