Visitor of the Week: Mansi Prakash

Meet Mansi Prakash of the Central Michigan University! The postdoctoral research associate is a member of Dr. Ute Hochgeschwender’s lab in the College of Medicine. She joined us at the second virtual course on Ion Channels in Synaptic and Neural Circuit Physiology – her very first CSHL course. Mansi found the Ion Channels course “exceptionally insightful and helpful.” She also shared that the “talks were stimulating and covered different aspects of ion channels. The afternoon lab experiments filled with in-depth training from the instructors and their lab members turned out to be very informative and useful. Most importantly, profound communication at every level by the instructors, lecturers, staff and [her] fellow participants and smart use of technology helped [her] navigate [the virtual format].”

Tell us about your research.
I am using bioluminescent light from a presynaptic axon terminal, generated by a luciferase, to modulate an opsin in its postsynaptic target under experimenter-controlled introduction of the luciferase substrate (bioluminescent optogenetics (BL-OG)). The luciferase is released into the synaptic cleft in response to presynaptic activity, creating a real-time optical synapse, and because both presynaptic luciferase and postsynaptic opsin are required, only their specific connections are modulated.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
When I joined this lab, I had no prior experience in neuroscience so the first look at the primary neurons under the microscope will always remain memorable for me. With my previous experience in cell biology and tissue culture and a keen interest in cell-cell communication, I became very excited about the concept of trans-synaptic bioluminescent-driven optogenetics--‘Interluminescence’ as we call it--and about devising a method for experimenter-controlled communication between genetically defined synaptic partners. The uniqueness and versatility of this project fueled my creativity and motivated me to step out of my comfort zone to learn a range of new approaches.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
My inclination towards science started very early in my childhood with my parents being my first source of inspiration. Thereafter, throughout my academic training and research, I have been inspired and supported by great scientific minds--including my teachers, mentors and colleagues--who are helping me to develop an interdisciplinary and innovative perspective towards research. Between my first post-doc training and pursuing a second post-doc in the field of neuroscience, there was a period of discontinuity in my wet-lab scientific career and I was unsure how I would fair after the gap. But my current post-doc mentor inspired me and gave me the opportunity to start from a new platform with this project while acknowledging my interests and past expertise.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
The requirements for an ‘ideal’ synthetic designer synapse are two independent components that can be genetically targeted to presynaptic and postsynaptic partners, that can excite or inhibit the postsynaptic partner, and whose interaction can be temporally controlled. As such, new tools that can specifically regulate these selectively connected elements are essential. Through Interluminescence, I hope to refine and provide a unique, new platform technology that will enable this crucial new level of specificity in circuit control. Alongside, I want to contribute to the community by inspiring young minds and sharing my skills and knowledge; and as a mom to a 7-year-old, I have already launched myself on this path. Also, I really do wish to convey that anything can be learned at any point in life so long as we are enthusiastic about it.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Five years from now I envision myself as an independent researcher fueled and supported by a creative, innovative, experienced and caring team; asking and solving together pertinent questions in science.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
As a researcher, I feel privileged to be able to explore with a curious mind and to learn and re-learn. This gives me strength and purpose to continue during both triumph and failure. Also, the fact that research is ‘never-ending’ is wonderful enough to propel me positively despite challenges and roadblocks.

What drew you to apply to this course?
Due to my involvement with Interluminescence, first at the neural population level and more recently at the synapse level, I have become very aware of the dynamics of the various ion channels mediating synaptic transmission. This is an area of knowledge addressed in the course in which an immersion would be tremendously beneficial. I applied to this course because I felt that it would be a great opportunity to hear from the experts in the field and be trained in the techniques, exactly when I need it most.

What is your key takeaway from the Course; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
This course has opened a whole new door for me to view and admire the complex and intelligent electrophysiological properties of the cells. I will practice and apply the information and skills that I learnt here to design, customize, conduct, troubleshoot and analyze my patch clamp experiments for investigating Interluminescence at the single synapse level.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this course?
I appreciate the fact that this course welcomes students from a wide range of training experience so please don’t be hesitant to apply if you have just started in this field. If you love to solve intriguing electrophysiological problems, I encourage you to consider this course. I also highly recommend this course to anyone trying to find their way through the ion channels.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Course?
The most memorable thing that happened to me during this virtual course was getting acquainted with the details of the patch ephys set-up provided to me for use during the course. It is important to understand the function and maintenance of every single part of the set-up and it was during the course’s real time experiments--under the online supervision of the instructors--that I got the chance to do it, and the interaction helped me troubleshoot various issues within and around the patch rig. I also very much enjoyed the student’s data blitz episodes.

What feedback and or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in a virtual CSHL course?
Communication is very important at every level, especially during the virtual course. Sharing individual concerns and challenges with your peers and instructors is crucial to find solutions.

Thank you to Mansi for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Images provided by Mansi Prakash.

