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OCTOBER 20, 2008 - MAY 31, 2009
VISITOR: Misha Ahrens (Ph.D. student, University College of London)
HOST: Vivek Jayaraman and Michael Reiser (JFRC Fellows)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Misha Ahrens, a graduate student from the University College of London, came to Janelia to collaborate with Michael Reiser and Vivek Jayaraman. The objective of this project was to develop tools to monitor the activity of multiple neurons in behaving fruit flies. Misha evaluated miniaturized multi-electrode probes designed for extracellular recordings in the Drosophila brain.
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MAY 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Haider Ali (Masters student, Old Dominion University)
HOST: Michael Reiser (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Haider Ali worked with Michael Reiser to test new tools for temperature control of behavioral rigs being developed in the Reiser lab.
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OCTOBER 1, 2007 - MARCH 31, 2008
VISITOR: Dan Bogenhagen (Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, SUNY Stony Brook)
HOST: Eric Betzig (Group Leader) and David Clayton (Lab Head)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Dan Bogenhagen came to Janelia to collaborate with Eric Betzig and David Clayton. Their focus was to use super-resolution imaging techniques developed in the Betzig lab to study the mechanisms of nucleoid replication in mitochondria.
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MARCH 15, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2008
VISITOR: Albert Cardona (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles)
HOST: Julie Simpson (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Albert Cardona to work with Julie Simpson and other scientists at Janelia to perform some pilot experiments toward mapping the fly brain by electron microscopy. The first objective was to install software for automatic imaging at the electron microscope. The second objective focused on sectioning, automatic imaging and image assembly of an entire segment of the Drosophila first instar larva ventral nerve cord. The third objective was to engineer new fly lines for future functional studies. This project was very successful and helped establish new technology and protocols for a large-scale mapping project of the fly brain and nerve cord by electron microscopy.
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AUGUST 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Ilan Davis (Professor of Biochemistry, The University of Oxford) and Russell Hamilton (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Oxford)
HOSTS: Sean Eddy (Group Leader) and Elena Rivas (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Ilan Davis and postdoctoral fellow Russell Hamilton came to Janelia to collaborate with Sean Eddy and Elena Rivas. Their focus was 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 were 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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DECEMBER 20, 2006 - DECEMBER 19, 2007
VISITOR: Michael Dickinson (Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology)
HOST: Michael Reiser (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Michael Dickinson came to Janelia to collaborate with Michael Reiser and others to develop behavioral assays for Drosophila. While the initial intention was to develop a system to track a walking fly, new research objectives developed, such as the use of nano-fabricated microelectrodes, and these have evolved into a new project in collaboration with James Truman.
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MARCH 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Michael Dickinson (Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology)
HOST: : James Truman (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Michael Dickinson returned to Janelia to collaborate primarily with James Truman. The scientific focus was to study how the small number of neurons in the Drosophila brain with descending projections into the thoracic ganglion control and integrate both major modes of locomotion in the adult: walking and flight. The four specific aims include a screen for behavioral defects using the Janelia collection of GAL4 driver lines (being generated in the Rubin and Simpson labs), the development of nanoelectrode probes for extracellular recordings, anatomical characterization of the descending neurons at the EM level, and the identification of the neural lineages involved.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - FEBRUARY 28, 2009
VISITOR: Robert Finn (Postdoctoral Fellow, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute)
HOST: Sean Eddy (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Rob Finn is the project leader of the Pfam protein families database curated in Alex Bateman's lab at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The core of the Pfam system is built on top of a protein sequence analysis software package called HMMER. Development of the HMMER software is largely the responsibility of the team at Janelia Farm, led by Sean Eddy. The most recent development of HMMER needs to be integrated into Pfam and will require testing. The purpose of Rob Finn's visit to the Eddy lab was to set up the basis of the collaboration that will be required.
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JUNE 1, 2008 - MARCH 31, 2009
VISITORS: Kevin Fox (Professor and Head of Research, Cardiff School of Biosciences) and Sandra Kuhlman (Postdoctoral Associate, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
HOST: Karel Svoboda (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Kevin Fox is a leading expert on plasticity mechanisms in the visual and somatosensory cortex. This project brings Professor Fox and postdoctoral fellow Sandra Kuhlman to Janelia to collaborate with Karel Svoboda. The scientific focus was to study plasticity of circuits in the mouse barrel cortex and somatosensory whisker cortex using new imaging and circuit mapping techniques developed in the Svoboda lab.
