We are going to the Falling Walls conference!

Tom's abstract for the Falling Walls conference has been accepted, and he will be giving a short talk about the course in Berlin this November! The Falling Walls conference defines itself as "The international conference on future breakthroughs in science and society". We expect many people to be interested in our project and to be able to repeat it next year!

Setting up an insect neuroscience and Drosophila neurogenetics lab in Uganda

Picture 1. Students learning about fly genetics by looking through
the four donated dissecting microscopes.

We have now successfully completed the first week of the course, and I have been here now for two weeks. On the first week I was setting up the lab. I brought with me 6 big suitcases (on average 25Kg each, some more and some less) with most of the equipment. Isa, and Lola also brought some equipment, and Marta and Tom some consumables. In the end we now have a pretty well equipped lab. We have four dissecting scopes that we use for fly work and dissections(see picture 1, donations from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge, and Richard Morris).
We also have one inverted compound microscope (Donated by Jim Haseloff) where to look at fluorescent Drosophila brains. We have fitted it in one corner and make a "dark room" with an improvised curtain, which actually works pretty well (see picture 2).

Figure 2 (b). Fluorescent microscope
inside the "dark room".

Picture 2 (a). "Dark room" created to
house the fluorescent microscope

 

We also have two larval behavioural set-ups (see picture 3) each of them consisting of a webcam attached to a computer, and a behavioural arena consisting of a peltier device (cooling module from old computers that we use to control temperature precisely by connecting it to two A batteries) to manipulate neuronal activity in neurons of genetically modified larvae (expressing UAS-shibts, and UAS-DTripA).

Figure 3. Larval behavioural set-up. Total cost: aprox. £60
(Computer: £30, webcam: £17, peltier device: £10, fan: £0)

The lab is also now equipped with 6 small neurophysiology amplifiers, which are a loan from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge, where they were built. Glen Harrison, who made the amplifiers at Cambridge, has kindly send us the planes so that they can be built here locally (see picture 4). We also have a soldering station to make electrodes locally as we need them (see picture 5).

Picture 4. Electrophysiology rig consisting of custom made amplifiers

conected directly to the audio port of the  laptops, and acquired using 

SpikeHound. In the picture is also visible a manupilator, the plates were
we place the insects for the recordings, and a wax melter, loan from 

the Bate lab. On the top picture you can see a grasshopper from which we 

were recording action potentials by inserting an electrode in the leg muscles.

Picture 5. Soldering station to make our
own electrodes

Additionally we have brought two patch amplifiers (donation from Leon Lagnado at LMB in Cambridge, and Bernardo Sabatini at Harvard University), which Tom will teach the students and faculty of the university how to use, and that will be used in the future for research. We also have an AM-Systems amplifier (loan from the Kravitz lab), and two acquisition boards (loan from AD instruments), to exemplify the more expensive options in electrophysiology, and compare it to the more economical custom made amplifiers. For acquiring the electrophysiology data we are using the open source software SpikeHound, and for its analysis the also open source program Spikepy. We also have 6 videocameras (donations from the Kravitz lab.) to perform courtship, and aggression behavioural experiments, and 7 laptops, whose story we shared in a previous post. And of course more than a hundred fly stocks that happily traveled from Cambridge. Additionally, we keep catching big insects on a daily basis with improvised traps to perform neurophysiology on them (see picture 6).

Picture 6. Collection of big insects in
our improvised cages.

Initially, as the room temperature during the day is around 23C which approximates the 25C at which we regularly keep our incubators, we were just leaving the flies outside.  However during the night the temperature falls to around 17C, and it becomes quite difficult to plan the crosses to be ready for the experiments on a particular day. If you know how much an incubator cost, you probably already understand why we don't have an incubator here. However, what we do have is an old oven, which by playing with the temperature knob we have managed to convert in an improvised incubator (see picture 7).

Picture 7.Oven used as
incubator by regulating the
temperature to aprox. 25C

I think we have done a pretty good job in transforming the initial Pharmacology lab, into a insect neuroscience and Drosophila neurogenetics lab. (see picture 8).

Figure 8. Picture of the lab on the day I arrived, and today, with all the equipment that we brought over.

Faculty of the course and local organizers

Lucia, Sadiq, Marta, Tom, Lola, Pounch, Isa

Students of the course

Here a photo of the students of the course, and the faculty teaching (minus Marta)

From left to right, top row: Steven Nyanjom (JKUAT, Kenya), Tom Baden (Tubingen, Germany), Maureen Sagom (Kenya Methodist University, Kenya), Samuel Dare (KIU, Uganda), Lucille Lyaruu, KCM College, Tanzania), Iliya Ezekiel (KIU, Uganda), Jimmy Olusakin (KIU, Uganda), Johnnie Mary Ngattu (Mbarara University, Uganda), Paulin Nana (University of Yaounde, Cameroon), Nelson Chimbiya (Blantyre Malaria Project, Malawi), middle row: Sylviane Dongmo (University of Yaonde, Cameroon), Sunday Abba (KIU, Uganda), Josep Oloro (Mabarara University, Uganda), Yunusa Garba (KIU, Uganda), Goji Teru (KIU, Uganda), bottom row: Mesole Bolaji (KIU, Uganda), Lola Martin Bermudo (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain), Isabel Palacios (University of Cambridge, UK), Lucia Prieto (University of Cambridge, UK), Okpanachi Alfred (KIU, Uganda).

Course schedule

I am sorry for the delay in the post, we are keeping quite busy making the course running. Here is the schedule of the course. I will post tomorrow some pictures of the faculty teaching, the students, and a bit on what we have been doing during this first week with some pictures of the lab.

Dr. Marta Vicente is joining us

Marta Vicente Crespo is also joining the team!! She will be part of the faculty teaching the course, and will be teaching assistant, lab-maid and co-blogger when needed. Marta did her undergrad and PhD at the University of Valencia. She was a visiting PhD student and a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Palacios and through those two degrees of separation got involved in our project. She is really excited about the possibility of contributing to and learning from this experience. She spent the last two years working as a postdoc at the University of California San Diego, where she has been very involved in initiatives to bridge the sciences and the social sciences at the undergraduate level and is now in love with the idea of using “dialogue” as a tool to educate better scientists that are also more socially involved

The local organizing committee.

I arrived to Ishaka, home of KIU, on Tuesday night. These last three days together with the wonderful people that integrate the local organizing committee(see photo of us just outside the lab), we have been setting-up the lab, and making sure that everything will be up and running for the course. To organize a course such as this one, a local organizing committee is essential to arrange everything here, from lab space, to finding reagents that can not be shipped, to taking care to the (many) possible unplanned circumstances that one might find. Of course the faculty that will be teaching is also essential and a photo of them will follow once they arrive on Sunday.

The people in the photo are:
Top row (from left to right): Mrs. Priscilia Kobusingye, Mrs. Winfred Bukenya, Dr. Kintu Mungaga, Mr. Fred Mwesigwa, Mr. Richard Kirungi, Dr. Ahmed Adedeji, Mr. Francis Ndagire, Dr. Ponchang Apollos Wuyep, Dr. Peter Ekanem, Mr. Mubiru Livingstone.
Bottom row (from left to right): Dr. Lucia Prieto (me), Dr. Sadiq Yusuf.