Visitor of the Week: María-Ángeles Bonmatí Carrión

Meet María-Ángeles Bonmatí Carrión of the University of Murcia! She recently joined the Chronobiology Laboratory led by Juan Antonio Madrid and María-Ángeles Rol. The postdoctoral researcher joined us at the 85th CSHL Symposium this week which focuses on Biological Time Keeping. María-Ángeles presented a poster at the Symposium titled “Correlated color temperature and light intensity: Complementary features in non-visual light field”.

 Tell us about your research.
My research is focused on how our body organizes its physiological processes through time (e.g., the sleep-wake cycle, body temperature, hormone secretion, motor activity) and non-visual effects of light, such as pupillary light reflex or melatonin suppression. I have also worked in developing tools and protocols to assess and palliate chronodisruption, which is when our body clock “gets broken” and our physiology becomes temporally disrupted.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
I find how biological variables oscillate through time to be a really interesting aspect of biology in general and of physiology in particular. It gives you a different perspective of physiological processes, where time becomes a central factor that has not been considered in most scientific approaches.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
In my case, it is really inspiring to observe how our body and the environment change across the day or longer periods, and how they both synchronize to maximize the biological functionality. The fact that circadian rhythms are so well conserved through evolution is also a reflection of their importance for the surveillance of the organisms. I have to thank several chronobiology/sleep scientists that have inspired and helped me through this journey, such as Profs. Juan Antonio Madrid, María-Ángeles Rol, Debra Skene, Simon Archer and Derk-Jan Dijk.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I would like my research to have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of general and sensitive populations, through scientifically-based recommendations.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
I would like to lead my own group and also to explore other fields related to sleep and circadian rhythms, such as the effects of other environmental stressors and the pathways involved.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
I love discovering different aspects of our physiology that can help people to improve their wellbeing and health. I also love the feeling of learning new things all the time!

What drew you to attend this meeting?
I had the feeling that by attending this meeting, I would be able to learn a lot from renowned scientists in this field. I also wanted to share with other scientist a small part of what we do in our laboratory.

What is your key takeaway from the Symposium; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
I had the chance to get knowledge about many molecular advances that I am planning to apply to my work in humans; which, at present, is mainly focused in physiology.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Symposium?
All the talks were amazing and really interesting and I am very happy to have the honor of listening to renowned researchers such as Joseph Takahashi and Michael Rosbash. It is also exciting to see more junior researchers leading really interesting projects that are contributing in a great manner to the development of Chronobiology. The In Memoriam session was very moving, dedicated to three essential researchers: Michael Menaker, Michael Hughes and Paolo Sassone-Corsi.

Images provided by María-Ángeles Bonmatí Carrión

Visitor of the Week: Abigail Sarah Jarosz

Meet Abigail Sarah Jarosz of Bowling Green State University! The third year PhD student and member of Dr. Julia Halo’s lab returned for another CSHL Retroviruses meeting where she again gave a poster presentation titled “Expression and fusogenic function of a CfERV lineage in canines”.

Tell us about your research.
I study copies of once-infectious retroviruses that arose from germline infection known as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), which act as a ‘fossil record’ of past infections providing a unique resource to examine virus-host evolution. I believe these fossils in the canine host may be the key to understanding why there appears to be no circulating retroviruses in any modern canids.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
Despite their being constantly challenged from numerous exogenous retroviruses, retroviral infection has not been observed in the domestic dog or any contemporary canid. This truly boggles my mind and I hope to help characterize what this purging mechanism is and how it has evolved.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
When I started high school, my family got a Golden Retriever named Sammy. We had a very close relationship through thousands of hours spent walking, cuddling, and of course, playing ball. Sammy solidified my love for dogs (although I love all dogs, he was the very best) and motivates me to work on my research. I will always be grateful for the time we had together.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
To be honest, I am not exactly sure where I see myself in five years. I do know I will continue to do research and ask questions that, when answered, will help expand our understanding of life.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
I love being able to explore science and how I am always learning new things. I am lucky to have an advisor who is extremely supportive of me and encourages the exploration of different research avenues.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
With my research, understanding retroviruses and the subsequent host response is essential. This meeting covers many of the different components that make up my project.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
In the question of why canines are elusive to retroviruses, I just started to get into restriction factors. This meeting presented some amazing new research that I can learn from while I begin to characterize restriction factors in canines.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
My advice to anyone considering participating in this meeting is to ask questions and seek out some research that may not appear to be in your “area”. Both of those things are the best way to learn, meet new people, and think about your own project from a different perspective.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
So far, I would say that the most memorable part of this meeting has been the poster sessions. It is always amazing to see all the cool research people are working on. I am also very excited for the talks this Friday during the ERVs and Pathogenesis session -- it looks like a great line up of talks!