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OCTOBER 1, 2007 - DECEMBER 31, 2007
VISITOR: Volker Hartenstein (Professor of Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles)
HOSTS: Julie Simpson and Gene Myers (Group Leaders)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Professor Volker Hartenstein, an expert in Drosophila neuroanatomy, to Janelia to work with Julie Simpson, Gene Myers and other scientists. The project laid the groundwork for a mapping project by defining and unifying existing models of brain regions. The first objective was to define and name neuropile compartments and fiber tracts by light analysis using a neuronal marker, nc82. The second objective was to further define small subdivisions ("foci") within the neuropile compartments using a lineage-based approach. This project was very successful and brought Professor Hartenstein back to Janelia to share his expertise in a large-scale mapping project of the fly brain (current projects, above).
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MAY 15, 2008 - JUNE 7, 2008
VISITOR: Stanley Heinze (Professor of Biology and Animal Physiology, University of Marburg)
HOST: Vivek Jayaraman (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY:This project brought Professor Stanley Heinze to Janelia to collaborate with Vivek Jayaraman. The overall aim of the collaboration was the development of a reliable method for paired recordings from polarization-sensitive neurons of the central-complex of the fly brain, while simultaneously loading the neurons with Ca++-sensitive dyes for in vivo identification of the neuron type and imaging of dendrites.
Studies on the Drosophila brain.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - DECEMBER 31, 2008
VISITOR: Martin Heisenberg (Professor and Head of Department for Genetics and Neurobiology, Universität Würzburg)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Professor Martin Heisenberg is a very senior and prominent scientist with pioneering expertise and knowledge in Drosophila neurogenetics. While at Janelia, Professor Heisenberg made progress toward two objectives, which were to work on a book on the epistemology of neuroscience from the perspective of behavior and to give a lecture series on topics related to studies on the fly brain. Professor Heisenberg's expert knowledge was so greatly appreciated that he will return to Janelia to consult with scientists at Janelia and to collaborate with the Rubin lab to analyze reagents, which are uniquely available in the Rubin lab (new GAL4 expression driver lines). The scientific focus will be to study circuits involved in controlling behavior.
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JUNE 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Alexei Koulakov (Associate Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
HOST: Dmitry Rinberg (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. Alexei Koulakov to collaborate with Dmitry Rinberg. Dr. Koulakov has expertise in theoretical neurobiology and modeling. This project focused on combining bioinformatics with genetic and electrophysiological techniques towards the construction of a verifiable model for olfactory coding in the mouse brain.
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AUGUST 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITORS: Tzumin Lee (Associate Professor of Neurobiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School), Hung-Hsiang "Sam" Yu (Research Specialist, HHMI/Janelia), and Shun Jen "Jacob" Yang (Associate, HHMI/Janelia)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. 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 was recruited to become a new Group Leader at Janelia and transitioned to his post on July 1, 2009. This project was a mechanism to support his lab's transition from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The project involved twin-spot double-marked mosaic analysis to characterize neuroblast lineages in the fly brain. This was complementary to and synergistic with work already underway in the lab of Jim Truman at Janelia and made extensive use of reagents in preparation in the Rubin lab.
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FEBRUARY 1, 2008 - JANUARY 31, 2009
VISITOR: Zachary Mainen (group leader, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal)
HOST: Alla Karpova (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Dr. Zachary Mainen came to Janelia to collaborate primarily with Alla Karpova and post-doc Dougal Gowanlock Tervo. Dr. Mainen is a leader in the study of rodent behavior. The scientific focus was to develop an animal model of reciprocity in rats with the aim of eventually studying the neural circuits that underlie this task.
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JUNE 1, 2009 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Eduardo Martinez (Senior Scientist, Medros, Inc.)
HOST: Scott Sternson (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This collaborative project brought Dr. Martinez to work primarily with Scott Sternson. The Sternson lab synthesized novel selective ligands of POAMS, tools used to activate and silence electrical activity in neurons in vitro. The goal of this project was to improve the potency of these ligands for in vivo studies by synthesizing analogs of two of these ligands with higher ligand-protein affinities.