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
When I started high school, my family got a Golden Retriever named Sammy. We had a very close relationship through thousands of hours spent walking, cuddling, and of course, playing ball. Sammy solidified my love for dogs (although I love all dogs, he was the very best) and motivates me to work on my research. I will always be grateful for the time we had together.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
To be honest, I am not exactly sure where I see myself in five years. I do know I will continue to do research and ask questions that, when answered, will help expand our understanding of life.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
I love being able to explore science and how I am always learning new things. I am lucky to have an advisor who is extremely supportive of me and encourages the exploration of different research avenues.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
With my research, understanding retroviruses and the subsequent host response is essential. This meeting covers many of the different components that make up my project.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
In the question of why canines are elusive to retroviruses, I just started to get into restriction factors. This meeting presented some amazing new research that I can learn from while I begin to characterize restriction factors in canines.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
My advice to anyone considering participating in this meeting is to ask questions and seek out some research that may not appear to be in your “area”. Both of those things are the best way to learn, meet new people, and think about your own project from a different perspective.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
So far, I would say that the most memorable part of this meeting has been the poster sessions. It is always amazing to see all the cool research people are working on. I am also very excited for the talks this Friday during the ERVs and Pathogenesis session -- it looks like a great line up of talks!

Thank you to Abigail for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Images provided by Abigail Sarah Jarosz

Visitor of the Week: David Alejandro Garcia Grisales

Meet David Alejandro Garcia Grisales who is affiliated at both the National Cancer Institute and University of Maryland, College Park. The graduate student-predoctoral fellow has a joint appointment in Arpita Upadhyaya and Gordon L. Hager’s labs. David returns for his third meeting at CSHL – Cell Dynamics and Models – where he presented a talk titled “Transcription factor dynamics and their interactions with chromatin”. This isn’t his first talk but he has “always felt that discussing your research is one of the best generators of ideas for future directions.”

Tell us about your research.
I observe and analyze the motion of proteins inside the nucleus as they bind and unbind chromatin to regulate gene expression.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
When I joined my PhD, I was interested in transcriptional dynamics and this area provided a new and fresh look at transcriptional regulation. Moreover, these were the perfect questions to use physics together with biology to solve long standing question in chromatin biology.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
My inspiration is to make science more equitable, in particular promoting the success of underrepresented minorities in academia. Everyone should have the pleasure of enjoying science independent of their social and economic background.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I hope to revolutionize the field of chromatin biology by proposing more accurate models of transcriptional regulation and bridging the gap between transcription factor kinetics and gene regulation.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
The freedom to explore the craziest ideas.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
This meeting lies at the heart of my research interests: I have always been interested in building physical and mathematical models to understand biological systems.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
Most of the time, the simplest models provide the most relevant insights. I will exhaustively explore the predictive power and insight that simple models provide before moving to more complex models.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
Participate in the discussions as much as possible, and you should not feel intimidated about reaching out to other scientists with questions. I joined the informal discussions scheduled after the oral sessions and have learned the most during chats.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
I had a long discussion on Slack regarding my talk with a couple of meeting participants. They each shared with me an exciting and unique perspective based from their individual research niche which then gave me some exciting ideas for future experiments and directions.

Thank you to David for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Images provided by David Alejandro Garcia Grisales.

Visitor of the Week: Julia Nepper

Meet Julia Nepper of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison! Julia is a postdoctoral trainee in Jo Handelsman’s lab and is with us this week at The Biology of Genomes meeting. This is Julia’s first meeting at CSHL and she presented a poster titled “Genetic regulation of soil microbe biofilm formation in response to sublethal antibiotic treatment”.

Tell us about your research.
My research centers around understanding how the chemicals that soil bacteria produce allow them to communicate with each other. Specifically, I study a system of bacteria that models the rhizosphere, the area of soil on and immediately surrounding plant roots.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
It’s been an interest of the lab for a long time, and there were preliminary results suggesting that some signal was causing a biofilm phenotype in one of the bacteria from our model system. Because I had previous experience with biofilm research, I decided to investigate further.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I’ve been interested in science ever since I could remember, and that passion was nurtured and supported by my parents throughout my childhood education. My undergraduate research experience convinced me to pursue a PhD. When I finish my work with Prof. Handelsman, I’m hoping to pursue a career in communicating science to lay audiences.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I’m hoping that my work will pave the way for a better understanding of bacterial biofilms and communication. Our goal is to establish a model system that can be used by researchers across the globe to interrogate rhizosphere bacterial dynamics in a controlled and methodical manner.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
I would love to be the host of a podcast/video series about science in general, but especially biology.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
I love talking to other people about research, and learning not just about the science, but also about the human stories that are behind the work.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
It was brought to my attention by my training grant program director. It seemed like a great opportunity to learn more about what’s state-of-the-art in terms of genomic and transcriptomic research. I am still fairly new to ‘omics, so I appreciate any chance to improve my understanding of the area.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
I found an interesting poster that discussed different methods for RNA sequencing with low input concentrations. Although the work was done in the context of immune cells, I think it could easily be applicable to my work with bacterial biofilms.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
Although it can be tempting to stick to the subject areas related to what you study, sometimes it’s fun to go to a “random” talk or poster and learn something totally new! And you never know when those insights can actually be super useful for thinking about your work in a different way.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
I virtually “ran into” an old colleague of mine and we had a great discussion catching up on what we’ve been working on the past few years.

Thank you to Julia for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by Julia Nepper.