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OCTOBER 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Lorenz Pammer (Master's student, University of Vienna, Austria)
HOST: Karel Svoboda (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought 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. Lorenz's research objective was 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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JANUARY 1, 2007 - DECEMBER 31, 2008
VISITORS: Norbert Perrimon (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School) and Charles Zuker (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego)
HOST: Gerry Rubin (Director)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought two HHMI investigators, Professor Norbert Perrimon and Professor Charles Zuker to Janelia to collaborate with Gerry Rubin. This was an infrastructural project with very specific and concrete goals: to develop gene inhibition reagents to target about 1,000 genes that have relevance to CNS function. These included genes involved in neurotransmission, connectivity and path finding, behavior, ion channels, and transcription factors preferentially expressed in the nervous system. In the first year, technology was developed to support the project and the production of the reagents themselves had begun. The second year saw the near completion of the collection and some phenotypic characterization. The project was the basis for a large grant that will be funded by the NIH to construct similar reagents for the rest of the fly genome.
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JULY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Christine Portfors (Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Washington State University)
HOST: Roian Egnor (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. 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 was to compare the vocalization of mice born and raised in large, multi-generational cages to those raised in small faculty offices.
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AUGUST 20, 2007 - DECEMBER 20, 2007
VISITOR: Sven Rahmann (Group Leader in the AG Genominformatik, Technische Fakultät, at the Universität Bielefeld)
HOST: Gene Myers (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: Dr. Sven Rahmann came to work with Gene Myers' group at Janelia to develop software for the analysis of neural structures in the fly.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 - JUNE 30, 2009
VISITOR: Louis Scheffer (Fellow, Cadence Design Systems)
HOST:Dmitri Chklovskii (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. 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 was to translate the experience developed in chip design to the analysis of neuronal circuits. In particular, they focused 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. Dr. Scheffer transitioned to a Janelia Farm Fellow on July 1, 2009
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JUNE 1, 2007 - MAY 31, 2008
VISITOR: Thomas Südhof (HHMI Investigator and Professor of Molecular Genetics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas)
HOST: Alla Karpova and Sean Eddy (Group Leaders)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Professor Tom Südhof in 2007 to Janelia to develop new methods to express transgenes in specific locations in the mouse brain. This technology is well advanced in Drosophila and other invertebrate models, but has lagged in the mouse. The ability to specifically express activity reporters, cell tracers and reagents to manipulate neural activity is crucial to the full exploitation of the mouse as a genetic model to study the brain. This collaboration led to the development of four (4) new transgenic mouse lines that will be used by multiple labs at Janelia to drive cell-type specific expression in the mouse brain.
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APRIL 1, 2008 - MAY 31, 2008
VISITOR: Coral del Val Muñoz (Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Granada, Spain)
HOST: Elena Rivas (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. Coral del Val Muñoz to Janelia to work with Elena Rivas. This work focused on the identification of possible riboswitch candidates for Salmonella typhi, in particular focusing on genes that are involved in the pathogenic behavior of Salmonella using a computational strategy developed by Elena Rivas and Sean Eddy.
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JUNE 1, 2006 - NOVEMBER 30, 2007
VISITOR: Matt Wachowiak (Assistant Professor of Biology, Boston University)
HOST: Dmitry Rinberg (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Dr. Matt Wachowiak and student Dan Wesson to Janelia. They worked intensively with Dmitry Rinberg to develop a head fixed assay for sniffing behavior in the rat.
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JANUARY 1, 2008 - MARCH 31, 2008
VISITOR: Daw-An Wu (Postdoctoral Fellow, Vision Science Lab, Harvard)
HOST: Michael Reiser (Fellow)
PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Daw-An Wu to Janelia to collaborate with Michael Reiser to undertake exploratory experiments in order to attempt to detect multistable perception in Drosophila. In this case they focused on the unification of the images generated by the two eyes, using flight-orientation behavior as an assay.
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JULY 1, 2008 - AUGUST 31, 2009
VISITOR: Marta Zlatic (Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and Visiting Fellow in Wes Grueber's Lab at Columbia University)
HOST: Fly Olympiad
PROJECT SUMMARY: Dr. 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's research objective is to 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 of 2009, Dr. Zlatic transitioned to Janelia Farm Fellow to continue her work.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2006 - JUNE 30, 2007
VISITOR: Michael Zuker (Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
HOST: Sean Eddy (Group Leader)
PROJECT SUMMARY:
This project brought Michael Zuker to do a one-year sabbatical with Sean Eddy. They collaborated on software to analyze and predict RNA structure from primary sequence.
